Sooner Blue

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal tried to demonize Obamacare with a false scare story about fast food giant McDonald's dropping coverage for 30,000 workers. It's a lie ...

"McDonald’s and federal heath officials say insurance report false"

I know, I know .. how could that be? A big-time right-leaning media outlet publishing a breathless story that twists the truth to convey the evils of healthcare reform .. right before an election?

"Sep 30 (Reuters) – McDonald’s Corp and federal health officials denied a newspaper report that the fast food chain may cut health insurance for its nearly 30,000 hourly workers.

The Wall Street Journal, citing a company memo, reported that McDonald’s might cut the insurance unless U.S. regulators waived a requirement of new healthcare legislation championed by President Barack Obama.

McDonald’s officials called the report "completely false." [..]

A couple weeks ago the WSJ triumphantly reported that insurers were jacking up healthcare premiums across the board, and that Obamacare was to blame.

The story fit right nicely into the paper's anti-Obamacare stance, even though the article really made no sense. True, the law hasn't done anything yet -- and people are skeptical that it will -- but healthcare inflation is nothing new. It's been happening year after year after year. What would change that this year?

The good people of small town Sidney, NY are afraid that the graves of Muslims in their town will scare their children and threaten their freedom .. or something. They're lobbying to dig up the bodies of two local Muslims buried in a Sufi cemetery that the town approved in 2005.

I don’t know a lot about Islam, but I read that Sufis are as far from a stereotype as one can get .. they're more like the Quakers of Islam.

"Town Wants Islamic Cemetery Removed"

From WBNG news: Sidney, NY It's a tradition for an Islamic Community in Sidney. But, it's one the town now wants stopped.

The Town of Sidney says the law prevents the group from maintaining a cemetery on its property. The group says it's bias.

But the Islamic order never expected to hear this. The town wants the graves dug up. Graves they say were not permitted in the first place.

"They buried bodies. They buried one last November that was not authorized, and they just buried another one this summer," said town supervisor Bob McCarthy.

McCarthy says the property is not zoned for burials. If the cemetery is eventually abandoned, he says the town will have to pick up the cost of maintaining it. ...

The group says it obtained the paperwork it needed from the town and the state several years ago for the cemetery. But negative feelings about Muslims in society, and their residence in town, are the underlying issues.[..]"

Don't you know that militant jihadists just love to use stupid actions like this -- desecrating a cemetery -- as a recruiting tool? Like they did with the Quran burning fiasco.

And, surprise, surprise, there's this: "[A]nother email, from McCarthy to a third party, discussed telephone calls from someone claiming Tea Party affiliation who "...wanted to know how he could help with 'the Muslims.'" ~~

Let me tell you a little story. Back in the late 1920's, a nutty German fringe group, filled with separatists, racists, economic cranks and violent thugs, was given a lot of newspaper space to address the nation so they could recruit more crazies. The guy footing the bill for all this was a rich conservative businessman named Hugenberg, who owned a conglomeration of publishing, film, advertising and newspaper companies. He wanted to attract people to this rightwing movement .. which had been criticized for its military failures and indifference to poverty. Oh yeah, this fringe group also labeled all their enemies "secret Jews."

Well, you know the rest. Note the similarity of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, the Koch brothers and their radical Tea-bag pets ... only this time they label their enemies Muslims, and secret Muslims.

The girl on the rooftop stares out
over the city and grips a cold revolver.
Laundry flaps around her in the hot night.
Each streetlight haloes a sinister act.
People are trapped in their beds, dreaming of
the A-bomb and hatching get-rich-quick schemes.
Pickpockets and grifters prowl the streets.
Hit-men stalk informers and crooked cops hide in churches.
Are there no more picket fences and tea parties
in America? Does no one have a birthday anymore?
Even the ballgames are fixed, and the quiz shows.
Airplanes full of widows circle the skyline.
Young couples elope in stolen cars.
All the prostitutes were wronged terribly in childhood.
They wear polka dot skirts, black gloves, and trenchcoats.
Men strut around in boxy suits, fedoras, and palm-tree ties.
They jam into nightclubs or brawl in hotel rooms
while saxophone music drowns out their cries.
The girl in the shadows drops the revolver
and pushes through the laundry to the edge of the roof.
Her eyes are glassy, her hair blows wild.
She looks down at her lover sprawled on the sidewalk
and she screams.
A crowd gathers in a pool of neon.
It starts to rain.

by Nicholas Christopher

"Film Noir" by Nicholas Christopher, from A Short History of the Island of Butterflies. © Penguin, 1986. Reprinted with permission.

By now we all know that Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central testified on Capitol Hill the other day about the very hot-button issue of migrant farm workers and immigration. Many people enjoyed the comedic relief.

How many of us know that more and more Americans are tuning in to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for not only comedic relief, but reliable news?

These days it's hard to tell where the sarcasm and satire actually end and the serious begins .. seems that humor, sarcasm, politics and news all go together anymore. And Americans seem to love it .. you have to wonder if funny is the new serious.

Listen, if there's anything that's funnier than politics, I don't know what it is .. ba-dum-ching...

No kidding, newsmakers appear on "The Daily Show" to talk about very serious topics. I mean, just the other night King Abdullah of Jordan warned Jon Stewart about war by the end of the year .. on Comedy Central.

It kinda makes you wonder if Stewart and Colbert, the two guys who stick it to political leaders every week, might becoming leaders themselves.

Both men are planning big rallies in Washington for October 30th .. Stewart's has about 140,000 RSVPs and a thumbs-up from Oprah. Don't underestimate Oprah's thumb.

Now this rally, obviously, is something of a stunt .. mimicking the big Glenn Beck rally at Lincoln Memorial .. but I believe it will make a serious point.

Jon Stewart is always being told that people get their news from him .. and he's basically said look, I'm not a newsman, I'm a comedian.

Yet Pew poll after Pew poll shows that young people, in particular, are increasingly getting their news, ALL of their news, from Stewart and Colbert.

Yes, they make their living getting laughs from poking fun at the news .. but they do it in a way that makes serious points. And it's not all partisan laughs, Stewart skewers the Obama administration all the time.

He also likes to expose the extremists dominating politics, like Tea Partiers .. and he likes to zing the media for being superficial and not giving us the high fiber diet that we need.

What should REALLY sadden us is the fact that the hardest hitting questions and toughest journalism comes from a channel called "Comedy Central."

Anyway, it's safe to say that Stewart is clearly not just a comedian .. and neither is Colbert. They're up on the issues, they get major newsmakers on their shows .. and they have fun exposing absurdity through satire.

The reason serious politicians and leaders (like King Abdullah) want to appear on these shows is because they can have interesting, moderate discourse that values intelligence over ideology. They're also looking for a younger viewership.

Stewart and Colbert are not just giving the news a good poke, they are making news, although it's a new hybrid .. very different from Walter Cronkite.

These guys are the Mark Twain and Will Rogers of our time .. you need to give them a listen. They have their fingers on the pulse of the nation.

In a way the Church never could?

People confuse me. If sex is so dirty, wouldn't they want places that would help keep it indoors and away from the eyes of children and Senate candidates?

"[..] ... residents of Manassas, Va. called a town hall meeting to protest a planned sex shop in the city's quaint Old Town District. Attendees argued that the shop's opening would tempt perverts, corrupt children, and promote the work of the Devil. Now, the generalized fearmongering has finally coalesced into legislation.

Last night, the Manassas City Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution regulating the development of "sexually-oriented businesses" inside Manassas city limits. The legislation would prevent sex shops from proliferating near Manassas schools, churches, playgrounds, day care centers, youth activity centers, parks, or libraries—most places, in other words. But the effective banishment comes at a price.

Manassas' fear of pornographic materials encroaching on its park space will cost the town an estimated $70,000 in legal fees.[..]"

I keep telling you, I'm not a feminist.
I grew up an only child on a ranch,
so I drove tractors, learned to ride.
When the truck wouldn't start, I went to town
for parts. The man behind the counter
told me I couldn't rebuild a carburetor.
I could: every carburetor on the place. That's
necessity, not feminism.
I learned to do the books
after my husband left me and the debts
and the children. I shoveled snow and pitched hay
when the hired man didn't come to work.
I learned how to pull a calf
when the vet was too busy. As I thought,
the cow did most of it herself; they've been
birthing alone for ten thousand years. Does
that make them feminists?
It's not
that I don't like men; I love them - when I can.
But I've stopped counting on them
to change my flats or open my doors.
That's not feminism; that's just good sense.

By Linda Hasselstrom

"Clara: In the Post Office" by Linda Hasselstrom from, Roadkill. © Spoon River Publishing, 1987. Reprinted with permission.

Love it, love it.

.. "Politics is the entertainment branch of industry."

It was supposed to be just another boring ol' House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on agricultural jobs .. but, boy howdy did the testimony of comedian Stephen Colbert spice it up .. turned it into Washington, DC performance-art, he did.

Some are saying congressional hearings have jumped the shark.

Colbert's appearance was because of a program launched by the United Farm Workers -- Take Our Jobs -- which invited legal citizens to replace undocumented workers in the fields. Colbert had used his show, The Colbert Report, to bring attention to this program by performing field labor for a day.

Well, wingnut righties were frothing all over the media .. whining that Colbert's appearance cost taxpayers big bucks. Guess they missed the part of his testimony where he said he is paying for everything except the water at his table and the electricity for his microphone. His travel and hotel and other expenses were paid out of his own pocket.

Next, the righties hollered that Colbert's testimony was an insult to the intelligence of the American people .. griped about his testifying in character. Guess they forgot that time they listened to the testimony of the red furry puppet named Elmo from "Sesame Street."

And, apparently some rightie politicians believe Congress should be a satire-free zone. <snort> Too late ...

I'm still chuckling about Colbert's appearance at the WH press club dinner a couple years back. He lampooned Republicans using a fake conservative view. It was an absolute Classic .. and there's some righties that still don't get it.

(BTW - Colbert also lampooned the press to their faces at that dinner .. about their coziness with the Bush White House .. I read that they still haven't forgiven him)

Anyway, a LOT of conservatives just don't get Colbert. There was a survey a while back that showed somewhere around 50% of them think that, although they recognized he was being funny, underneath it he's genuinely a conservative.

Satire is wasted on the humorless.

I think Congress needs to be lambasted like this more often .. loved the part when Colbert said, "... like most members of Congress, I haven't read [the bill]."

If it took Colbert to get Americans to pay attention to what their government representatives are really doing .. he should be at all the hearings.

From news.yahoo.com:

~~"[C]olbert said he was there at the invitation of subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. And Conyers later gave him the go-ahead, apparently hoping Colbert's performance would counter the testimony of a political science professor who said illegal immigrants were competing with black and Hispanic citizens for jobs.

Colbert wiped his brow and launched into his mock right-wing schtick, demanding that lawmakers do something about the agriculture industry's dependence on immigrant labor.

"I'm not a fan of the government doing anything," Colbert insisted. "But I've got to ask, Why isn't the government doing anything?"

Colbert's humor drew guffaws from the audience and several Democrats on the subcommittee. But most of the Republicans sat stone-faced. ...

At the close of the hearing, Colbert dropped his TV persona and turned serious, saying he was using his celebrity to bring attention to farm labor because "these seem to be the least of my brothers."

"Right now migrant workers suffer and have no rights," Colbert said." ~~

Now I ask you, if it weren't for Colbert, how many people would've even known that this hearing, about immigration, was even taking place. Without Colbert there, none of it would've even made the "news."

I'd bet that our Founding Fathers would smile at all this .. Colbert used humor to make some valid points regarding a sensitive topic, and he created an atmosphere where his views could be received sort of non-threateningly.

Even though a couple of jokes fell flat, well done Stephen! Here's some video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t39uqg6e4so

Migrant farm workers are NOT taking jobs away from Americans. No matter how bad the economy, Americans are just too lazy to pick fruits and veggies for $10.25 an hour .. some are paid by the bushel.

Too little money you say, the farmer should raise the wages? Are you prepared to pay $5 for a tomato?

I know someone who owns an apple orchard in Washington. He tried to hire American high school and college students to harvest fruit .. it was rare for them to show up for the second day's heavy duty, back breaking work.

Read an interesting sfgate.com piece about it here:

"It's a question rekindled by the recession: Are immigrants taking jobs away from American citizens? In the heart of the nation's biggest farming state, the answer is a resounding no.

Government data analyzed by The Associated Press show most Americans simply don't apply to harvest fruits and vegetables. And the few Americans who do usually don't stay in the fields.

"It's just not something that most Americans are going to pack up their bags and move here to do," said farmer Steve Fortin, who pays $10.25 an hour to foreign workers to trim strawberry plants at his nursery near the Nevada border.[...]"

You have to admire and respect a mentality that is prepared to do whatever it takes to provide for a family .. a determination to work as hard as it takes to build a life. That is the mentality that made the US a great country.

A new study done by Pew found that Atheists and Agnostics correctly answered more questions about world religions than the devout. Yes, Atheists knew more about Christianity than Christians.

Jews and Mormons came in second.

Here are some of Pew’s surprising findings:

"More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.

In addition, fewer than half of Americans (47%) know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. Fewer than four-in-ten (38%) correctly associate Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism. And only about a quarter of all Americans (27%) correctly answer that most people in Indonesia – the country with the world’s largest Muslim population – are Muslims."

We Atheists tend to read a lot (I've been a voracious reader since fourth grade), Atheism stems from knowledge, not a lack of knowledge (as the fundamentalists try to say). We tend to study the different religions, and think about religion more than most people.

One has to wonder why carnival barkers such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin have so many followers listening to their craziness, which any rational person can easily see is bullshit.

Why are so many so hungry for what these clowns serve? Is it because people are tired of eating cold reality straight from the can, and anything steaming looks pretty good .. even bullshit?

Allow me to ramble. What it all boils down to is -- the party is over, but nobody wants to go home. It would appear that the USA's era of phenomenal growth that lasted for over 200 years, since the Industrial Revolution began, is drawing to a close.

We are literally running out of gas.

So, if people are afraid the American Dream is dying and they're going to be shut out .. they start looking for someone to blame .. they start looking sideways at minorities.

Our country's blue funk is extremely difficult for Americans to come to grips with .. because our entire culture, both the real one and the one Hollywood feeds us, are built around the idea of endless horizons and opportunity galore.

This dream has always emotionally sustained us, especially when we're going through a rough patch .. like now .. so it's dang near impossible for most Americans to face the new reality .. and to think clearly about what it all means .. or how to fix it.

This is where the Tea Party, Fox News, etc. comes in -- they're all about keeping people from thinking straight, they play on emotions such as fear, hate, racism, xenophobia. Which is encouraged by the Big Money footing their bills .. because Big Corporations (Murdoch, Kochs, etc.) only care about gaining power and electing the party that'll deliver the fewest regulations.

We make fun and criticize the Tea Party, Beck, Palin, Gingrich, Limbaugh and Fox News for not making good sense .. but it's not a failure of communication on their part. Their intention is to overload people's emotions so much that rational thought is difficult .. or impossible.

(Something similar happened in Germany in the 30's .. the country's richest industrialists, worried about communism, saw fit to finance the rise of Adolph Hitler.)

This is dangerous because a country that travels on fear, on raw emotion, is usually more prone to war and violence .. and cool-headed thinking falls by the wayside.

Right now the extremists are in the minority -- about 25% -- but we'll have to wait until after the mid-term elections to find out how powerful they've become.

The New York Times has a piece this morning about the Feds seeking new regulations for the Internet .. because it's more difficult to gather info on terrorist suspects who are throwing away their phones and going online to communicate. Feds are losing their capability to track suspects.

Law enforcement and national security want Congress to require communication services, such as BlackBerry, Facebook and Skype, to be "technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order."

They want to be able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

Obama's White House wants to give the bill to Congress next year, and "because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html

I heard that the government can already open anyone's computer any time it wants ...

From HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher:

"New Rule: Never let your children take an overnight trip with a holy man who wears more than two pieces of jewelry. Atlanta’s gay-bashing Bishop Eddie Long has been accused of buying cars for teenage boys, then inviting them to New Zealand and molesting them, in what authorities are calling "the worst Oprah surprise of all time."

Which leads me to: New Rule: If your minister says being gay is bad, or a sin, or an evil temptation, or has any opinion on it stronger than "who gives a shit," your minister is gay."- Bill Maher

"There’s nothing about what really, you know, is bothering people, especially on that side of the aisle, how to cut the deficit or decrease spending, it’s just about kicking out Mexicans, keeping Guantanamo open, getting rid of health insurance for sick kids, you know, feel-good stuff."- Bill Maher, in his opening monologue, regarding the Republicans "Pledge to America"

"It was a very good week for getting absolutely nothing done in Congress. They blocked, the Republicans did, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We thought this was going to be a done deal. I don’t know what their problem is with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Even if it is repealed, there will still be a major American institution where gays are still forced to hide in shame and secrecy: The Republican party."- Bill Maher

"They’re giving up on their tax cuts for the middle class until after the election. … Have they seen the polls? Planning to do this after the election. This is like a condemned man asking for a doggie bag at the last meal."- Bill Maher

"Christine O’Donnell in Delaware … There are a lot of questions now about her use of campaign funds and not paying her taxes and not paying her mortgage. And on top of that, some asshole outed her as a witch."- Bill Maher

"Let me just say to the Wiccans, who are the witch people out there, cause they’re on my case: It wasn’t me, Wiccans, who conflated witches with Satanic stuff, that was Christine did that. I know that Satan worshippers and witches are not the same thing. So please, change my assistant back into a human. Would ya please? It’s funny for a while, but chickens can’t type."- Bill Maher

Clip from "Politically Incorrect 10/15/98:

Panel: Christine O’Donnell, Dee Snider, John Fugelsang, Eddie McClurg.

Christine O’Donnell: You know what. evolution, evolution is a myth. Even
Darwin himself…

Maher: Evolution is a myth? Have you ever looked at a monkey?

O’Donnell: Then why aren’t they, why aren’t monkeys still evolving into
humans.?

John Fugelsang: It takes a long time."

From Maureen Dowd's NYtimes Column:

"Holy Roddy McDowall.

Christine O’Donnell doesn’t understand why monkeys can’t turn into people right before her eyes.

Bill Maher continued his video torment of O’Donnell by releasing another old clip of her on his HBO show on Friday night, this time showing one in which she argued that "Evolution is a myth."

Maher shot back, "Have you ever looked at a monkey?" To which O’Donnell rebutted, "Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?"

The comedian has a soft spot for the sweet-faced Republican Senate candidate from Delaware, but as he told me on Friday, it’s "powerful stupid to think primate evolution could happen fast enough to observe it. That’s bacteria.

"I find it so much more damaging than the witch stuff because she could be in a position to make decisions about scientific issues, like global warming and stem cells, and she thinks primate evolution can happen in a week and mice have human brains." [..]

There will soon be a new TV show on E! -- "Bridalplasty" -- where brides-to-be will compete in "wedding-themed" challenges, and the winner gets -- wait for it -- massive plastic surgery .. to, I guess, make her look presentable on her Special Day.

And no, they won't have trouble finding contestants willing to humiliate themselves, their family and their fiance on national TV.

I thought I had seen it all and could no longer be stunned by anything they came up with on reality TV .. the weirder and more humiliating, trashy and shrill, the better the chance you'll see a show about it. But this "Bridalplasty" is right up there as most bizarre.

Nobody will remember, but this reality TV cultural phenomenon started back in the 70's with a PBS documentary series called "An American Family" .. a study of the Loud family, who were falling apart. I remember it was required homework for social studies.

It took the country by storm. The wife asked for a divorce on camera because the husband was having an affair .. the oldest son was gay and sometimes wore lipstick and women's clothes, certainly the first openly gay character on television .. which started conversations across this country about homosexuality, among other realities of family life.

We were fascinated, it was certainly real compared to the sanitized TV sit-com families we'd been fed. Read more here.

Strange that reality shows didn't catch on back then ..

But the next reality show we saw was MTV's first drunken "Real World" .. then we trudged through TV reality muck with everything from "Celebrity Rehab" to "Real Housewives" to "Jersey Shore," "Hell's Kitchen" to, uh, "I Didn't Know I was Pregnant."

And now we've come down to "Bridalplasty" .. we'll probably end up somewhere putrid, humid and dark ...

"So two years ago America broke up with you, because you had badly mistreated her. ... And you come back rapping on our door, hat in hand, and you say, 'Baby, I know you love me. But if we get back together, I pledge to you, I promise you, I will still try to f*ck your sister every chance I get.'" –Jon Stewart, on the GOP's new "Pledge to America"

"Boy, you got to like the Republicans. First they claim that Obama is not an American. 'Where is the birth certificate?' They claim he's not an American, that's the Republicans. Then they run a witch." –David Letterman

"You know Delaware is running a witch, her name is Christine O'Donnell, and she wants to be the Senator from Delaware and today she promised if she's elected she'll cast a spell on health care." –David Letterman

"The Republicans announced their Pledge to America, and here's what it is: Less taxes, smaller government and act now and they'll throw in the Dean Martin roast of Frank Sinatra." –David Letterman

"Last night on Fox News, Sarah Palin said she would run for President, if nobody else steps up. Which explains why today, nearly every person in the country announced they were running for President." –Jimmy Fallon

"Vice President Biden held a conference call with senior citizens to talk about health care. Seniors started the conference call confused about how health care works, and ended up more confused about how conference calls work. They're like, 'Wait, can you hear me? Sal you're talking to the VCR.'" –Jimmy Fallon

"Larry Summers, President Obama's top economic adviser, is stepping down. So finally some good economic news, I'll tell ya, Summers didn't want to leave, but apparently he was out of bad ideas." –Jay Leno

"As you know, Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell has come out against masturbation. Well, she is already paying a heavy price for taking this stance. In fact, today, the powerful hand lotion lobby has endorsed her opponent." –Jay Leno

"Here's how you can tell it's autumn, Christine O'Donnell, the witch from Delaware, today she used her caldron to make chowder." –David Letterman

"The premiere of 'Hawaii Five-0' was a great episode. The cops were looking around and they accidentally stumbled upon Obama’s birth certificate." –David Letterman

"According to experts, the recession is over. Is it really over or is it just pulling a Leno?" –David Letterman

"Everybody is talking about Bob Woodward's new book, 'Obama's War.' In the book, he says Joe Biden called Middle East advisor Richard Holbrooke, 'the most egotistical bastard I've ever met.' Then Rahm Emanuel's like, 'What am I, invisible?'" –Jimmy Fallon

"Repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell is supported by 82% of Democrats, 64% of Republicans and 100% of Ladies Gaga." –Jon Stewart

"There's a clip going around of this Christine O'Donnell discussing how she once dabbled in witchcraft. Have you heard about this? Although she says she never joined a coven. Never joined a coven? Hey, what do you think Congress is?" –Jay Leno

"Well, you know what's interesting, O'Donnell said she dabbled in witchcraft, and her opponent, Democratic candidate Chris Coons, he had no comment. He wanted to comment, but he lost his voice, went blind and came down with boils." –Jay Leno

"This Christine O'Donnell is a very conservative woman. Not only is she against premarital sex, she is against masturbation. She even wants to outlaw beef jerky." –Jay Leno

"The state of Delaware has nominated and they're going to probably elect a witch as Senator from Delaware. Listen to this. One day Delaware elects a witch. The next day the recession is over. I don't know. Is that a coincidence?" –David Letterman

"Bristol Palin made her debut on the show and after a lot of speculation, Sarah Palin was not there to see it in person. However, she could see it from her house." –Jimmy Fallon

"Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell is taking criticism because she once said she dabbled in witchcraft. Yeah, everyone is talking about this. O'Donnell was like, 'If one more person claims I'm a witch, I will take legal action against them and their little dog, too!'" –Jimmy Fallon

"Bristol Palin is one of the dancers on the show. She got an 18. The judges were pretty nice to her. Her mother, Sarah Palin, said she was going to be in the audience for the first show, but she wasn't. It's not like her to commit to something and back out. But it's otter hunting season." –Jimmy Kimmel

[gathered from about.com and newsmax.com]

Yes, the pony meme is trite, but I'd just like to use it this one last time .. because I'm so tired of the way some Democrats whine about how President Obama didn't keep his promises or fight hard enough for his policies.

Like he has a magic wand ...

The frustration should be directed at a do nothing congress more worried about reelection then governing

But no, it's all directed at the President .. thank goodness his shoulders are strong and he always accepts the buck.

President Obama, talking to Democratic supporters -- "The single biggest threat to our success is not the other party. It's us. It's complacency. It's apathy. It's indifference. It's people feeling like, well, we only got 80 percent of what we want, we didn't get the other 20, so we're just going to sit on our hands."

Obama is right. The biggest threat to Democratic success is Dems themselves .. and I'm not talking about all us average Joes and Janes out here. Our so called Dem "leaders" in Washington have again showed why a large % of people who supported them are now basically disgusted with them. I have never seen such totally weak group of congress critters in my life .. they really have NO concern for their constituents, only concern for their "jobs."

I'm talking about the Democrats who responded to nutjob Sarah Palin's tweets by stripping end-of-life counseling from healthcare legislation .. the Democrats who responded to nutjob Joe Wilson's factually incorrect outburst about immigrants by changing healthcare bill language .. and the Democrats who axed Shirley Sherrod out of terror of what Glenn Beck might say.

I keep thinking about that video of the rich black lady whining about being "tired of defending you" .. and hearing Dems complain that Obama's presidency is a do-nothing broken road of promises. Someone needs to read the report card that doesn't support their whine.

Lefties are still whining about no single payer or public option in healthcare reform. Well, if they wanted it so badly they needed to get out from behind their computers two summers back and start hollering in protest marches .. maybe strap on some guns. Okay, forget about the guns .. but at least raise a ruckus. That's what the Tea-bags did.

But there wasn't one substantial angry march from the left .. not freakin' one.

Instead they sat on their asses and typed and whined and typed and whined .. and now they're pissed because Obama didn't get them the pony.

Or maybe the Dem demonstrations and town hall meetings were too sane, too quiet, so the media gave them light cover. Angry dressed up funny freaks, screaming about death panels, Stalin and forced sterilization draw in more viewers.

Suggestion to the Democrats -- Get off your ass and get some skin in the game. And I'm not talking about a Return to Sanity million man moderate march. How about an angry million man march to keep tax cuts for the working stiff and raise the taxes on the rich?

You have to give credit to the Tea-billies .. at least they have balls.

I get a kick out of how Tea Party candidates such as Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and Christine O'Donnell, are scared to death of answering questions from the national media. There's video footage of them running from cameras, high-tailing it to exit doors, making mad dashes to waiting vans whenever they see a press badge.

Yeah, the same candidates who're trying to convince voters that they have the qualifications to serve in the United States Senate.

Sarah Palin urged her clone, Christine O'Donnell, to shun the national news media's talk shows altogether .. and Palin knows what she's talking about. Remember Katie Couric?

O'Donnell appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News program a few days ago to defend her decision. Surprise surprise .. her interview with him came off like a paid campaign ad.

You could understand how there's no strategic benefit to going on shows where some of the hosts might be a little biased -- but O'Donnell cancelled "fair and balanced" Fox News Sunday .. which tells us how afraid she is of answering ANY question .. much less one from a respectable, objective journalist.

But how on earth are we supposed to believe they have the guts to face down Kim Jong Ill, Ahmadinejad, Qaddafi, and Putin if they're scared of facing Mike Wallace, Wolf Blitzer, David Gregory and Bob Schieffer?

Looks to me like we'd want politicians who are tough as nails .. who can answer the hard questions about the health, welfare and national security of America without losing their cool.

What are they terrified of? I mean, they crow long and loud about what's wrong with our government. Shouldn't they just jump at the chance to share all this wisdom with CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS?

Of course, we all know the reason -- because behind the facade, they don't know a dang thing about US policy and important issues. They even have trouble articulating what positions they do have .. and they are really prone to hoof and mouth disease.

Like the video of Sharron Angle talking about bartering chickens for doctors' care .. or the video of Rand Paul saying he'd like to re-think the Civil Rights Act .. or Christine O'Donnell rambling on about masturbation, witchcraft and how "mice have fully functioning human brains" ...

Dang, I hate to miss out on all the fun .. but we'll probably only see them speak at stacked-deck town hall meetings and small town churches .. where adoring wingnuts will toss softball questions to give them a chance to trash the opposition with cutesy sound bites.

The Republicans unveiled their new "Pledge to America" today .. even some in their wingnut base are dissing it. Like RedState's Erick Erickson, who said the program was a "series of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes. ... It is an illusion that fixates on stuff the GOP already should be doing while not daring to touch on stuff that will have any meaningful longterm effects on the size and scope of the federal government."

Democrats are saying the GOP's pledge is just pretty but empty words .. arguing that the pledge to extend the Bush tax cuts and repeal healthcare would only increase the deficit .. and there are no plans to pay for these two proposals. The document doesn't even claim that its proposals will reduce the deficit.

Apparently the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq weren't worth mentioning ...

I like what Huff-Post's Richard Eskow said --"Here's the bottom line: the GOP "Pledge for America" will raid your money to make their rich patrons even richer. The middle class will continue to wither away, and those who manage to hold on will be worse off than ever."

Just imagine if GM announced a new car, roomy, lots of power, loaded with features, and claimed it would get 55 mpg .. and then rolled out a "brand new" 1980 Chevy Caprice and called it a 2011 "full sized car for America." Do you think anyone would buy it? GM would go belly up over night.

Hopefully Americans won't buy into the Republican’s repackaged 80's bullshit .. the same ol' crap they’ve pedaled since Reagan.

But then I'm constantly surprised by lazy voters ...

.. how it helped divide a country. Back in 1980, I remember it well, there was an entire radio band struggling to survive. AM had lost the music when FM proved better with music, having stereo and all. AM tried to adapt by experimenting with talk shows .. and the only thing that really took was Limbaugh-like talkers .. especially Limbaugh himself. He knew how to channel that "angry white man" syndrome into radio ratings gold.

It was a time when calling into the radio was the only interactive thing you could really do. Letters to the editor in the paper were slow, TV time was expensive as hell, the 'interwebs' had not boomed yet .. there simply was nothing else out there.

So Limbaugh pretty much had a mass audience to himself .. and he just had one of those confident voices that sounds authoritative .. like he really knows what he's talking about .. even if his facts aren't truthful.

He knew how to reach working class Americans, because he knows how to sound like an ordinary working stiff .. he complains about the wealthy elite, even though he makes $45-million per year, last I heard.

His biggest break came when the Federal Communications Commission repealed its Fairness Doctrine - a rule that had required radio and television stations to provide equal time to both sides of political debates.

Limbaugh was free to spread all the lies he wanted to .. his callers are pre-screened .. few who disagree with him are allowed on the air. One black caller was told to take the bone out of his nose.

His impact on America has been huge .. he's widely credited with helping Republicans get elected. Several newly-elected Congressmen openly called themselves "the Dittohead caucus." Old Guard Republicans are afraid to cross him or contradict him.

Limbaugh has dramatically polarized America .. filling it with hate, bigotry and intolerance. He tries to be as outrageous as possible .. he loves to be the center of attention .. and it brings in the money.

Hopefully, the generation of angry white men that fueled his rise is dying off and will soon be gone. The youngest are now 60 plus with a few 50 something wannabes who resent black and brown people because they think minorities are somehow taking away the prosperity and status they think should be theirs.

They especially hate that Black man in the White House ...

And that’s the only crowd that listens to Glenn Beck, the same crowd as Limbaugh’s .. a dying breed with social attitudes against any growth in America.

Maybe with the peak and inevitable demise of the Tea Party -- and we may go through hell getting there -- the Republican pendulum will begin to swing from the extreme right back to the middle, and we can have half-way reasonable political discourse in this country .. a true two-party system.

I hope I live long enough to see it ...

"Let me tell you something, Sarah Palin better be careful. Because this Christine O'Donnell is younger, hotter, and crazier. That's the things guys are looking for in a trophy candidate. So, be very careful." –Jay Leno

"Christine O'Donnell looks a lot like Sarah Palin, and you know what that means, more work for Tina Fey." –David Letterman

"More problems for candidate O'Donnell. It seems she canceled all her Sunday talk show appearances after a video surfaced her on Bill Maher's TV show where she admitted she once dabbled in witchcraft. So, apparently, she is pro-dabbling, but anti-diddling." –Jay Leno

"Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol Palin is on 'Dancing With The Stars.' And I'm telling you something, you can't get any bigger star than the daughter of a vice presidential loser. That's as good as it gets there." –David Letterman

"The Republican candidate from Delaware, Christine O'Donnell, it turns out she's a practicing witch. And if she wins, and goes to the Senate, she'll be the first practicing witch in Washington since Barbara Bush." –David Letterman

"Christine O'Donnell says that she once had a date on a satanic altar? Well, who hasn't?" –David Letterman

"Sarah Palin tweeted a warning to Christine O'Donnell that the national media is seeking her destruction. That is ridiculous. If the media wanted to destroy her, they would just douse her with water." –Craig Ferguson

"I like Christine O'Donnell. She's good-looking and she's hilarious. I haven't had this much fun since Cheney was in office." –Craig Ferguson

"O'Donnell said that Hollywood needs to re-evaluate what they're doing because movies these days are all filled with gay sex and extramarital affairs. I thought, 'Have fun in Congress then.'" –Craig Ferguson

"If you've got a Google news alert tuned to Republican party, witchcraft and anti-masturbation, you are probably sick of hearing about how Tea Party favorite Christine O'Donnell clinched the nomination for Senator from Delaware." –Jon Stewart

"Nation, I've have been a diehard supporter of Delaware Republican Senate Christine O'Donnell ever since I learned of her existence last week. She is a dynamic, conservative Christian who believes masturbation is adultery. And fellas she's single and will condemn you for masturbating. The total package." –Stephen Colbert

"I do miss George Bush. Compared to these teabaggers and the people who are pandering to them, he looks like a professor." –Bill Maher

"She hates masturbation, which is ironic, because she owes her nominations to a bunch of jackoffs." –Bill Maher, on Christine O'Donnell

"In Delaware, Christine O'Donnell won a huge upset in the primaries, but she has some problems. Karl Rove has accused her of lying. When the guy that told 300 million Americans there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq says you're lying, he knows what he's talking about." –Jay Leno

"I don't know a lot about Christine O'Donnell, but she has some interesting views. She has come out against masturbation. And you thought the war on drugs was unwinnable." –Jay Leno

"Take it down a notch — for America." —Jon Stewart unveiling the Rally to Restore Sanity's call-to-no-arms-please

"We will gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., a million-moderate march where we take to the streets to send a message to our leaders and our national media that says, 'We are here, We are only here until six though, because we have a sitter.'" —Jon Stewart

"You may be asking yourself, but am I the right person to go to this rally? The fact that you would even stop to ask yourself that question, as opposed to just jumping up, grabbing the nearest stack of burnable holy books, strapping on a diaper, and pointing your car towards DC — that means I think you just might be right for it." —Jon Stewart

[gathered from about.com and newsmax.com]

Too bad we Democrats can't have a reasonable discussion with the other side .. but it's difficult to talk to people who honestly think President Obama means them harm .. and it’s their responsibility to take the country back.

BTW -- it’s not their country to take back .. it belongs to all of us. After all, Obama got elected because there were more of us than them.

Also, they might want to have a conversation with American Indians before they holler about taking back countries .. we had squatter's rights.

Anyway .. at first I couldn't figure out what they were talking about. Take America Back .. back to what .. back from what?

Think about it .. take for example the Civil War. Southerners will tell you that it was not about slavery .. it was about states' rights. True, but the states' right that they were worried about was the right to own slaves.

In much the same way, we now have the Tea Party squawking about freedom .. but not any old freedom, like religion or speech. No, they can't point to one freedom that the Obama administration has taken away.

So, it makes you wonder -- just exactly what freedom do they feel is threatened?

Then, it hit me -- the blindingly white Tea Party is afraid that they're losing power, that their freedom to be the superior majority is in danger. Granted, maybe subconsciously, but it makes sense to me.

Our country has always been about the balance of freedom and equality .. and with the election of a black president, maybe we've leaned too far in the direction of equality for their comfort.

Somehow they sense their freedom to be top white dog is in peril. With the demographics changing, and the news reports that for the first time more black/brown babies are being born than white babies, the freedom that Tea Partiers fear for is to comfortably, without challenge, to be the majority in power.

So they protest and stamp their feet and yell that they want their country back .. they're feeling crowded, hampered and restricted because their days of being in the majority might be numbered.

That's why they felt no threat from GWBush. Bush played hell with American freedom in all kinds of ways .. but not in a way that really elevated minorities to equality. That's why they had no problem with Bush .. and that's the freedom they want back.

The country they want back is full of smiling white Father Knows Best faces, who live behind white picket fences along a Mayberry street, with no pesky people of color to muddy the view.

They especially want that Black Man out of the White House.

The closer we get to election day, the more we liberal patroits need to speak out with very strong and very strident voices to counter the rightwing threat posed by radical Tea Party Republicans and all those hysterical extremists they've nominated .. Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Carl Paladino, etc.

Not to mention that we need to keep drawing attention to that silly Face in the Crowd Glenn Beck .. who hears the hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in his head.

Democrats, especially beleaguered incumbents and the White House, need to counter the toxic message of the Tea Party .. show the voters they have an alternative.

At first I thought, hey, we need our own liberal Tea Party movement .. but, no, what a stupid idea that would be. The last thing progressives/liberals need is to energize our own wingnut base of crazies.

Because, after many decades as a political junkie, I can assure you that the left still has plenty of its own nuts.

Besides, if we put our leftwing nuts together with all the Tea Party’s rightwing nuts we might just blow a hole in the space-time continuum thingy.

Some sore-tail left-of-center Democrats like to gripe about how President Obama didn't get enough done since he was elected .. or get it done fast enough .. or had to kiss too much Republican butt in the process.

So will they cut off their nose to spite their face and stay home come election day? This 2012 election is just as important as 2008, even more important actually.

I'd like to remind them that the other choice is the party of bigotry and illiteracy .. who have moved to some other planet .. one that's 6,000 years old and believes in witches.

I still think Obama's an honorable guy who wants to take everyone's needs into account .. and he tries to achieve his goals without cracking heads.

I'm not some purist who insists we have to get everything in one bite. For example, I'm glad that we got at least something out of healthcare .. even though it could've been much better and much cheaper than what we ended up with. There are bugs to work out on down the line .. just like with Social Security and Medicare.

But when you look at Washington's record over the last few decades .. Obama's accomplishments are remarkable.

First, look at near-universal healthcare reform. Look at how Obama and the Democrats succeeded when Truman, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton all failed. But Obama got 'er done .. never mind that the Party of Hell No! blocked him at every turn, or that the healthcare industry is bigger, richer and stronger these days.

Yes, the $787 billion stimulus was too small .. but just look at the important things that Obama and the Democrats managed to do with that money.

Time.com has an excellent article on what happened with the stimulus money:

"Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more."

The article reports about Obama's investments in medical research, health information technology, green energy, high-speed rail, universal broadband, the Race to the Top education reform program, the Making Work Pay tax cut, etc., etc., etc.

Oh, and don't forget 2 Supreme Court Justices.

Isn't that good enough for you? Do you think Hillary would have done better by now?

I believe that Obama's achievements are remarkable and substantial and deserve to be shouted from the rooftops.

Maybe he didn't grin big enough or tapdance fast enough while he was doing those things?

Maybe the reason the legislative successes of Obama and the Democrats aren't being talked about more is because the the country is still in such terrible shape. "Things could have been worse, and things will one day be better" is a hard message to sell today.

Hopefully the accomplishments of the first two years of Obama's term will really take effect over the next two years .. and the President will be in good shape for winning a second term.

But, if I wake up in Never Never Land on Nov. 7, 2012 to find Sarah Palin president .. ah well, I've survived Tricky Crooked Dick & Ronnie Movie Star ...

Well, okay it's free .. but protection from those who want to kill you is not.

"City plans to bill pastor Jones for security costs"

GAINESVILLE: Terry Jones, the pastor who for more than a week was at the center of controversy and demonstrations after he threatened to burn copies of the Holy Qu'ran, now plans to move his Dove World Outreach Center 130 miles southwest to Tampa, an area he considers "less liberal."

At the same time, the City of Gainesville announced it cost $200,000 to provide police protection and to monitor the situation after Jones threatened to burn copies of the Qu'ran.

City officials are sure to discuss the strain this expense places on their budget at upcoming council meetings and might even attempt to find a way to send Jones the bill.

As Sept. 11 approached, the controversy escalated, other law enforcement agencies, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation also sent their agents to monitor the situation in case there were terrorist threats. ...

The FBI and Homeland Security became involved in the scenario as its intensity increased, worrying that the Sept. 11 UF football game in Gainesville might provide an opportunity for terrorists to strike. More than 100,000 fans from all over Florida and Georgia, many of whom are alumni, attend Gator football home games. ...

If the Dove World Outreach Center is moved to Tampa, the plan could easily backfire on Jones. Tampa and St. Petersburg are a lot more racially diversified and have a large ethnic mix, all of whom could find Jones' radical evangelical viewpoint very offensive."~~

Many people believe that Pastor Crazy declined to burn the Quran because he received so many death threats.

This isn't just about money, it's about raising a scare that demands a reaction .. wasting resources that could have been elsewhere. You don't get to just call 911 all you want and waste their time. You don't get to make fake bomb threats and waste their time. Why should you get to cause a security panic just because you've got a crazy idea?

And it's not just the police security bill .. I heard on the news that the church lost its insurance, and the bank holding the mortgage has called it in demanding full payment of the balance.

Boy, they want that guy out of Gainesville ...

Sarah Palin helped make Christine O’Donnell a rock star .. but will her mini-me steal her thunder? Margaret Carlson has an interesting read on the GOP's new It Girl.

"Some people may think it accidental that Sarah Palin has left the stage at this weekend’s Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit to Christine O'Donnell. The summit is a crucial event on the Republican calendar, a stop for any Republican who wants the conservative activists’ seal of approval and a beauty contest for GOP presidential hopefuls who vie to win its straw poll.

I think it’s wise that Palin is otherwise occupied. Better not to be upstaged by the new It Girl on the block. Sure, Palin created the monster now threatening to steal her thunder by endorsing the unknown O’Donnell ....

Often we don't realize when we are cooperating in our own demise, a classic tale, memorialized in All About Eve. Bette Davis's Margo Channing, the venerable star of Broadway, lets the adoring Eve Harrington, the fresher, prettier version of herself, into her life only to find her career eclipsed by the outwardly docile ingénue.

Why would Palin want an obvious knockoff hawking her wares on the shores of the Delaware? She can tolerate Mamma Grizzlies who aren't poaching her act, like Sharron Angle and Rep. Michele Bachmann. They acknowledge she's the Big Mamma. But look at O'Donnell. She used to be a dead ringer for Elaine on Seinfeld until this election. Now, she’s a mini-me of the queen of the tundra.

It's an unmistakable homage, if not poaching, as O’Donnell struts around in a bright red suit with the big smile, the bedhead hair and the glasses she doesn't seem to need but wears for cosmetic reasons. With some new coin in her pocket ... after her stunning upset and is known to spend campaign cash on her rent), it's only a matter of time before she upgrades the plastic frames ... and gets the choppy bangs feathered. If she bent the rules to spend campaign donations on her rent, surely she'll be spending it completing the look.

Like Eve, O'Donnell has some striking advantages. Although with soft lighting, the pair look like they were separated at birth, in fact, the baby-faced O'Donnell looks less like a twin than a daughter. Time is cruel to women, especially on HDTV ... Palin, who is a grandmother after all.

Which brings up another plus. While O'Donnell has plenty to be embarrassed about, tall tales about graduating college years before she did, getting fired for running a for-profit public-relations business out of a nonprofit, she doesn't have children or pesky virtual in-laws to worry about. There will not be multiple People covers featuring her daughter and an on-again, off-again putative fiancé, Levi Johnston, no revelations that Palin turned a blind eye to Levi sleeping with Bristol while she holed up in the bedroom watching decorating shows.

O'Donnell also was to a TV studio born, completely unfazed when she makes bizarre remarks or speaks with a lack of substance. Palin was rattled when she couldn't remember a newspaper she'd read or a Supreme Court opinion she would change in an interview with Katie Couric. Even now, Palin can get the deer-in-the-headlights look when she doesn't know something. For instance, on Thursday night, on the Bill O'Reilly show, she couldn't remember who she'd endorsed in the New Hampshire race—even though her choice had won a nail-biter in the Granite State 24 hours earlier ...

No matter what is happening around her, O'Donnell remains blissfully unperturbed before the camera. Back when she headed up SALT (Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth), she was a guest multiple times on Bill Maher's show Politically Incorrect. She blithely ignored the reaction of the audience and other guests who hooted when she said she wouldn't lie to Hitler even to save a Jew hiding in her house and that sex was for procreation only, and that today's youth was going to hell in a handbasket. By flirting with and turning to Maher, she kept him in her corner. He may have been using her as grist for his mill but was not immune to her charm, recognizing the degree to which the camera loved her. ...

The day after the election, she turned a criticism of uber-Republican Karl Rove, who'd accused her of saying too many "nutty things" to win the general election before endorsing her under pressure from Rush Limbaugh, on its head. ...

On Friday, O'Donnell arrived at the Omni Shoreham like a conquering hero. ...

She got the audience chanting on cue: "Will they [the elites] attack us? Yes... Is it worth it? "Yes," Is freedom worth it? "Yes," and so on. Think of Palin in her Valentino silk suit accepting the vice presidential nomination in St. Paul in 2008. A star was born. Political stars rise and fall more quickly than Lady Gaga overtakes Madonna. O'Donnell might want to rent All About Eve ...

Margaret Carlson is a columnist for Bloomberg News. She was a columnist and deputy Washington bureau chief for Time magazine.

Bill Maher played a previously-unaired 1999 video clip on his show Real Time last night of Delaware US Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell (R) talking about how she once "practiced witchcraft."

O'Donnell said: "I dabbled into witchcraft -- I never joined a coven. But I did, I did... I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do... One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic alter, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that. We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nECxQUi_pr0

I guess O'Donnell used to appear on Maher's show Politically Incorrect all the time and he has a lot of video to share of her saying all manner of crazy things .. he joked that he's going to show a new clip of O'Donnell every week on his show until she agrees to appear on his show again.

Maher said: "I'm just saying, Christine, it's like a hostage crisis, every week you don't show up, I'm going to throw another body out."

Of course Maher isn't going to reach any potential O'Donnell voters with his show .. they aren't watching. But I don't think that's his point .. when he releases the clips, he's feeding the news media, who will run with it, and stuff like this will continue to shape public perceptions of O'Donnell between now and the election.

She's not going to be able to escape public scrutiny when her extreme beliefs become widely known .. moderate voters will plainly see that she is too crazy to be elected to office.

Maher probably also wants to make voters and pundits realize that the Republican/Tea Party is supporting candidates like her, so supporting the Republicans anywhere is effectively supporting nutjobs like O'Donnell.

The sad thing is that this -- like every other negative on her long list -- won't matter one bit to her Tea Party voter base, they're just so tickled to have a Palin clone.

It seems that if you are a pretty woman, you can do no wrong in their eyes.

Pop some more corn, it's gonna to be a great 6 weeks watching this stuff roll out ..

From HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher":

Her campaign signs show a picture of Obama and they say "Spank This Monkey Instead," because the Tea Party is 100% not racist.
- Bill Maher on Christine O’Donnell

She does not have a mean bone in her body. Or any other bone in her body. She would campaign against sex outside of marriage, against condoms, against pornography, against masturbation…all my hobbies. But mostly masturbation. She hates that. Which is ironic since she owes her nomination to a bunch of jack offs.
- Bill Maher on Christine O’Donnell

Her detractors use this; say she’s homeless, jobless and can’t pay her taxes and her supporters say ‘finally, someone who represents the average American.’
- Bill Maher on Christine O’Donnell

There is nothing that cools right-wing heads more than injecting Michael Moore into a controversy.- Bill Maher regarding Michael Moore’s blog entry about the mosque controversy

Why don’t we have words for people like Gingrich and Palin because you know, they’re essentially our Mullahs, our Taliban. We don’t even refer to them as but we should start calling them Cleric Gingrich and Mullah Taliban Palin. See how that fits….their level of bigotry is so un-American.
- Michael Moore

How about that McDonald’s two blocks away from Ground Zero? That’s killed more people than the nineteen high jackers.
- Michael Moore about the mosque controversy

I do miss George Bush. Compared to these tea baggers and the people who are pandering to them, he looks like a professor.
- Bill Maher

I think it is sad that the guy who was a big ideas guy in the party is crawling his way to the bottom. We should be debating ideas and not birth certificates and the notion that someone comes from Africa.
- Mark McKinnon on Newt Gingrich

The Democratic Party is re-electing people like Charlie Rangel. We’ve got Democratic congressmen who think that Guam is overpopulated and going to tip over, so all the crazies aren’t in the Tea Party. They’re all crazy up there right now.
- Mark McKinnon

Isn’t Obama’s big problem that he does everything half ass? Maybe it’s because he’s only half black. If he was fully black, he would be a better president. There’s a white man in him, holding him back.
- Bill Maher

New Rule: Nobody wants to see a movie about Facebook. What's the big Second Act crisis, a server going down? If this is a hit, what next? "Google: The Musical?" "Craigslist 3D - The Search For A Slightly Used Rowing Machine?" They might as well make a sitcom out of that blog where some guy just repeats shit his dad says.
- Bill Maher

New Rule: If you dragged your man to "Eat, Pray, Love" this summer, he gets to take you to a movie called, "Football, Jerk Off, Nap."
- Bill Maher

"In the Delaware Republican U.S. Senate primary, Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell won a huge upset. Interesting woman, very conservative. She has come out against masturbation. So not only is she against politicians putting their hands in our pockets, she's against you putting your hands in your own pockets as well." –Jay Leno

"Well-known, veteran politicians were upended by candidates from the Tea Party. It was especially shocking because I've been to a lot of tea parties with my daughter and most of the people there are stuffed animals." –Jimmy Kimmel

"Former New York Congressman Rick Lazio was beaten by an unknown businessman named Carl Paladino, whose achievements include comparing a Jewish assembly speaker to Hitler unfavorably, endorsing a plan to turn prisons into dorms to teach welfare recipients about hygiene, and he's also known for forwarding racist joke emails and videos of a woman having sex with a horse to his friends. Like Lincoln never emailed his friends a video of a woman having sex with a horse!" –Jimmy Kimmel

"In Delaware, former Republican governor Mike Castle was defeated by Sarah Palin favorite Christine O'Donnell. Nobody knows what this woman does for a living, if anything. All we do know is that she's gone on the record to oppose masturbation, for real. I have a feeling Christine O'Donnell opposes masturbation the same way Bristol Palin opposes pre-marital sex." –Jimmy Kimmel

"I'm not a political person. I keep to myself. I’m not one to get involved in these things. I’m not proud to say I'll stand by as our leaders drag us into wars based on false pretenses. I’ll stand by while our oceans are polluted by greedy corporations who only care about money. I'll stand by while our military blatantly discriminates against our own armed forced based on their sexual preferences. But I'll tell you something. When our right to masturbate is threatened, that's where I draw the line. What goes on between me in my own bedroom, and car sometimes, is my business, not the government's. We need to send a message to Washington, people. This November, I want everyone who believes in basic human rights to touch themselves in the voting booth. I want to say this to Christine O'Donnell. I want you and your followers to know one thing: you’ll take away this penis when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands." –Jimmy Kimmel

"It's a great day for the members of the tea party. You know, the new political party that believes in . . . I don't know." –Craig Ferguson

"She’s also against masturbation. I'm afraid you lost me now, lady. If she wants to win this November, she may have to change that position." –Craig Ferguson

"The Palin is strong in this one. My God. Just give her bangs and a pair of rim glasses and she'd be a dead-ringer for… [onscreen: a video clip of O’Donnell wearing glasses with bangs] Oh my God!" –Jon Stewart

After showing a clip of O'Donnell saying, "You’re gonna be pleasing each other and if he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?", Jon Stewart said: "You're in the picture, my dear, because as Oscar Wilde once said, 'I can't reach it with my mouth.'"

After showing a clip of O'Donnell saying, "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery, so you can’t masturbate without lust," Stephen Colbert said: "Thank you madam. Masturbation is adultery. I know this is horrible news for my home audience, many of whom are committing adultery as we speak."

"Democratic Congressman Charlie Rangel easily won his primary. He hasn't been this happy since he saved all that money by not paying taxes. " –Jay Leno

"A group called the Center for American Progress is using Justin Bieber in their marketing to help get out the vote in November. And really, what better symbol to get out the vote than someone who is way too young to vote and Canadian." –Jay Leno

"New FBI statistics say that crime in the United States fell 5 percent from last year. You see what happens when we put Lindsay Lohan in jail?" –Jimmy Kimmel

"You know things are bad when even criminals can't find work in this country." –Jimmy Kimmel

"Experts say the decrease in crime could be due to the aging of the population, increased incarceration, and many criminals finding jobs in the banking industry and on Wall Street." –Jimmy Kimmel

[gathered from about.com and newsmax.com]

So, it's a class thang? The "unruly and unwashed" Tea Party vs the rich, upper-class Republican elite?

Salon's Glenn Greenwald has an intriguing piece about the Tea Party. For one thing, he says what I've been saying all along .. that the TP is not something new, it's made up of the extreme rightwing of the Republican Party .. in fact it's all the crazy extremists rolled into one.

You got your John Birchers, your neo-confederates and your Christian Theocrats .. all under one tent which is held up with the support of some very wealthy benefactors -- the Koch brothers (and their front man Dick Armey), not to mention Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. After decades of pushing the party to the right, they've finally reached the outer fringe.

But, even though they've been around forever, this is the first time they've had this much power. They are more dangerous today because if they win a few mid-term seats they might cause some serious trouble .. they should be turned back by any means necessary.

I personally don't think there's enough crazy voters in America to put them into serious power .. but we shall see.

The Republican establishment created this monster .. they were more than happy to use them .. but they're now having regrets because they don’t want to share power with them. Tea Partiers are fun, but they don't want to bring one home to Mom ...

Greenwald says: "Much of the patronizing derision and scorn heaped on people like Christine O’Donnell have very little to do with their substantive views -- since when did right-wing extremism place one beyond the pale? — and much more to do with the fact they’re so ... unruly and unwashed. To members of the establishment and the ruling class (like Rove), these are the kinds of people -- who struggle with tuition bills and have their homes foreclosed -- who belong in Walmarts, community colleges, low-paying jobs, and voting booths on command, not in the august United States Senate."

I betcha the Republican old guard is hoping for Tea Party defeats in November .. so they can take their Republican party back from the "unwashed." Their ideal candidate is someone who's rich, upper-class and can pose in a cowboy hat for pictures.

Isn't it ironic that this same GOP old guard may be the ones who save us all from the new blackshirts? It’s only fair since they set them loose in the village in the first place.

"Outspoken actor Jon Voight picked a fight with Time Warner on Sunday when he slammed their flagship magazine Time on Fox News Channel's "Huckabee" for being anti-Semitic. The video didn't hit the web until Tuesday. Watch below (it begins around the two-minute mark).

"This is anti-Semitism," Voight said of the Sep. 13 edition, which features a Star of David and the cover line, "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace."

Voight said, "Who are the anti-Semites who are running Time Magazine?"

The politically active actor, who supports the Tea Party and conservative candidates, then attacked Time's August 30 cover that asks: "Is America Islamophobic?"

"They're calling America Islamophobic. Well, this is exactly the way that we create wars between nations," Voight said. ...

"What are we going to do? Should we boycott Time magazine? Maybe so, because they shouldn't have the right to create wars," he said to applause.

Quipped the host, Mike Huckabee: "Given their circulation numbers, I think most of America already is." ...

In June, Voight wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama in The Washington Post accusing him of "promoting anti-Semitism throughout the world."

"An Ottawa woman says she bought some take-out wings recently from a Toronto eatery and was horrified when she instead received an order of Shake ‘n’ Beak.

Among the mound of wings there was allegedly a deep-fried chicken’s head — its eyes staring up at Karen Cook.

"It was absolutely disgusting," Cook, 44, said Monday.

The Ottawa woman, in town on business, said she went to the Wild Goose Bar & Grill, 5395 Eglinton Ave. W., in Etobicoke, for a bite to eat on Aug. 18. She ate a pound of wings there and got a second pound to go.

Later, in her hotel room, Cook claims she and a friend opened the container and found the chicken’s head.

"It was really gross," Cook said, adding she hasn’t been able to eat wings since.[..]"

It still had eyes? Boy, they really need to cook them longer.

You're put up for adoption as an infant .. you find your mom years later .. turns out she was born a hermaphrodite, has werewolf syndrome, and works in a freak show

"Bearded Lady Reunites With Long-Lost Son"

"[T]he 33-year-old Kansas man had always been curious about his birth parents, but with a wife and two young daughters, he was busy making a life of his own. After a recent back injury led to multiple medical exams and many questions about his family medical history, he decided it was time to start digging.

His search began this past spring, when he filed a request with the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services to find his biological parents.

Six weeks later he received a letter from the department saying it had the identity of his mother: Vivian Wheeler, now 62.

It also informed him that both his mother and his maternal grandmother had hypertrichosis, known as werewolf syndrome. Each had facial hair, even as children. The letter further stated that his mother was born a hermaphrodite, with both male and female reproductive organs. [..]"

I smell a made-for-TV movie.

Wow, it's been fun watching Karl Rove fight the Republicans over Christine O'Donnell's Senate primary win in Delaware -- he told them she said nutty things, had problems with honesty, lived off campaign money, didn't pay her taxes or school loans, had too many skeletons in her closet and was going to cause them to lose the Delaware Senate seat.

Well, all the rabid Tea-bag righties really jumped his case - Limbaugh, Hannity, Palin, DeMint - and called him everything from incompetent to traitorous. And now it looks like they've gotten to him because he walked his talk back a bit this morning.

Dang, just when I'd gotten fresh popcorn ...

Anyway, a bruised and battered Rove appeared on Fox News to climb on board the Christine O'Donnell train .. pardon me while I snicker, but he's now saying that not only does he think O'Donnell can win, he actually got the NRSC to begrudgingly send money to her campaign.

And he pointed out that his criticisms of O'Donnell have caused thousands of dollars to pour into her campaign fund .. with Rove himself sending her an internet contribution.

I still can't get over Karl Rove saying something any sane person could find reasonable .. but, in the end he caved .. and now supports a financially irresponsible, dishonest, extremist candidate for Senate who is totally unqualified for the job.

And it still surprises me -- with the GOP being so screwed up and their candidates are such a disaster, why are they going to do so well in November?

Long-Shot Louisiana Senate Candidate Challenges Vitter to Cage Fight

"A dark horse Senate candidate is trying to bring back the art of the duel, challenging Louisiana Sen. David Vitter to a mixed-martial arts cage fight next month in the run-up to the election.

Third-party candidate Mike Spears, a Louisiana businessman, is an ultra-long shot in the race dominated by Vitter, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Rep. Charlie Melancon. If Spears can't beat Vitter at the polls, he's at least hoping to beat him in the ring -- or cage, as it were.

Old-fashioned duels were usually called to resolve quarrels and restore the honor of an offended party, but Spears said he's calling this match to restore the honor of Louisiana. [..]" 

Boy, this could definitely replace those long-winded debates on C-SPAN.

Yes Virginia, Republicans have souls .. or they used to ...

Now that the GOP is in danger of being very badly splintered by the Tea Partiers .. now, after years of irresponsible, extremist rhetoric, Republicans are worried because irresponsible extremists are winning their primaries .. aww, the poor dears.

Politico reports: "Christine O'Donnell's surprise victory in the Delaware U.S. Senate GOP primary "left Republicans in conflict, senior party officials openly fretting that the Senate is now out of reach and Democrats overjoyed that the opposition has handed them a late and desperately needed chance to reframe the national argument about the 2010 elections ...

Aside from the political implications of the upset, the outcome prompted a round of deep Republican soul-searching about what it said about their party when a political pillar in Delaware like Rep. Mike Castle, a respected lawmaker who was considered a shoo-in for the Senate seat, could not even come within six points of defeating the controversial and still largely unknown O'Donnell."

Mark Halperin: "She is the canary in the coalmine for a level of intraparty bloodletting that will likely cost the party one Senate seat in November. And if the GOP establishment doesn't figure out how to build a bigger tent and still win elections, the price Republicans will pay will be a whole lot higher starting on November 3, into the new Congress, and when they try to beat Obama in 2012."

I predicted the Tea Party would tear the GOP (or the remaining shreds of the GOP) apart, and it appears I was right. I would like to personally thank Tea Partiers for giving the Democrats another sure Senate seat.

The Democratic leaderships in both chambers, in state legislatures up and down the country should now be reaching out to moderate Republicans and saying -- Join us.

Because, do Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe seriously think they'll survive a primary challenge?

Duuude .. don't bogart that tomato ...

Be careful, tomatoes might be a gateway to harder vegetables.

COURTENAY — A Courtenay man is furious after police came to his house looking for marijuana, only to discover garden tomatoes and dahlias. ...

On Aug. 29 (Sunday) at about 10:30 p.m., the man was sleeping upstairs in his room. His wife, who was preparing to head to bed, saw several police cars pull up in front of the house.

He was presented with a search warrant for marijuana plants and told that he and his wife would be taken into custody to the police station.

He said he turned on the garden floodlight to allow the police officers more light for their search.

The police search had yielded only dahlias and garden tomatoes -- plants that had mistakenly been identified by police as marijuana over a two-week investigation that included aerial surveillance of the couple's back yard.[..]"

Geez, Canadians ought to be able to recognize pot when they see it .. it's one of their largest exports to the USA.

...but very very very very slowly.

From usatoday.com: "[T]he Amish population is growing and embarking on a westward migration that has now reached as far as Colorado, South Dakota and Montana, according to an annual survey by Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, which tracks the Amish.

In the past year, the North American Amish population has grown 5%, an increase from 237,500 in 2009 to 249,500 today, the survey found.

..."They'd never been this far west and to see them come rolling in with their buggies and everything, they're kind of like pioneers rediscovering the Old West," says Bill Werner, a Realtor in Alamosa, Colo., who sold land to Amish when they stopped in to his real estate office about eight years ago.[..]"

Times they are a changin' .. I saw young Amish using cell phones.

We Democrats are prepared to lose House seats in the next election because history tells us that mid-term elections mean losses to the incumbent party. But wouldn't it be wild if Republican votes get split enough for Democrats to GAIN seats? Because these surely are unusual times .. major issues constantly changing, and the absurdity of political rants, etc.

Sure the Democrats could lose seats, but almost certainly not control. On the other side we've got people talking secession out loud, which is TREASON. We've got people exposing ideology so wrong-headed and out-dated that you wonder why they don't just keep quiet and do themselves a big favor. Then there's the bad-mannered morons like Joe "You lie!" whatever his name was.

Too many on the right are drawing crowds of the lunatic fringe -- about 25% of all Americans -- but will not be elected by more sober moderate voters. Hell, look what they've got for a party chairman, a token moron who spends like a drunken sailor, treats his people to lesbian sex clubs and told everybody that Obama chose the Afghan War while Americans have always rejected it!

Their BS is so deep that only the truly faithful will be able to hold their nose and trudge through it to the voting booth.

Sooo .. with the strong possibility, even likelihood, of the radical righties causing the vote to splinter big time, there's nothing and no one on the far left who could do the same to the Democrats. We have no Tea Party, Fox Faux News or Limbaugh/Beck/Palin/Angle/Paul embarrassments.

Another factor - a lot of my Republican friends are really put off by the party being held hostage by wingnut fringe elements, by the lockstep (one calls it goose step) .. not liking the image that conjures up, the Party of Hell No, etc.

Some of my GOP friends say they're going to have a hard time voting for Republicans at all .. not that they'll vote for the Democrats .. so they well might not vote at all.

So maybe there are considerably better than even odds that the fringe right is in for a rude awakening once the votes are counted. Boy, just try to scrape the smile off my face if the Democrats gain even a single seat in either chamber, let alone one (or more) in BOTH.

Hey .. it could happen! <g>

Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party candidate for Joe Biden’s old Delaware Senate seat, told ABC News this about Republican Mike Castle, her opponent in the primary:

"The Republican Party has lost it’s way. They get behind candidates like my opponent, who don’t even support the Republican platform. Who continue to support the Democrats agenda lock, step, and barrel."

Oh My.

Haha, lock, step and barrel .. it just kills me .. I wonder how much sleep they lose trying to come up with these catchy phrases .. like lame-stream media, etc.

Everyone (well, we political junkies) is watching this blue state primary .. some see it as a bellwether for the future of the conservative movement. The two candidates vying for the Senate seat are two-time Governor and now Congressman Mike Castle, a rare breed of Republican who is pro-choice and pro-gun control, and Tea Party backed, Palin-endorsed Christine O’Donnell who .. isn't.

Sorry Mike, but we Dems want Christine to win .. she'll be easier to beat.

BTW - Too many news outlets are treating the Tea Partiers as if they’re an authentic party .. when it’s really just a label being used by the most radical fringe of the party.

A new Quinnipiac poll shows that support for the Tea Party seems to have stalled .. only 12% of voters consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement.

Hmm, that percentage is about the same as Dick Cheney's approval ratings.

If the Tea Party movement has stalled out at 12%, that certainly deflates their plan to "rise up and take back the country." The TP is a faction within the GOP and has never been anything else .. it has NOT won over Democrats, moderates and independents.

This poll just shows that voters might be waking up as they focus on election season and learn what nutcases the Tea Party has nominated. Crazies like Sharron Angle with her "Second Amendment remedies" and Rand Paul with his questions about the Civil Rights Act.

Independents and moderate swing voters will be scared to death when they really listen to the ideas of these extremists, who are birthers, who want to repeal the 14th Amendment, dump Social Security, force rape/incest victims to have rapist‘s babies, abolish the Department of Education, take another look at Civil Rights ...

Not that we Democrats don't expect to lose the House .. history tells us that the party in power always loses mid-term seats. But, remember that Truman and Clinton both won second terms which were followed by midterm thumpings.

So, better a midterm loss than a 2012 loss ...

The TP was created by the GOP reactionary right. Its energy was fueled by the stunned disbelief that America actually elected a black man, Barack Obama, as president .. their only purpose is to demonize him and destroy his presidency any way they can.

Once the Tea Party is no longer useful to its handlers and manipulators it will be absorbed back into the GOP from whence it came.

Here's what Meghan McCain said to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show about her insecurity during her father's 2008 presidential campaign:

"When you're sent to an image consultant and told that you look like a stripper and talk bad and you're hurting the campaign when, you know, there's a pregnant teen there, it does a little bit to your self-esteem."

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-september-9-2010/meghan-mccain

Except for her thing for "Droopy Dog" Lieberman, I kinda like her .. certainly more than the cranky dude who unleashed the media disease know as Sarah Palin on the nation.

At least she speaks the truth .. that's a big no-no in Republican circles. And she's actually got a point -- the way that women are treated on the campaign trail is pretty ridiculous.

I blogged recently about the WWII Secret Dog Army of Cat Island. Not many people know about yet another bizarre super-secret project dreamed up by our CIA during the Cold War -- Operation Acoustic Kitty. They surgically implanted cats with sophisticated bugging devices .. so the kitties could 'eavesdrop' on Soviet conversations from park benches, windowsills, etc. They used the cat's tail as an antenna.

When the spy cat was ready for its first field test, the CIA drove it to a Soviet compound in Washington, DC., and let it out of a parked van across the street to eavesdrop on two men.

The cat ambled across the road, was struck by a taxi and killed.

Here they'd spent 20 million dollars in surgical and training expenses .. then splat .. roadkill.

If you think I'm kidding, read about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty

Remembering all those who died on that sad and horrifying day, 9/11/01

For the Falling Man

by Annie Farnsworth

I see you again and again
tumbling out of the sky,
in your slate-grey suit and pressed white shirt.
At first I thought you were debris
from the explosion, maybe gray plaster wall
or fuselage but then I realized
that people were leaping.
I know who you are, I know
there's more to you than just this image
on the news, this ragdoll plummeting—
I know you were someone's lover, husband,
daddy. Last night you read stories
to your children, tucked them in, then curled into sleep
next to your wife. Perhaps there was small
sleepy talk of the future. Then,
before your morning coffee had cooled
you'd come to this; a choice between fire
or falling.
How feeble these words, billowing
in this aftermath, how ineffectual
this utterance of sorrow. We can see plainly
it's hopeless, even as the words trail from our mouths
—but we can't help ourselves—how I wish
we could trade them for something
that could really have caught you.

"For the Falling Man" by Annie Farnsworth from Bodies of Water, Bodies of Light. © Annie Farnsworth. Reprinted with permission.

People are having fun with this .. and wondering what's in the water in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Rush Limbaugh was once Cape Girardeau’s most famous son .. but someone found out that Pastor Burn-a-Koran Terry Jones and Rush were classmates in Cape Girardeau Central High School, and graduated together in 1969.

Maybe Jones watched his old classmate reach the pinnacle of success through hate and intolerance and decided he could become infamous too .. using "psycho-terror" religion to one-up Limbaugh and grab a little of the spotlight for himself.

Wonder if his feelings were hurt when Rush called him a "crackpot" on the air .. BTW, Rush never let on that he went to school with Pastor Crazy.

Missouri must be quite a place .. but at least they had enough sense to realize that a dead man would make a better Senator than John Ashcroft.

Remember when this right-wing crazy pastor in Florida first started making threats about this burning of Korans .. and you didn't hear a peep out of the righties? It sorta followed the hate talk they'd been making about Muslims.

Finally, Boehner and Palin were almost forced to say they did not approve .. then they began to tie it in with the NYC mosque .. then Pastor Crazy began to tie it in with the NYC mosque ...

Maybe Palin et al were trying to give Pastor Crazy an escape route when it was clear that Americans were going to be targeted. Sounds like a rightwing set up to me .. sort of a Fox News-Wingnut Muslim demonization campaign.

After all, the righties protected this man when he and his wife were kicked out of Germany for all the stuff they did there .. the right made him out a victim.

"German flock expelled Pastor Jones 'for his extremist views'"

Call me a conspiracy freak .. but I'm just sayin' ...

Forget Koran burning .. this guy shot a Bible .. in self-defense

"...According to the Knox County Sheriff's Office, Daniel Kiser told officers his home on Shipe Road had been burglarized several times in the past eight months, so he installed a motion detector in his barn.

Just before 11 p.m., the alarm went off, and Kiser said he went to the barn with a handgun. As he headed into the barn, where a gate was open, someone lunged at him, and he fired.

Authorities say the suspect, Jerry Bible, 62, was hit in the upper torso. As he fell, Kiser told officers he threw a knife, which was recovered by officers.

Bible, who lives near Kiser, was taken to UT Medical Center, where he underwent surgery. There's no word on his condition, but when he's released from the hospital, he will be charged with burglary, according to the sheriff's office. ..."

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=133565&catid=2

So now he's a holey Bible?

Sorry ..

Can you say "attention whore" .. Kansas Church annoyed by Florida church's Quran burning because they burned one in 2008 and nobody cared.

Kansas City Star - One of those angry at a Florida preacher's plans to mark Sept. 11 by setting fire to copies of the Quran is Shirley Phelps-Roper, a leader of the Westboro Baptist Church.

... Her irritation Wednesday was not that the Rev. Terry Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center's planned bonfire would offend Muslims worldwide and probably increase the danger to American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's that in 2008 she and her father's Topeka flock set fire to a Quran in plain view on a Washington, D.C., street and nobody seemed to care.

"We did it a long time before this guy," Phelps-Roper said by telephone from a street corner in downtown Chicago, scene of the latest Westboro picket — against Jews this time, not gays.

The difference could be that in 2008 many news media outlets had decided to ignore the group's routine of spewing hatred at funerals of fallen American soldiers.[..]"

See .. if the media didn't decide that some wacko burning a book was a national crisis, nobody outside this nut's circle would know or care.

I wish they'd just set themselves on fire ...

Today Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Penn.) called the radical fringe of the Republican Party, Fruit Loops, Wackos and "flat-out crazy" .. he added, "We are going to turn the reins of the Congress over to these people who are more and more dominated by the wacko right?"

..."I'm telling you," Rendell said. "If I'm an independent voter in [Rep.] Patrick Murphy's district, sure I'm worried about the deficit but I sure as heck am worried about people who want to do away with the 14th amendment. I'm sure as heck worried about people who don't think the president was born in the United States of America. I sure as heck am worried about people who think that workers are staying home because of unemployment benefits... they are nuts. They are flat-out crazy." ...[..]"

Boy, we'd have a better country if these rightwing wackos hated corruption and incompetence instead of other people.

This has to be one of the most bizarre ideas our Pentagon ever had. I'd never heard of it until the episode on PBS's "History Detectives." During WWII the US actually tried to train an army of attack dogs to kill Japanese soldiers by their smell .. and we used Japanese-American soldiers as bait.

"When the United States entered World War Two, it sought to rapidly increase its number of K9 soldiers. ...The US Army, Marines and Coast Guard used dogs for both sentry and pack use and later in scout and mine detection.

One dark program involved a much more tactical use of these dogs in all-out war. It was thought that a unit of attack dogs could be formed to be dropped on occupied beaches in the atolls of the pacific that would be trained to devour Japanese defenders based on their smell.

Cat Island in the Barrier Islands of the Mississippi Gulf Coast was chosen for this secret experimental program. It was the only dog facility that was directly under the Army Ground Forces command and not the Quartermaster Corps.

...Some 25 Japanese-American (Nisei) enlisted volunteers were selected from 3rd platoon B/100 and sent to the island to be used as human ‘bait’ for the war dogs to find. A Swiss refugee William A Prestre was the civilian instructor at the island who maintained that he could produce an army of war dogs who would kill Japanese on sight and on their own without handlers instructing them.

... For three months Prestre had Nisei soldiers dressed in Japanese Army costumes perform unusual tasks such as strike training dogs until they bled and others in an effort to make the dogs vicious attack animals.

...The program was bound for failure as the dogs could not discern between the Nisei soldiers and the other US troops. When large packs of dogs were turned loose to attack and ‘kill’ on command they quickly lost interest and milled around. On February 2, 1943 after two disappointing exhibitions in front of the brass, Prestre was shown to the door and his involvement with the military terminated. ..."[..]

Here is a detailed interview with Roy Nosaka of Company B .. one of the 'bait soldiers' .. I couldn't read most of it because it made me sad and angry.

You can watch the History Detectives episode here.

.. losing my religion .. "

I had lost my religion by the time I turned 18, turning my back on the magic show, it had no sway over me anymore. I had life to live and adventures to experience .. and I had been taught how to be a good person.

I still admired Jesus .. but as a philosopher. His teachings convinced me that he would never condone how blacks were treated in this country .. I knew Jesus would be marching along side Martin Luther King.

I did return to study religions in my 20’s and 30’s .. read everything I could get my hands on .. only becoming more convinced that I had made the right decision.

I am one of those atheists/humanists who believes in 'live and let live' .. it doesn't bother me that my small town has Baby Jesus manger scenes on the town square .. as long as other religions can also have displays there.

I'm not going to discuss all the religious zealots (like Glenn Beck), I know many religious people who are full of good will and compassion, as well as kindness and care .. their actions pay testament to their inherent humanity. We get along fine .. as long as they don't try to convert me ...

The only place I really draw the line is between Church and State .. please keep your religious beliefs out of my government's law making.

I don't know why I'm thinking about all this on Labor Day .. maybe because I woke up this morning with REM's song in my head:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_XFMCgeI7c

This still sticks in my craw -- Fox TV host Glenn Beck trying to steal the legacy of Martin Luther King while his crazed Tea Partyers have done nothing but trash our first African-American president in the nastiest of terms .. it will go down as one of the most arrogant and craven moments in civil rights history.

A stroll through the watchdog group Media Matters gives an interesting sampling of Glenn Beck's greatest racist hits:

"Glenn Beck's attempts to "reclaim the civil rights movement" and "pick up Martin Luther King's dream" ring hollow when contrasted with the radio and TV host's long record of racially-charged, offensive rhetoric.[..]"

http://mediamatters.org/research/201008260006

It's laughable that Glenn Beck is taken seriously .. worse that he is even mentioned in the same breath as MLK.

MLK tried to unify us, bring us together .. Beck is the antithesis of that and he's making a lot of money whipping angry unstable white folks into a dangerous frenzy. MLK would be crushed to see this pin head attempting to ride his coattails in this manner.

I can only hope that we are witnessing the death rattle of the old reactionary right .. their loathing is so thick now they can barely make a point. How can Americans call themselves patriots when they wish failure on a US president .. even death?

Another thing that irks me is how Beck brags that his tent revival was peaceful and non-violent. Nazi rallies were also non-violent events. Does that mean Nazis were not racists?

I'm going to share a yummy recipe, and yes, I'm talking about Oklahoma buffalo. I know, other people call them bison, but we Okies call them buffalo. Many of them roam very near here, they are no longer endangered, and ranchers are raising buffalo as a leaner alternative to beef. Some even breed beef and buffalo and call it beefalo .. restaurants go crazy for the stuff.

If you have never eaten buffalo .. imagine a really lean, deep red, grass-fed beefy beef .. not gamy at all, but just a tad sweeter. It's leaner and lower in cholesterol. Trust me, if you like the taste of a good steak or beef burger, you'll love buffalo.

Ground buffalo is not that expensive, and easy to find here on the southern plains in good supermarkets. People tell me it can be found at Whole Foods. Then there's always online ...

You can cook buffalo the same way you would lean, grass-fed beef. 　

Okie Buffalo Burgers

Ingredients:

2 pounds ground buffalo (bison)

2 Tbsp finely chopped fresh sage (or 1 tsp dried sage)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons black pepper

1/2 med. onion, finely chopped

2 Tbsp olive oil

Your favorite smoky BBQ sauce

First you saute the onions in the olive oil over medium-high heat until translucent .. turn off the heat and let them cool.

When the onions are cool enough to touch, scrape them (along with whatever oil is left) into the meat .. add sage, salt and pepper, and use your hands to gently mix everything.

Do not overwork the meat, or you'll have tough burgers.

Form patties using about 1/4 of a pound of meat per patty. Here's a tip - if you press a slight indentation in the center of each patty it will help keep the burgers in a nice disk shape when cooking. Otherwise the burger will puff up in the middle when the edges contract from cooking.

Grill or fry the burgers on medium heat, about 6-7 minutes per side, less or more depending on the thickness of the burger and the heat of the pan/grill. Don’t mash the juices out of your burgers while cooking, and keep the flipping to a minimum. Let the burgers rest about 5 minutes before serving.

Serve burgers on your favorite toasted buns with all your favorite fixin's - mine are lettuce and tomato, topped with a smoky BBQ sauce. Makes about 8 burgers.

.. but then we don't need any more martyrs for ignorance.

Poor birthers .. nothing will make them happy. The red eyes, the spittle flecked lips, the spelling errors. Is it their lack of understanding of history and politics in general? Their lack of a high school diploma? Inbreeding?

"Judge removes 'birther' elements from Army doc's court martial"

"A judge on Thursday denied a request for President Barack Obama to testify at a court martial for a U.S. Army flight surgeon who refused to deploy to Afghanistan until he saw proof that Obama was born in the United States.

The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, said any evidence or witnesses related to Obama's citizenship is irrelevant to the charges against Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, who has 17 years of service in the U.S. military.

After failing to deploy with his unit in April, Lakin was charged with missing a movement, disobeying a lawful order and dereliction of duty.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice says the maximum punishment for both offenses -- missing his plane and disobeying lawful orders -- is a dishonorable discharge and up to two years in confinement. A guilty verdict could also result in forfeiture of Lakin's pay, which totals $7,959 a month ... [..]"~~

You can't even say "nice try" Lt. Col. Lakin .. because it wasn't close.

To the 27% of Americans who don't believe Obama is legally our President -- what are you smoking? Don't you think his heritage (birth place included) would have been authenticated back when he threw his hat into the ring for the Democratic Primaries?

Think about it for a minute. Clearly his history would have been checked before being allowed to compete in primaries and accept the Democratic nomination in June 2008.

Clearly these birthers and the rest of the 27% need to get over their racist attitudes. No one ever asked George Bush for his birth certificate. Is it because Obama's middle name is Hussein? It's a name, chosen by his birth mother ... who ... was ... WHITE!

Bad = being trapped underground in a Chilean mine for months. Worse = having your wife bump into your mistress at a prayer vigil for you .. neither woman will back down.

Drama Above Ground as Chilean Miners Await Rescue

(Sept. 2) -- Yonni Barrios may have been feeling trapped long before a landslide sealed him inside a Chilean gold mine last month.

As Barrios awaited rescue along with 32 other miners, his wife and his mistress met each other thousands of feet above, at a vigil for the men stuck in the mine. Marta Salinas, 56, says she heard the other woman calling her husband's name as families gathered to pray for the workers.

Salinas told told The Sun in London she was "horrified" but plans to keep her man. "Barrios is my husband. He loves me, and I am his devoted wife. This woman has no legitimacy," she told the British paper.

But the other woman, Susana Valenzuela, said she and the trapped miner will stay together. "We are in love," she told the paper. "I'll wait for him." [..]"

Where do we place our bets? I'd like to put $100 on the wife.

The State of Ohio doesn't care that Puerto Ricans are US Citizens by birth .. begins restricting use of Puerto Rico birth certificates for proving ID.

Yes, I tease .. there's more to this story ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Elizabeth Torres was stung when her 19-year-old son said he'd been turned down for a state-issued Ohio identification card because his birth certificate from Puerto Rico was considered invalid.

"We're not illegal aliens, we are citizens of this country," Torres said. "We have everything, all the documents and all that, but we are not treated as such."

People born in Puerto Rico are finding that older birth certificates from the U.S. territory are not being accepted when applying for a state ID or driver's license at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, a reaction to concerns about possible fraud that a national Hispanic group said smacks of racial discrimination.[..]~~

See, Puerto Rico recently reissued all of its birth certificates because of rampant fraud, and older birth certificates are no longer valid in Puerto Rico .. so why would they be valid in Ohio?

"Since early April, the bureau has refused to accept Puerto Rican birth certificates issued before Jan. 1 as proof of identity and date of birth. The policy reflects a law on the island that will invalidate all older birth certificates on Sept. 30, the agency said."

BUT .. if the certificate is good through Sept. 30th in Puerto Rico, it ought to be accepted on good faith and credit in other states until Sept 30th .. that leaves April, May, June, July, August and September .. a pretty big gap.

It might not be racism but somebody's got some 'splainin' to do.

I am so tired of the controversy over the size of Glenn Beck's Lincoln Memorial crowd .. but this just tickles me.

A crowd estimate expert, who was once cheered by righties for downsizing Obama's inaugural, is now ridiculed by the same righties for downsizing the Glenn Beck crowd.

"Conservatives bash once-respected professor for low-balling Beck crowd"

"Estimates of the turnout for Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial last weekend have varied widely, from a low of 87,000 to a high of one million.

As a result, the already-controversial rally has sparked a secondary controversy over a report by CBS News that the organization it hired to make a scientific count from aerial photos had come up with a figure of only 87,000, plus or minus 9,000 -- a number greatly at odds with Beck's own estimate of 300,000 to 500,000.

Conservative bloggers like Anthony G. Martin have been quick to deride the CBS figure as "laughable" ...

Ironically, one of the analysts who provided the CBS figure -- crowd estimate expert Stephen Doig of Arizona State University -- was hailed by conservative bloggers in January 2009, when he came up with a size for the crowd at the Obama inauguration that was half of what most media sources were suggesting.

Doig himself notes in a blog post that when he estimated the Obama inauguration crowd as 800,000, "my reality-based estimate was ignored by many left-wing commentators and embraced by those on the right."~~

I thought Beck's crowd looked like about 100k people .. not bad by any means, but certainly not half a million people.

I don't know why righties and Fox News personalities are so obsessive about crowd size -- remember when Fox pulled something shady about a Tea Party rally? They just can't stand the idea of being in the minority .. which makes me wonder about a possibly related fear in conservative circles that the day is approaching when caucasians won't be a majority in the US.

Today James Jay Lee entered the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, MD and took hostages .. he had a gun and bombs and was angry about a lot of things, some eco-related, some immigration related .. he called for the elimination of "anchor baby filth" for one thing.

Apparently he didn't care about all the innocent babies in the Discovery day care center ...

In the end the police shot him dead .. and nobody else was hurt. Good riddance, one less dangerous crazy in the world.

SILVER SPRING, Md. — Police shot and killed a man armed with several bombs who held three hostages Wednesday at the Discovery Communications building. Authorities said the hostages were safe.

At least one device on the man’s body went off when he was shot inside the building in suburban Washington, D.C., Montgomery County police Chief Thomas Manger said. Police were searching the building for other explosive devices.

Manger said no one was believed to have been injured other than the gunman, whom SWAT officers shot about 4:50 p.m. ET because officials "believed the hostages were in danger." The building in the close-in suburb of Washington was safely evacuated, including the Discovery Kids Place day care center, police said.

An NBC News producer who called the building to find out what was going on had a brief telephone conversation with the man when he came on the line unexpectedly. He identified himself as James J. Lee and said, "I have a gun and I have a bomb. ... I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to go off."

NBC News informed Montgomery County authorities of the conversation as the producer spoke to the man for about 10 minutes. NBC News did not report the conversation until the hostage situation had been resolved. [..]"

And doncha know that Fox News is all -- it's Al Gore's fault .. the gunman is an unbalanced environmentalist .. which proves that global warming is a hoax and we need to sell off Yellowstone Park to developers so we can balance the budget, yada, yada, yada ..

We're all laughing, but do not underestimate the danger of an emotionally unbalanced, maybe psychotic, newly self-styled preacher and long term racist, Glenn Beck...

Please take this phony rally of religious fervor seriously, it eggs on a growing mass of racist whites, led by a right-wing extremist entertainer, and a shrill-voiced half-baked half-term governor/grifter woman, both employed by fake-news Fox News who just donated a cool million to the Republican Party .. an obscene display, yes, but don't dismiss this Palin/Beck strategy so readily.

Pierre Tristam wrote an excellent piece about Beck's National Association for the Advancement of White People -- "Neo-Supremacy Chic: Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin's Tea-Scalding of MLK."

His observations are profound .. read it:

"They don’t call it white supremacy for nothing.

One of the ways this country’s reactionaries have made racism and neo-segregation chic is by co-opting the language of emancipation, equality and civil rights. ...

Almost exclusively white, Catholic, Protestant and old, this most selfish generation discovered in 2008 that it was no longer the swing vote. It was outrun by younger, certainly more colored, more colorful, voters. It rebelled. It declared itself disenfranchised. ...

The minor genius of the “tea party” movement is to do so by adopting the language and methods of rebellion, albeit in slogans only: reactionaries don’t make rebellions. They crush them. By co-opting the mythology of the original tea party, today’s “tea party” broods have managed to make their over-representation at almost every level of government look like no representation because the man at the helm doesn’t look like them. ...

You don’t need to call the president a nigger to get your point across in this era of “darkness.” Especially not to a sea of whites joined on the Washington Mall by the single resentment of being led by a darkie president, and there to pay homage to Beck, who called America under Obama “The Planet of the Apes.” ... [..]"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/29

Tristam mentions Charles Blow, a columnist for The Times, who wrote “I Had a Nightmare” .. another good read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/opinion/28blow.html