Exposing the lack of compassion by conservatives and
debunking right wing hypocrisy at every opportunity.
Keep Them Indoors - Memebase: Rage Comics, Forever Alone, Y U No Guy, Troll Face, Foul Bachelor Frog
4/23/12
4/17/12
10/28/11
This Is Some Sick Santorum
By: Mark W Adams
All I wanted to do was get this sad little girl's name right, knowing that I should avoid Googling Santorum I headed to Wikipedia. After reading what sick, demented shit these children are being subjected to being raised by Rick and Karen, I'm convinced the boy with the crazed look in his eyes will end up atop a bell tower with a sniper rifle, and the girls would be better off as Mormon Sister-wives.
So much for my original snarky take which has completely left my brain after reading this:
In 1996, their son Gabriel Michael was born prematurely and lived for only two hours (a sonogram taken before Gabriel was born revealed that his posterior urethral valve was closed and that the prognosis for his survival was therefore poor). While pregnant, Karen Santorum developed a life-threatening intrauterine infection and a fever that reached nearly 105 degrees. She went into labor when she was 20 weeks pregnant and allowed doctors to give her Oxytocin to speed the birth.[13]
Karen Santorum wrote a book about the experience: Letters to Gabriel: The True Story of Gabriel Michael Santorum.[14] In it, she writes that the couple brought the deceased infant home from the hospital and introduced the dead child to their living children as "your brother Gabriel" and slept with the body overnight before returning it to the hospital.
After seeing that, forgetting you left your dog on top of the family car seems like something out of a Chevy Chase film, and leaved me with the permanent impression the Santorums are a frightening mix of Amityville Horror, The Stepford Wives (original version) and Night of the Living Dead.
Not to make light of Mitt Romney's criminal neglect of his pooch (having just lost a dog myself to a hit-and-run driver) I feel obligated to link to Dogs Against Romney.
10/3/11
Focus People, Focus
By: Mark W Adams
For now, which time period has constituted my entire adult life of watching my fellow liberals snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I'd like to concentrate on the issues we liberals have a hope in hell of winning. We can't tax the Oligarchs anywhere near where the vast majority of this nation believes we should and we can't get the money out of politics which shields that corrupt system. But we can and should ... and have GOT to stop pissing around. More importantly, we have to stop pissing on each other.
Those two goals, and I can name a host of others, enjoy support in the 60-70 percentiles and yet year after year, decade after decade these "liberal" policy demands are given bare lip-service. Come on people, the Public Option was favored by 77%, but we couldn't get our act together enough to secure a win on that one. Arguably, unless we tax them and throw them out of the temple of our democracy, the oligarchs will continue to feed their greed and buy off our elected officials with the tantalizing promise of making those crooks rich beyond their dreams as well -- quaint notions of ending wars and poverty will remain a fantasy of the prols and plebs.
So forgive me for not getting worked up when the Death Penalty is once again abused and misused, cuz that little bit of American Exceptionalism ain't going nowhere when only a quarter of the population oppose it. That's "Birther" numbers people. I'm not saying to get on any bandwagon, rather quite the opposite. Just pick your battles.
State Sponsored Killing enjoys popular support in this country, period. Which brings us to the sad case of the American in al-Queda, Anwar al-Awlaki. Barrels of digital ink have been spilled denouncing the assassination as unconstitutional, and frankly I don't care. I've been informed that I've no right to hold the opinion that the President's decision was correct and still call myself a liberal, to which I can only reply in a manner which His Rudeness will understand: "Suck my cock."
The man was a traitor. He had sworn allegiance to an organization dedicated to the destruction of western civilization and the mass murder of it's citizens. Regardless that his actions didn't technically fit into the definition of treason and war by and between nation-states written centuries before the rise of multi-national corporate "personhood," he had no right to continue to enjoy the protections afforded American citizens -- whatever the hell that means -- and was putting my daughters and your friends in danger. He had to be stopped.
I see little distinction about the way in which we should treat such vermin as al-Awlaki and bin-Laden just because they were born on different continents. Al-Awlaki's cultural heritage is what made him valuable to al-Queda. It's what made him an effective terrorist. I can't condone him being able to use that same background as a shield against recrimination. He cannot use the Constitution to protect him from actively trying to destroy the society it created.
To my eyes, if he should have been captured instead of killed, so should Osama bin-Laden. They were both human beings, were they not? Is one a lessor human just because he was an Arab? Are you endowed with a superiority gene when born in New Mexico instead of old Mexico? Feh! By Digby and the Rude Pundit's logic, anyone who cheered the death of bin-Laden needs to turn in their tie-dyed T-shirts as well, because they aren't "real" liberals either.
If that puts me in the uncomfortable company of Dick Cheney, so be it. I like his attitude on LGBT as well. If you still think the President should be condemned for taking out a known, admitted and notorious terrorist, then you are waltzing with Ron Paul, so suck on that.
That's doable folks, and it has the potential to fix so many wrongs in this nation. Crying over death row inmates or cave-dwelling bomb throwers while spitting on the closest thing we've seen to a liberally minded President since Reagan declared war on working folk is counter-productive to say the least.
Those two goals, and I can name a host of others, enjoy support in the 60-70 percentiles and yet year after year, decade after decade these "liberal" policy demands are given bare lip-service. Come on people, the Public Option was favored by 77%, but we couldn't get our act together enough to secure a win on that one. Arguably, unless we tax them and throw them out of the temple of our democracy, the oligarchs will continue to feed their greed and buy off our elected officials with the tantalizing promise of making those crooks rich beyond their dreams as well -- quaint notions of ending wars and poverty will remain a fantasy of the prols and plebs.
So forgive me for not getting worked up when the Death Penalty is once again abused and misused, cuz that little bit of American Exceptionalism ain't going nowhere when only a quarter of the population oppose it. That's "Birther" numbers people. I'm not saying to get on any bandwagon, rather quite the opposite. Just pick your battles.
State Sponsored Killing enjoys popular support in this country, period. Which brings us to the sad case of the American in al-Queda, Anwar al-Awlaki. Barrels of digital ink have been spilled denouncing the assassination as unconstitutional, and frankly I don't care. I've been informed that I've no right to hold the opinion that the President's decision was correct and still call myself a liberal, to which I can only reply in a manner which His Rudeness will understand: "Suck my cock."
The man was a traitor. He had sworn allegiance to an organization dedicated to the destruction of western civilization and the mass murder of it's citizens. Regardless that his actions didn't technically fit into the definition of treason and war by and between nation-states written centuries before the rise of multi-national corporate "personhood," he had no right to continue to enjoy the protections afforded American citizens -- whatever the hell that means -- and was putting my daughters and your friends in danger. He had to be stopped.
I see little distinction about the way in which we should treat such vermin as al-Awlaki and bin-Laden just because they were born on different continents. Al-Awlaki's cultural heritage is what made him valuable to al-Queda. It's what made him an effective terrorist. I can't condone him being able to use that same background as a shield against recrimination. He cannot use the Constitution to protect him from actively trying to destroy the society it created.
To my eyes, if he should have been captured instead of killed, so should Osama bin-Laden. They were both human beings, were they not? Is one a lessor human just because he was an Arab? Are you endowed with a superiority gene when born in New Mexico instead of old Mexico? Feh! By Digby and the Rude Pundit's logic, anyone who cheered the death of bin-Laden needs to turn in their tie-dyed T-shirts as well, because they aren't "real" liberals either.
If that puts me in the uncomfortable company of Dick Cheney, so be it. I like his attitude on LGBT as well. If you still think the President should be condemned for taking out a known, admitted and notorious terrorist, then you are waltzing with Ron Paul, so suck on that.
And like Abraham Lincoln, Obama has saved the constitution and the country by defending it against a nihilistic and narrow reading of the constitution that would prevent the country from protecting itself.I have to laugh that the chief criticism of the Occupy Wall Street protesters is that they are basically an unfocused, quixotic street party. Good god, they're the only ones out there who've identified a specific target with a grievance that enjoys popular support throughout the rest of the country: the fat cats simply have got to pony up some dough.
That's doable folks, and it has the potential to fix so many wrongs in this nation. Crying over death row inmates or cave-dwelling bomb throwers while spitting on the closest thing we've seen to a liberally minded President since Reagan declared war on working folk is counter-productive to say the least.
9/22/11
Hollywood Liberal
By: Mark W Adams
From one of those "Vanity Cards" Chuck Lorre puts at the end of his productions, like Big Bang theory, Two and a Half Men, Dharma & Greg, etc.
CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #322If, somewhere in the course of this vanity card, I were to use a monosyllabic, Anglo-Saxon word that sits atop the 'no say' list, my guess is nothing would change in your life. You might form an opinion, have a passing thought, or even choose to be outraged. But, and it's a big but, the choice would be yours. It would not be inflicted on you by the word. The word would be, like Kansas once morosely whined, "Dust in the Wind." And yet, we live in a culture that fears the word. In fact, on broadcast television, the phobia for the word has reached the point where the letter f is, in certain instances, no longer acceptable. F has become a subversive letter. According to our network censor, f is often up to no good. We have been warned. F is being watched! Which brings me to my belabored point. I believe that words by themselves are actually quite impotent. They hardly rise above being noise. Ideas, however, the clever, inane and/or insidious grouping together of words, are dangerous. If history proves anything, the wrong idea at the right time can do unbelievable damage. Bad ideas are what the culture should fear and guard against. Which is why I get spooked watching ox News.
9/16/11
They Need To Get It Together
By: Mark W Adams
Boom...Boom. These two items appeared next to each other on my feed reader:
Jim Cramer: President Obama Is ‘Hated Like Jimmy Carter’ By Business Leaders
Republicans accuse Obama of trying to ease regulatory burden on 'job creator' who donated to GOP
Sadly, none of the haters will really see the cognitive dissonance.
That or the really sad news is that no matter how much he tries to appease, cajole, placate, compromise or outright bribe them, the self-appointed Masters of the Universe will ALWAYS hate most anyDemocrat Harvard Grad Liberal Center-Lefty Northerner Big City Dweller Black Dude.
Jim Cramer: President Obama Is ‘Hated Like Jimmy Carter’ By Business Leaders
Republicans accuse Obama of trying to ease regulatory burden on 'job creator' who donated to GOP
Sadly, none of the haters will really see the cognitive dissonance.
That or the really sad news is that no matter how much he tries to appease, cajole, placate, compromise or outright bribe them, the self-appointed Masters of the Universe will ALWAYS hate most any
9/15/11
They Must Be Joking
By: Mark W Adams
Monty Python - History of the Joke
Truly inspired thoughts come from all over, more often than not from the lips what Mel Brooks describes as Stand-up Philosophers. That's the job, thinking of the absurdities of life pointing it out in the most devastating way ... while not pissing their audience off (too much). Laughter is a bonus reaction, the signal that they've hit on something
Marc Maron is one such sage, and I've been enjoying his WTF podcasts for some time now. While entertainingly funny the podcasts are profound in that they are not an "act," but a forum where Marc and his fellow comedians discuss the craft of comedy, where it comes from, how it develops. Like Chris Hardwick's Nerdist podcast (which I also highly recommend), what works and what doesn't is what drives the program, but Maron's WTF is a level all its own.
Where political bloggers and activist Tweeters analyze and advocate in often heroic efforts to spread the message of where our society needs to go, and some are even podcasting to great effect (and here I must plug the Best of the Left aggregator podcast and Mr. and Mrs. Driftglass/Bluegal's Professional Left as personal favorites), let's face it -- they mostly are preaching to the choir.
So, when the nature of GOP nihilism is expounded on at some lefty blog in trying to get a grip on the suicide pact conservatives are using to blackmail the nation into accepting their theocratic policy prescriptions -- or else, "we" know what's up. But "we" are folks who care, sometimes too much, about politics.
Republican hue and cry about the current budget "crisis" is intended to force Americans to embrace their vision for the future whether voters like it or not. Their argument at its essence is, you may not like our vision but at this point you don't have any choice.But when you hear something that on the surface is not political at all, but is so very applicable to the state of the nation even when it's entirely intended for another audience and merely describing an individual's personality, it gives pause. Maybe it's more about what's in my head and this says more about me than the art of the joke, but take this exchange between Marc Maron and Anthony Jeselnik last week on WTF about Jeselnik's experience playing sports in high school and Marc's introspective reaction and see it you too find it perfectly descriptive of how the leading conservatives of the GOP are operating:
Maron: Did you get shit from the football guys?Sure, call me PollyAnna, say it's just wishful thinking, but in the long run the extremism of the right stinks of desperation. They're losing, and they know it.
Jeselnik: Nah, it wasn't like that. No one cared, no one cared about lacross at all. I think it might be better there at my high school now than at the time.
Maron: ... I always think about that in myself. That if someone had tought me some sense of healthy competition I would be better off in life. Like to me losing, is just, like I'm, if I'm losing I would rather ruin the game ... than lose.
They're losing at life, and their attempt to destroy the game, our government, our democracy, our economy, our way of life is a symptom of their last gasp attempt to stop what cannot be stopped. Progress. Progress towards social justice, towards fairness and equality cannot be stopped no matter how many road blocks the conservative cry babies throw at us.
It's all they got. And it works to a degree, but only for so long my friends. Tricks and fear mongering only work for so long. Face it. No matter how some douchebag like Jim DeMint holds his breath and stomps his feet, Barack Obama is our President. An insanely articulate, extremely well educated, urban black man from a northern state is President, and Jim DeMint never, ever will hold that title. That alone is progress.
We will always need more progress and they will always try to slow it down, but generation by generation, we win, they lose, and life goes on. Our society will advance and even if they try to destroy it from within, "we" will always be "We the People," (even if we have to include corporations or even androids and zombies as "people" too).
9/13/11
You Asked For My Debate Take
By: Mark W Adams
Well, maybe not "you" specifically, but I was indeed asked for my opinion. Well, I was asked if there was any more comedy gold that could be gleaned from Bachmann's performance, but close enough.
Actually, Bachmann did very well on the attack vs. Perry last night. Made him look like a crooked chump. It's a bit complicated and I can get into the details if you want, but basically Perry required schoolgirls get an anti-cervical cancer vaccine via executive order. The drug was provided by Merk, a campaign contributor his Chief of Staff used to run. Perry acted offended that he could be bought for a five grand contribution when he raises 30 million. (No mention if he really was a whore and was only dickering over price.) Rick Santorum - in his best debate performance to date - pointed out that you vaccinate kids so other kids don't catch what you got and start an epidemic ... and cancer ain't contagious. (Okay, those were the details.)
Libertarian tea baggers ended up booing Perry ... and also booed their godfather, Ron Paul, for stating the obvious vis-a-vis 9/11 terrorists motives. They liked his stance that "Freedom" means you take your chances, and those have consequences, so if you ain't insured and get sick ... too bad weakest link, you die. Actually got cheered for that one. I weep for our nation.
Huntsman was there, tried to do stand up and failed. Godfather Pizza guy Cain, tried to be serious and looked like a poor man's Bill Cosby.
Later, Patti Davis, Reagan's daughter, was on MSNBC and said that none of these clowns were fit to stand underneath her dad's shadow.
Meanwhile, half-term Governor Mousellini agreed with Bachmann and piled on Perry, who she'd endorsed for Governor in 2010 and for whom shehad nice things to say about, just short of endorsing, last week. Onlyknock on Bachmann I saw last night on twitter was that her hair didn't look as good as Perry's or Romney.
Winner, Mittens! Stayed above the fray, got some shots in on Perry too, and didn't get picked on.
AND... ppp polls Obama up 49-45 on Romney, 52-41 on Perry, 53-41 on Gingrich, 53-39 on Bachmann
Forgot about Gingrich. He's so funny, so angry, so full of crap. Twitter is scoring this debate a win for Bachmann, that she breathed new life into her campaign ... which has zero hope of going anywhere but may have earned her the Palin VP spot as designated attack poodle.
For those keeping track at home:
Bachmann: Pro-life mother of 23 and beard to one very up tight closeted white guy is also Pro Cancer.
Perry: Cannot be bought cheaply, pretty dumb on his feet, great hair, authentic swagger, real ranch, bought and paid for by big oil. Typical GOP Texas politician. (Got booed by tea baggers for compassionate immigration stance similar to his old boss when he was Bush's Lieutenant Governor - booed for his one decent and human act as governor.)
Romney: The robotic GOP equivalent to Al Gore, the RomBot is a quantum candidate, able to be on all sides of an issue at the same time.
Santorum: STILL the most googleable candidate there, but was not frothy enough last night.
Huntsman: Is obviously in the wrong party.
Paul: Is obviously on the wrong planet.
Gingrich: Is obviously on the wrong end of the space-time continuum.
Herman Cain has a 9 point plan which as near as I can remember stands for a 9 item pizza for $9.99 delivered in 90 minutes.
9/8/11
Speaking of Zombie Reagan
By: Mark W Adams
Hey kids, guess what STILL doesn't work .... Star Wars. <<cue Imperial Death Star Theme>>
You don't hear as much about Ronny Ray-Gun's SDI anymore. No doubt because the Homeland Security Industrial Scaremongering Complex has supplanted that boondoggle as the preferred cash cow of the Oligarchs.
.For those of you still paying attention, I needn't remind you that the undelivered speech Condi Rice was to give on the ill-fated morning of Sept. 11, 2001, (initially classified to protect the embarassed) was revealed to be a complaint that we were not doing enough to build a missile defense shield, instead of wasting twice as much money on counter-terrorism.
U.S. Ballistic Missile Intercept Test Fails
Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011A test last week of next-generation ballistic missile intercept technology ended unsuccessfully, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said (see GSN, March 31).
A mock short-range ballistic missile was fired at 3:53 a.m. local time on Thursday from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. A minute-and-a-half later, a Standard Missile 3 Block 1B interceptor was launched from the USS Lake Erie to take down the target. However, no intercept took place.
The SM-3 1B interceptor had not previously undergone a flight trial. The agency said in a press release it would carry out a thorough assessment to identify why the test failed.
You don't hear as much about Ronny Ray-Gun's SDI anymore. No doubt because the Homeland Security Industrial Scaremongering Complex has supplanted that boondoggle as the preferred cash cow of the Oligarchs.
9/5/11
Tolerating the Intolerant is Bringing Us All Down
By: Mark W Adams
Mike Lofgren has written a piece I would consider required reading in any Political Science course that teaches how our government really works and why it doesn't live up to the promise it's institutions inspire when you study them in all your other government classes. Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult:
Back in the good old days, like the Summer of 2007, I attempted ever so feebly to make a non-racist, non-sexist argument for John Edwards as a superior presidential contender than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton based in no small part on the innate racism and misogyny of the Republicans in our midst.
The idea was that Edwards, as a white Southern gentleman, A) was more "electable" and B) almost as an afterthought, that his policies would be easier to get through an otherwise hostile Congress that would constantly filibuster Hillary in a replay of the Clinton Witch Trials of the late 1990s -- and they simply wouldn't be able to deal with a Black guy in the Oval Office emotionally/rationally.
I never actually put that argument to digital paper beyond the flame wars at Daily Kos, and I most certainly did not flesh it out completely. The ability to govern effectively was a throw-away line, a "By the way..." thing since we were immeasurably more obsessed with the idea of insuring an end the nightmarish Bush administration by any means necessary than the difference between a public option and single-payer.
Others were making that argument anyway, and getting righteously slammed for being intolerant themselves, only making the argument that it was the Klansmen on the right we needed to fear as a mask covering their own bigotry -- on of the most horrific things you can ever call a true liberal. Treading among those minefields just wasn't appetizing.
Not that it really would have made any difference, and besides ... my crystal ball is a shattered remnant of it's former splendor from whence it told me Jonny E. was someone America should trust. However, I do wonder sometimes. We proved that America was indeed ready to elect a black President, and I certainly believe it's past ready to elect a woman to the White House. We also have proved these last couple of years that, sadly, America is far from ready to be run by a black President.
And if disaster should occur and Palin or Backman are able to prove that we are okay with electing a woman as Chief Executive, we will also prove that we are in no way a mature enough society to be run by a Female Commander in Chief, and least not either of those two idiots. Hillary sure, and dozens of other women I could rattle off would be fine Presidents and effective ones too, but not those T-bagger supported screeching harpies. I just can't imagine.
And that's the problem. I couldn't imagine just how cravenly GOP operatives would manipulate the public's natural xenophobia and authoritarian tendencies. I mean, I know they do, and will again. I just lack the evil genius gene that seems required to second guess how low they can go. That is the very weakness they exploit in all liberals, and short of becoming what we hate, I don't know how to defeat them.
But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up trying.
I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.As they say, Read It All. Go ahead, I'll wait....
Back in the good old days, like the Summer of 2007, I attempted ever so feebly to make a non-racist, non-sexist argument for John Edwards as a superior presidential contender than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton based in no small part on the innate racism and misogyny of the Republicans in our midst.
The idea was that Edwards, as a white Southern gentleman, A) was more "electable" and B) almost as an afterthought, that his policies would be easier to get through an otherwise hostile Congress that would constantly filibuster Hillary in a replay of the Clinton Witch Trials of the late 1990s -- and they simply wouldn't be able to deal with a Black guy in the Oval Office emotionally/rationally.
I never actually put that argument to digital paper beyond the flame wars at Daily Kos, and I most certainly did not flesh it out completely. The ability to govern effectively was a throw-away line, a "By the way..." thing since we were immeasurably more obsessed with the idea of insuring an end the nightmarish Bush administration by any means necessary than the difference between a public option and single-payer.
Others were making that argument anyway, and getting righteously slammed for being intolerant themselves, only making the argument that it was the Klansmen on the right we needed to fear as a mask covering their own bigotry -- on of the most horrific things you can ever call a true liberal. Treading among those minefields just wasn't appetizing.
Not that it really would have made any difference, and besides ... my crystal ball is a shattered remnant of it's former splendor from whence it told me Jonny E. was someone America should trust. However, I do wonder sometimes. We proved that America was indeed ready to elect a black President, and I certainly believe it's past ready to elect a woman to the White House. We also have proved these last couple of years that, sadly, America is far from ready to be run by a black President.
And if disaster should occur and Palin or Backman are able to prove that we are okay with electing a woman as Chief Executive, we will also prove that we are in no way a mature enough society to be run by a Female Commander in Chief, and least not either of those two idiots. Hillary sure, and dozens of other women I could rattle off would be fine Presidents and effective ones too, but not those T-bagger supported screeching harpies. I just can't imagine.
And that's the problem. I couldn't imagine just how cravenly GOP operatives would manipulate the public's natural xenophobia and authoritarian tendencies. I mean, I know they do, and will again. I just lack the evil genius gene that seems required to second guess how low they can go. That is the very weakness they exploit in all liberals, and short of becoming what we hate, I don't know how to defeat them.
But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up trying.
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