Five Before Chaos

While writing up my last post, I had the misfortune of visiting the website of the hate-group known as the American Family Association. You know the type – typical Christianist drivel, afraid of the gay menace, titties, Obama, and anything remotely fun, interesting, or factual. They put on that circle-jerk known as the “Values Voters Summit” every year, where Republican pols go and kiss their tightly puckered asses.

So anyways, at the top of the page, there’s this rotating banner with all sorts of Action Alerts! nonsense. After the one about a Home Depot employee who was asked to remove their “One Nation Under God” pin from their work apron, there was a big Sears logo, that said under it, “SEARS IS CONTENT TO SELL PORNOGRAPHY. AND IF YOU’RE OFFENDED, THEY DON’T SEEM TO CARE”.

What? I can get something fun at at Sears besides lawnmowers? Sign me up! So I clicked on the link.

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Now, given my current standpoint on religion, I never think any new houses of worship are a good thing, although I’m not about to advocate banning ‘em. But this whole “mosque at Ground Zero” thing is yet another thing that convinces me we are truly Redneck Nation.

Putting aside the fact that in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero, there’s a few other mosques, titty bars, gay bars and several other things that conservatives object to when they’re not secretly going to them (except for the mosque, of course, we can’t have that… plus whatever goes on there might not be in English), why on earth should anyone give a flying fuck about this? Seriously. Will the ghosts of the WTC hijackers be attending this mosque? What are you tough-talking pants-pooping chickenshits afraid of?

Well, to answer that question, unfortunately, we have to poke our noses into the mouthbreathing, paranoid, delusional far-right blogosphere,  more specifically, something by a WATB named Brian Fischer. Fischer blogs for the hate-group known as the American Family Association. With quaking, greasy fingers, he wipes the piss and shit off of his keyboard long enough to tell us:

Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero. This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.

Each one is a potential jihadist recruitment and training center, and determined to implement the “Grand Jihad” of which Andy McCarthy has written.

Really? Each one? For “evidence” he makes the huge jump citing some radical Muslim, who obviously speaks for all Muslims, right? Just like nutters like Tony Perkins, Mike Huckabee, and hell, Fred Phelps speak for all Christians, of course. Or I speak for all atheists, for that matter.

Now, for a contrasting viewpoint, look at what not-nearly-as-crazy-as-Fischer conservative Jeffrey (not Jonah) Goldberg (ADDENDUM: Yes, I know Goldberg’s a warmongering dolt – he just has a momentary lapse of insanity here) at the Atlantic has to say about the Cordoba Initiative (the mosque in question):

This seems like such an obvious point, but it is apparently not obvious to the many people who oppose the Cordoba Initiative’s planned mosque in lower Manhattan, so let me state it as clearly as possible: The Cordoba Initiative, which is headed by an imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an enemy of al Qaeda, no less than Rudolph Giuliani and the Anti-Defamation League are enemies of al Qaeda. Bin Laden would sooner dispatch a truck bomb to destroy the Cordoba Initiative’s proposed community center than he would attack the ADL, for the simple reason that Osama’s most dire enemies are Muslims. This is quantitatively true, of course — al Qaeda and its ideological affiliates have murdered thousands of Muslims — but it is ideologically true as well: al Qaeda’s goal is the purification of Islam (that is to say, its extreme understanding of Islam) and apostates pose more of a threat to Bin Laden’s understanding of Islam than do infidels.

Treason! Traitor! Giving aid and comfort to the enemy! Socialist! Ack!

Yes, Jeffrey, it is an obvious point… to one who, you know, pays attention to facts and stuff, not someone who takes his marching orders from some Michelle Malkin or some similar waste of oxygen. Fischer closes his rant with this gem… who’s to say he’s not open-minded?

American Muslims are being radicalized every single day in American mosques. We are sowing the seeds of our own destruction by allowing these improvised explosive devices to be established in community after community.

If a mosque was willing to publicly renounce the Koran and its 109 verses that call for the death of infidels, renounce Allah and his messenger Mohammed, publicly condemn Osama bin Laden, Hamas, and Abdelbaset al Megrahi (the Lockerbie bomber), maybe then they could be allowed to build their buildings. But then they wouldn’t be Muslims at that point, now would they?

Fair enough. Now, let’s just say that there was a big uproar about a megachurch going up somewhere next to the Smithsonian or some other place that celebrates knowledge, and there was a big stink about it. I’d say to Fischer…

“American Christians are being radicalized every single day in American megachurches. We are sowing the seeds of our own destruction by allowing these improvised explosive devices to be established in community after community.

If a megachurch was willing to publicly renounce the Bible and its endless verses that call for the death of non-believers and those who enjoy shrimp or touching menstruating women, renounce Jesus and his messenger Paul, publicly condemn Tony Perkins, The American Family Association, Focus on the Family, creationism, homophobia and Phyllis Schafly, maybe then they could be allowed to build their buildings. But then they wouldn’t be Christians at that point, would they?”

… at least if you’re conservative, that is.

I’ve said numerous times that one of the enduring characteristics of modern-day conservatives is the ability to construct their own reality/history/science when the conventionally accepted ones don’t fit their worldview. Hence, we have Conservapedia, creationist museums, intelligent design, climate change denial,  “The Founding Fathers wanted this to be a Christian Nation” and proud homophobia of numerous permutations. What made Judge Walker’s smackdown of Prop 8 so important was the fact that it illustrated how, when not on talk radio, pulpits or right-wing blogs, these idiots’ “evidence” crumbles when it has to do crazy things such as, you know, prove itself. Jason Rosenhouse has a good bit on it:

Hard-core right-wingers live in a fantasy world of their own creation. It is a world in which creationism and ID are legitimate science and evolution is not. It is also a world in which gay couples pose some sort of threat to heterosexual marriage, or are too morally suspect to raise children. When thundered from a stage or a pulpit to a generally supportive audience, such notions play very well. But put them in a forum with rules of evidence and a sober, nonemotional tone, and they crumble. Judge Walker in this case was absolutely scathing towards the defense, just as Judge Jones was in the Dover case. When forced to defend their ideas rationally, the right-wingers always come off looking like fools.

It’s just a pity they aren’t forced to do it more often.

Yes, a pity that those people whose patron St. Reagan once said “Facts are stupid things,” aren’t forced to confront their ignorance more often. So instead, we have people taking Teabaggers seriously, where “I heard it on Glenn Beck” carries more weight than the empirical evidence of a thousand researchers.

We are a stupid, stupid country.

When these “news” stories pop up, as they occasionally do, I’m not sure what angers me more… the stupidity of the people they talk about, or the fact that some douche actually found this newsworthy:

A Bakersfield woman is claiming divine intervention after she said she found a cross seared into a potato chip, Bakersfield TV station KERO reported.

Amanda Biezad was about to eat the Lay’s potato chip when she discovered the cross.

She said she’s never seen anything quite like it, but isn’t ready to call it a miracle just yet.

“I don’t know, it’s either divine inspiration or some random rogue person that decided to stick it into the bag of chips. I don’t know, but I think it’s cool,” Biezad said.

When is the Rapture coming and taking these people? I want to go through their things that they leave behind. Seriously.

Here’s a groovy article about my ongoing obsession – abandoned hospitals (documented here). The ones worth exploring seem to be concentrated east of the Mississippi. I haven’t been to any on this list, but certainly plan on it in the near future, probably after I get back from that Colorado trip I haven’t told you about yet.

It’d be funny, I guess, if they weren’t serious. But, of course, they are. The Republican solution for fixing the ailing economy?

The Economic Freedom Act of 2010 — introduced by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) — proposes deep tax cuts favoring the wealthiest in America, a reduction in regulatory oversight and the elimination of a federal tax on the estates of millionaires, which will allow wealthy investors to escape taxes entirely on a significant portion of their income.

Republicans say the bill will create jobs where President Obama’s policies have failed to do so.

Because, of course, Bush’s tax cuts for the rich created a bajillion jobs, right? And the rich are just suffering so much, right now. Sniffle. Jordan and Chaffetz also stated that the tax cuts would prevent any future oil spills, reverse the global warming they don’t believe in, divert any asteroids that may head toward earth some day, cure all kinds of cancer, male pattern baldness,  and make Lady Gaga go away.

Now, to understand the theoretical underpinnings of this, I’d suggest one from a typical shill-for-the-rich over at The Cato (“Promoting Social Darwinism under the guise of liberty”) Institute. Mitchell states:

The White House may be playing smart politics by engaging in class warfare, especially if President Obama succeeds in blaming the recession on tax cuts that took place five years before the downturn began. But for those who care about prosperity more than politics, what really matters is that the economy is soon going to be hit with higher tax rates on productive behavior.

Well, putting aside the fact that the economy was more or less anemic, with very little growth throughout the Bush administration, that the said tax cuts did nothing to kick the economy into overdrive, that the upper classes that Mitchell defends have been waging “class warfare” for decades and that when Mitchell talks about “productive behavior” and competitiveness, he’s really talking about a race to the bottom, several questions remain. I linked to him moreso to show it’s the same-ol’ same-ol’ that’s floating around out there, with none of the “maybe we just might be wrong about this” that’s needed when one keeps pushing failed ideas ad nauseum. They’re simply not adding anything new to the discussion at this point.

Maybe I’ll even ask or try to answer a few shortly, but let’s look at the way Republicans really push this – like most things in fundamental libertarianism (just like fundamental Marxism), it looks good on paper, but then that pesky thing known as human nature kicks in. The Repubs and Cato folks seem to push this notion that if you give more and more tax cuts to the rich, they’ll automatically invest it and create more jobs, not just, you know, spend it on stuff to already enrich their privileged lives. It doesn’t seem to work out that way. If it did, the economy would be booming with all that freed-up-death-tax billions, wouldn’t it? Trickle-down is really pissing on the rest of us, as the last thirty years have shown us (more on that below the jump).

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One of my regrets about the upcoming election is that more Teabagger candidates didn’t get nominations, as they provide endless hours of entertainment as I try so hard to grasp the depths of their intellectual dishonesty and vacuousness. If you follow the nutters like I do, you know all about Harry Reid’s opponent, the more-crazy-than-Sarah-Palin Sharron Angle, she who believes that the government has no role in job creation and we just may need a 2nd Amendment-based revolution nonsense.  She never seems to stop making an ass out of herself, and more importantly, doesn’t have that filter that a lot of Retardicans have that somehow hides from the MSM h0w insane they actually are.

She let slip on FOX Propaganda Channel a few days ago a candid insight into  the right-wing media strategy, which even the FOX lackey had a hard time swallowing, that the media should “ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported.” This would explain why she won’t appear on anything but right-wing news outlets and literally runs from the rest of the press.

Her latest doozy should lay to rest, however, any notion that Angle knows anything about, well, anything. Apparently, the poster idiot for the Teabaggers believes that Harry Reid’s policies are not just unconstitutional, they violate the First Commandment. You know, those rules handed down from the Sky Fairy to the mythical Moses:

“And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.”

A look back at the Old Testament: “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Now, I’m no fan of Reid, but when his opponent doesn’t apparently realize that the Ten Commandments have no legal standing whatsoever in our country, and is quoting Scripture in typical nutter fashion, his job is lookin’ pretty secure for the next six years, at least.

Not surprisingly, I had several people send me a link to the “Godblock” site, a site that offers software similar to the NetNanny/porn blocker software for people with kids, with one big difference:

GodBlock is a web filter that blocks religious content. It is targeted at parents and schools who wish to protect their kids from the often violent, sexual, and psychologically harmful material in many holy texts, and from being indoctrinated into any religion before they are of the age to make such decisions.

I snickered when I saw this, and I certainly don’t disagree with the premise that religion is bad for young minds. But truth be told, if, in that other life I’ll never have, if I had a kid, I wouldn’t block any religious stuff. I’d use it as a teaching moment, as it’s really the best way to show them how ridiculous it really is. Plus, as we all know, kids tend to do things we forbid them too. The last thing I’d want is my theoretical kid to turn out to be a religious nutter because I didn’t let him look at tripe such as Rapture Ready and the like.

Blogger General JC Christian at Jesus’ General has an excellent idea:

A pseudonymous liberal blogger in Washington state hopes that progressives across the country will show up to tea party rallies on September 12 and — if it’s legal — light up a confederate flag so tea partiers can watch it burn…

General JC Christian says he hopes Burn The Confederate Flag Day will expose what he says are the racial motivations of the tea party movement. The logistics are simple: protesters are urged to show up to the rallies and, if local laws allow a fire to be set, light a Confederate flag (or whatever approximation of one they can get their hands on — the blogger told me he’s not picky.) If laws don’t allow the flag to be burned in a public place, the protesters are urged to show up with a singed flag they burned at home and display it prominently.

I would love to see the reactions of certain people when this happens, especially at Teabagger rallies north of the Mason-Dixon line. Are those people going to decry an “attack on southern heritage”? Shockingly as it may seem, when driving on the many fine backroads of Vermont, occasionally I’ll see a house with a Confederate flag.

Unshockingly, the house usually looks like this:

JC’s BaCFD page can be seen here.

One of the things I would’ve loved to have posted about in my down time was this news about one of the people running in the Washington County Senate Democratic Primary, a woman named Laura Moore. As Jack at GMD recently pointed out, Laura Moore donated $450 to Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie. Dubie’s a man with the intellectual temerity of Sarah Palin, and views only slightly less draconian. When asked about it, Moore gave a pathetic excuse about how she was “helping out her Republican husband,”  who’s already maxed out his contribution or some other bullshit.

Get a load of this shit from Moore:

Not only have a number of friends and supporters inquired about my donation to the Lt. Governor but also a few have said that they question their support for me because of it. I find this hyper-partisan attitude harmful to the political process and deserving of further comment.

Got that? Criticizing a candidate who’s insisting she’s a “loyal Democrat” who gave a nice chunk of change to a candidate who stands against just about everything she allegedly believes in is “hyper-partisan”. Funny, I’d call it “calling bullshit on Laura Moore”. Her husband chimes in later on the post, with more of this “post-partisan” horseshit, as though her giving money to Dubie somehow shows her “willingness to work across the aisle” or whatever.  That’s like saying that if a nation at war is supplying weapons directly to its enemy, it’s no different than negotiating a treaty with the enemy. Laura Moore thinks you’re stupid. Really stupid.