"I'm Carlos Danger, Private Sextitextigator."
"You look like Anthony Weiner, disgraced ex-congressman."
"No, really, I'm Carlos Danger. Says so right there on my card."
"That's a bizarre photo to put on a business card, isn't it Mr. Danger?"

 "Do I have a pistol in my pocket or am I just happy to see you?"
 "What kind of question is that, Carlos Danger, or whoever you are?"
 "Ask me if I have a license to carry a concealed weapon."
"I'm not the police, Mr. Danger."
 "Please, ask me."
 "Alright, Mr. Danger. Do you have a license to carry concealed?"
 "No. Now you have to stop & frisk me."
"I'm not going to frisk you, Mr. Danger."
 "What if I gave you fifty bucks?"

The Carlos Danger Theme

 

Labels: America Gone Mad, Anthony Weiner, sex, Sexual Harassment, shamelessness

Christina Green, age 9, Granddaughter of former baseball player and manager Dallas Green. Shot dead by Jared Lee Loughner on January 8, 2011.

Gabriel Zimmerman, age 30. Community outreach director for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, shot dead by Jared Lee Loughner on January 8, 2011.

Jonathan Blunk, age 24; Alexander J. Boik, 18; Jesse Childress, 29; Gordon Cowden, 51; Jessica Ghawi, 24; John Larimer, 27; Matt McQuinn, 27; Micayla Medek, 23; Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6; Alex Sullivan, 27; Alexander C. Teves, 24; and Rebecca Wingo, 32. All shot dead by James Holmes in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012.

Andres Ordonez, 25. Shot dead in a Los Angeles church after a dispute over graffiti, November 5, 2012.

Eighteen as-yet-unidentified kindergartners, shot dead today by Ryan Adam Lanza in Newtown, Connecticut.

Kasandra Perkins, 22. Shot dead by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, 25, who later shot himself to death.

White House Spokesman Jay Carney:

"I think it's important, on a day like today, to view this -- as I know the president, as a father, does, and I as a father and others who are parents certainly do, which is to feel enormous sympathy for families that are affected and to do everything we can to support state and local law enforcement and support those who are enduring what appears to be a very tragic event. There is, I am sure -- will be, rather -- a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I do not think today is that day."

When IS the day, Jay? Tomorrow? A week from Tuesday? After the first of the year? When Jesus comes back? Mitvoch and donnershtick? When? Can we set a date? Can we make an appointment? Maybe do lunch? If you can't talk about gun violence when eighteen kindergartners have lost their lives ten fucking days before Christmas, when can you?

A few weeks ago, Ross Douchebag in the New York Times wrote about how American women need to have more babies. And yet nobody is writing about how guns are stealing the future of America. Yes, there are older people who are shot dead in mass shootings, and they are no less of a loss to their loved ones. But here we are, awash in guns, and every young person who is caught up in a mass shooting because s/he went to the movies or went to school or did any of the perfectly ordinary things that people do, is a young person who will never get her Ph.D. or find a new treatment for melanoma or discover a new clean source of energy or develop a car that runs on common household trash. Every young person who is killed in these shootings will never grow up and marry and have Babies For Ross Douchebag. Every young person who is killed in these shootings is an empty bed, an empty childhood room, an empty place at the dinner table, in the classroom, in the chemistry lab, at cheer practice, at the local Habitat for Humanity build.

Where is our outrage at this? Right-wing politicians scream at women to have more babies for America's future. They want to cut government spending to the bone in the name of America's future. They give lip service to America's future and then they shrug their shoulders when a sick person with easy access to guns goes nuts and decides to kill everyone he sees just because they were there.

Guns are destroying our future. Democrats, there's your framing. Now let's get out there and fucking use it.

Labels: America Gone Mad, guns, massacre

After the Aurora movie theatre massacre this summer, we heard a lot of tough talk from people like Michelle Malkin, insisting that more people packing heat could have prevented the carnage. This kind of talk pops up every time some nut gets hold of a gun and blows a bunch of people away. Every yahoo in America seems to think that HE would be just like James Bond or whatever movie hero lives in his delusional mind, who would have the presence of mind to aim and fire.

The same thing happened after the shooting in Tucson Arizona that nearly killed now-former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords -- there was much talk about how more people waving guns around would have saved lives. There's just one problem with that theory, and his name is Joe Zamudio. Zamudio was trained as a police officer, and even HE almost shot the wrong man:

"I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready," he explained on Fox and Friends. "I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this." Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. "And that's who I at first thought was the shooter," Zamudio recalled. "I told him to 'Drop it, drop it!'"

But the man with the gun wasn't the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. "Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess," the interviewer pointed out.

Zamudio agreed:

"I was very lucky. Honestly, it was a matter of seconds. Two, maybe three seconds between when I came through the doorway and when I was laying on top of [the real shooter], holding him down. So, I mean, in that short amount of time I made a lot of really big decisions really fast. … I was really lucky."

When Zamudio was asked what kind of weapons training he'd had, he answered: "My father raised me around guns … so I'm really comfortable with them. But I've never been in the military or had any professional training. I just reacted."
The Arizona Daily Star, based on its interview with Zamudio, adds two details to the story. First, upon seeing the man with the gun, Zamudio "grabbed his arm and shoved him into a wall" before realizing he wasn't the shooter. And second, one reason why Zamudio didn't pull out his own weapon was that "he didn't want to be confused as a second gunman."

This is a much more dangerous picture than has generally been reported. Zamudio had released his safety and was poised to fire when he saw what he thought was the killer still holding his weapon. Zamudio had a split second to decide whether to shoot. He was sufficiently convinced of the killer's identity to shove the man into a wall. But Zamudio didn't use his gun. That's how close he came to killing an innocent man. He was, as he acknowledges, "very lucky."

That's what happens when you run with a firearm to a scene of bloody havoc. In the chaos and pressure of the moment, you can shoot the wrong person. Or, by drawing your weapon, you can become the wrong person—a hero mistaken for a second gunman by another would-be hero with a gun. Bang, you're dead. Or worse, bang bang bang bang bang: a firefight among several armed, confused, and innocent people in a crowd. It happens even among trained soldiers. Among civilians, the risk is that much greater.

And even among trained police officers, as we now know, in the aftermath of a targeted shooting in New York City yesterday. A laid-off worker went after the man he believed responsible for him losing his job, and in the end, the shooter and his intended victim were dead, and nine other people were injured. It has now been confirmed that ALL of those injured were shot by police bullets:

The veteran patrolmen who opened fire on the suit-wearing gunman, Jeffrey Johnson, had only an instant to react when he whirled and pointed a .45-caliber pistol as they approached him from behind on a busy sidewalk.

Officer Craig Matthews shot seven times. Officer Robert Sinishtaj fired nine times, police said. Neither had ever fired their weapons before on a patrol.

The volley of gunfire felled Johnson in just a few seconds and left nine other people bleeding on the sidewalk.

In the initial chaos Friday, it wasn't clear whether Johnson or the officers were responsible for the trail of wounded, but based on ballistic and other evidence, "it appears that all nine of the victims were struck either by fragments or by bullets fired by police," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters on Saturday at a community event in Harlem.

And these were trained police officers. The may have never fired their weapons before on patrol, but they were presumably trained in just this sort of emergency. And in the chaos, they accidentally shot nine people.

I'm not faulting these officers. The NYPD has rightfully taken a lot of crap about being trigger happy, but this was no Amadou Diallo situation. This was a clear-cut case of an actual shooting taking place. And even these trained officers could neither stop the gunman nor prevent their own weapons from injuring more people.

So why should we believe that some phony tough guy with barely an eighth grade education and who can't tell the difference between real life and the movies would do better?

Labels: America Gone Mad, gun control, gun nuts

America: Looking forward into the 13th century:

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) announced yesterday that he will “probably” sign a bill that attacks the teaching of “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning” by giving broad new legal immunities to teachers who question evolution and other widely accepted scientific theories. Under the bill, which passed the state legislature last month:

Neither the state board of education, nor any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or any public elementary or secondary school principal or administrator shall prohibit any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.

Although the bill is written to seem benign, as it neither specifically authorizes the teaching of creationism nor permits teachers to do more than criticize scientific theories “in an objective matter,” the practical impact of this bill will be to intimidate all but the heartiest of school administrators against disciplining teachers who preach the most outlandish junk science in their classrooms. Because the bill provides little guidance as to what constitutes an “objective” criticism of a scientific theory, any principal who reigns in teachers who force creationism or Pastafarianism upon their students risks finding themselves on the wrong side of the law.

I grew up in a country that envisioned space travel and technology and science and discovery as good things. Today I live in a country that is one step away from burning witches.

Labels: America Gone Mad, dangerous religious freaks

Despite the hue and cry over "liberal hate" about the death of right-wing hatemonger, provocateur, and financier of a certain sniveling little rat-faced git currently living with his Mommy and Daddy in Westwood, New Jersey, the response among my bloggy compatriots (our own jurassicpork notwithstanding) has been relatively subdued. I've been sort of picking through this one like dried beans, trying to separate out the increasingly unhinged hatemonger we've seen over the last few years from the husband and father whose family has lost him far too soon. I can't be happy about someone dropping dead at 43 and leaving four young children behind, but I can be glad that he can't do any more damage to our national discourse and can no longer destroy people for fun.

But there ARE other things going on in this lunatic asylum of a country of ours.

Ted Frier turns Allan Bloom on his head with The Closing of the Conservative Mind.

Charlie Pierce on Obama getting his Candidate on in New Hampshire.

Korie Beth Brown at Addicting Info: ‘Godless’Liberals Speak Out.

Oh. That's why.

Doghouse Riley wonders why Olympia Snowe has just woken up NOW to what her party has become.

Will IOKIYAR apply to this too?

It isn't just me. I may be wearing o'the tinfoil that all this GOP primary crap is kabuki theatre designed to make independents embrace the idea of another Scion of the House of Bush, but I'm not the only one convinced of who the actual GOP nominee will be.

Oh, OK. If you insist. Michael Stickings gets it about right. So does Dennis G. Of course, then there's the inevitable.

Labels: America Gone Mad, bloggers, Blogroll Amnesty Day

It's a dream shared by conservative politicians and Vatican bishops, as well as so-called "sane" people like E.J. Dionne, Joe Biden, and Chris Matthews. It's a dream America in which abortions are illegal and birth control impossible to get. This is one doctor's experience. It could become commonplace in the Romney/Santorum America:

I was in clinic when I heard the overhead STAT page to the emergency room.

As I sprinted down the stairs, I ran through the possible scenarios. I wasn’t on call, so the day to day gynecologic emergencies weren’t my purview. I hadn’t operated on anyone in the past few weeks, so unlikely to be one of my own patients with a complication.

Logically there was only one conclusion.

A nurse was holding the staff entrance to the ER open. From the look on her face I surmised this was to save the minute or two it would take to punch in the numbers on the lock and inquire at the desk for patient’s whereabouts.

“Down there,” she pointed.

On the gurney lay a young woman the color of white marble. The red pool between her legs, ominously free of clots, offered a silent explanation.

“She arrived a few minutes ago. Not even a note.” My resident was breathless with anger, adrenaline, and panic.

I had an idea who she went to. The same one the others did. The same one many more would visit. A doctor, but considering what I had seen he could’t have any formal gynecology training. The only thing he offered that the well-trained provers didn’t was a cut-rate price. If you don’t know to ask, well, a doctor is a doctor. That’s assuming you are empowered enough to have such a discussion. I was also pretty sure his office didn’t offer interpreters.

Read the whole thing.

There have always been abortions. For a relatively brief time in our history, desperate women who at one time would have gone to butchers like the one whose butchery brought the that nameless woman to the hospital had access to clean facilities run by caring physicians. All that is different now. There are states in this country where there are no abortion providers. There are other states where one doctor risks his/her life to fly in once a month. There are still others where doctors who used to perform abortions won't do it anymore because they are afraid for their lives. And the butchers have come back in those states to fill the void.

The organizations that view women as people and not just incubators have been so focused on making sure that a challenge to Roe v. Wade doesn't get to the Supreme Court that they have allowed incremental challenges to a woman's right to control her own body to pass unchallenged, to the point that now there are states seriously talking about declaring fertilized eggs, up to 50% of which may pass in a normal menstrual period, as being the same as actual people. That such a law failed to pass in Mississippi last year is immaterial. Discussions of egg personhood have given rise to the current foofarah about contraception.

Birth control prevents unwanted pregnancy. Unwanted pregnancies that are prevented are not aborted. Birth control is far more "pro-life" than the fetophiles who are perfectly happy to see the life-blood of women such as the one described in Dr. Gunter's account above drain into America's sewers. It's just punishment for their lack of chastity, in the view of sick, twisted people like Dierdre McQuade of the Conference of Catholic Bishops. How else can you explain a worldview that would rather see women hemorrhaging in hospital emergency rooms than let them control their own bodies?

I remember a few years ago reading an article about how young women were unconcerned about the anti-abortion rhetoric of the right and how frustrated at their lack of concern older women were who remember the fight for abortion rights, and even some who remember the world before Griswold v. Connecticut. "Oh, they'll never make abortion illegal again," one young woman was quoted as saying. Well, yes they will, as we are now seeing in states where abortion may still be legal, but is impossible to obtain. Now they're coming for your contraception. And they'll get it too, if we let them.

Labels: America Gone Mad, contraception, The Republican War on Women

January 20, 2013
WASHINGTON, DC - President-elect Willard "Mitt" Romney took the oath of office of the Presidency of the United States today under a steel-gray sky. He was sworn in, seemingly heedless of the icy sleet falling around him by Chief Justice John Roberts, who, unlike four years ago, delivered his lines perfectly. Following an abbreviated inauguration ceremony, the Romney family, along with the family of Vice-President Rick Santorum, walked down Pennsylvania Avenue without umbrellas, waving at the sparse crowd that had gathered despite the freezing precipitation to wish the new President well. Like the inauguration of the last Republican President, George W. Bush, twelve years ago, the festivities were clouded by controversy over the new President's whisker-thin 47%-46%-7% victory over former President Barack Obama and Libertarian candidate Ron Paul, with many elderly and minority voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Florida claiming that they were thwarted from voting due to lack of clarity over voter ID laws, lack of working voting machines in their precincts, and machines that they say did not record their votes accurately.



January 21, 2013
WASHINGTON, DC = President Romney lived up to a campaign promise today when he signed five Executive Orders that had been at the forefront of his Presidential campaign.

The first was a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, former President Obama's signature achievement. "I promised to end Obamacare, and now I have," the President said. "Now the magic of the free market is unfettered to provide the best possible care to the best -- er, the most Americans."

Next, the President signed an order directing all Federal agencies to immediately suspend any regulations passed during the Obama Administration and ordered that future budgets contain zero increase in regulatory costs. "The American people are tired of their tax dollars being used to impose burdensome regulation on the businesses that employ them," he said.

The president's next order of business was to order the Department of the Interior to step up the pace of domestic energy drilling, even as Gulf Shore Boulevard residents in Naples, Florida demonstrated at the Naples Pier against drilling off the shores of their beachfront high-rises. "This is NOT what we voted for," one resident said.

The SEIU and AFL-CIO wasted no time in expressing outrage at the President's signing of his order to that reverses orders issued by his predecessor that he claimed tilted the balance of power in labor negotiations to unions. Upon signing the order, President Romney said "Every American should have a right to work in this country and not be fettered by union demands that they join, and the unreasonable demands that large unions have placed on businesses. From now on, individual initiative and merit will be the only thing that matters in American workplaces, not membership in a union." SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said, "Now Americans can see for themselves how this president is committed to nothing but the gutting of the middle class and of the great tradition of organized labor that created that middle class."

Mr. Romney then ordered the new Republican-led House and Senate to fast-track the rest of his economic plan, following which he said, "I made these promises to the American people, and now I have kept them." But absent from his signings today was a pledge to sanction China for practices he had called unfair during the campaign. When asked about this omission, the President said, "We will be looking carefully at China's practices, and if there are holes in our policy, we'll fix them."




February 24, 2013
WASHINGTON, DC - President Romney today signed into law five bills from his "Believe in America" plan, unveiled during his campaign. The legislation was fast-tracked through the House and Senate by newly-appointed Speaker of the House Eric Cantor and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Collectively, the legislation, effective immediately, cuts the corporate income tax to 25%, implements free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, orders an immediate survey of untapped U.S. energy reserves, eliminates federal job retraining programs and creates block grants for states to use as they wish, and perhaps most importantly, orders an immediate 5% reduction in non-security Federal spending. Following the signing, legislators returned to Capitol Hill, where they scrambled into the wee hours to protect their favorite programs.




April 23, 2013
TALLAHASSEE, FL - Governor Rick Scott today announced today a sweeping plan to retrain unemployed workers to work in the state's important agriculture industry, using the state's federal block grant for worker retraining to create an internship program that would put unemployed collee graduates to work picking tomatoes. "The Immokalee tomato workers work hard, and now those who have relied too much on government largesse will learn a new skill and provide much-needed labor to the farmers of the state of Florida, who have suffered too long from a lack of workers to pick their crops." Under the plan, the unemployed would earn the same wages as other workers, which are set by each farm owner following the dissolution last month of the Coalition of Immokalee workers.




May 14, 2013
GRUMBLE, IN - Jeremy Benjamin Walter, Jr., 5, died today at home. A crowd had kept a vigil outside the Walter home ever since the boy, whose family is uninsured, was turned away from Corporate Hospital after suffering a brain hemorrhage. "It's just not right," a weeping neighbor said. "It wasn't his fault his family couldn't pay." The boy's parents, Heather and Jeremy Walker, are both unemployed and are unable to obtain health insurance. Their son was covered under the CHIP program until Governor Mitch Daniels, emboldened by the new Republican rule in Washington, ended the program in February, stating at the time that the state could no longer afford to be in the health insurance business.




September 20, 2013
WASHINGTON, DC - Edith Hollan Jones was confirmed today to fill the vacant seat left on the Supreme Court when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg retired earlier this year for health reasons. Jones is one of the most conservative judges in the country, and her name has been raised by presidents as a potential Justice since the administration of George W. Bush. Justice Jones, who was Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, has high regard in conservative circles as one of the most conservative judges in the country. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had attempted to block the nomination, but with Republicans as the majority in the Senate, were unable to do so.




November 30, 2014
Krystee Lynn Smith, 28, of Beulah, Mississippi today became the first woman put to death under a new Federal law making abortion a capital crime. Smith was pronounced dead from the lethal injection at 12:46 AM.

Smith had claimed that the five-month fetus she was convicted of murdering was miscarried, but a neighbor, seeing beer bottles outside the Smith home one evening, convinced a jury that Ms. Smith's alcohol consumption contributed to the loss of her baby. Vice-President Rick Santorum spoke out after the execution, saying "Let this unfortunate incident show that we are serious about the sanctity of the unborn. There is no gift greater than that of new life, and we will do whatever is necessary to ensure that every unborn American is treated with the honor and sanctity he or she deserves."

******************
It might not make much difference who's in power, but it does make some.

Labels: America Gone Mad, nightmare scenarios

I know I should give someone else a turn, but Charles Pierce has been on such a roll lately that he's our first two-successive-time honoree for The State of the Union is Angry.

Money quote, and it's a long one:

We are not a great people. Not in the way we treat ourselves in our politics, anyway. We are frightened. We lash out. We kick the country as though it were a lawnmower that won't start. In 2010, just as the president and his administration managed to lift their heads above the brim of the ditch in which their predeceesors had dumped the country, We, The People elected the most retrograde, brick-stupid, poo-flinging monkeyhouse of a House of Representatives in the history of the Republic.

That anger could have been channelled better. It could have been channelled in the direction of the right targets. (That will remain my ultimate verdict on the Occupy movement: at least they yell at the correct buildings.) Obama could have trusted the greatness of the American people to accept a program to seek justice for the nation for the crimes perpetrated against the political commonwealth by a corporate class that would sell the United States for parts as long as it could overbill the people who were buying it. (It was a thoroughgoing masterpiece of political ineptitude that his administration handed the volatile issue of corporate greed over to Dick Fking Armey, and the lunatics in the three-cornered hats.) He could have trusted the greatness of the American people far enough to expose the constitutional heresies of the previous administration, not perpetuate them in law. (That's the one thing on which he will never get a pass from me. His Department of Justice has gone to court on the wrong side of too damn many of his predecessor's constitutional atrocities. Well, that and hiring Geithner.) And, at the very least, he could have trusted the greatness of the American people to understand why he could only do so much because of the rules of the United States Senate, the petulant treachery of some of the cowards in his own party, the complete barking madness of so much of the other one, and, frankly, the ongoing suckerhood of the American people to act and vote against their own interests as long as somebody flashes something sparkly in front of them. Obama did none of this. The greatness of the American people is little more than a rhetorical trope, and not something of value that can be drawn upon — or relied upon — at times of crisis.

Labels: America Gone Mad, Barack Obama, bloggers, damn fine rantin'

E.J. Dionne is getting in touch with his inner Krugman today:

Imagine a Republican saying this: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

These heretical thoughts would inspire horror among our friends at Fox News or in the Tea Party. They’d likely label them as Marxist, socialist or Big Labor propaganda. Too bad for Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president, who offered those words in his annual message to Congress in 1861. Will President Obama dare say anything like this in his jobs speech this week?

As for the unions, they are often treated in the media as advocates of arcane work rules, protectors of inefficient public employees and obstacles to the economic growth our bold entrepreneurs would let loose if only they were free from labor regulations.

So it would take a brave man to point out that unions “grew up from the struggle of the workers — workers in general but especially the industrial workers — to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production,” or to insist that “the experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life.”

These heretical thoughts would inspire horror among our friends at Fox News or in the Tea Party. They’d likely label them as Marxist, socialist or Big Labor propaganda. Too bad for Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president, who offered those words in his annual message to Congress in 1861. Will President Obama dare say anything like this in his jobs speech this week?

As for the unions, they are often treated in the media as advocates of arcane work rules, protectors of inefficient public employees and obstacles to the economic growth our bold entrepreneurs would let loose if only they were free from labor regulations.

So it would take a brave man to point out that unions “grew up from the struggle of the workers — workers in general but especially the industrial workers — to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production,” or to insist that “the experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life.”

That’s what Pope John Paul II said (the italics are his) in the 1981 encyclical “Laborem Exercens.” Like Lincoln, John Paul repeatedly asserted “the priority of labor over capital.”

That the language of Lincoln and John Paul is so distant from our experience today is a sign of an enormous cultural shift. In scores of different ways, we paint investors as the heroes and workers as the sideshow. We tax the fruits of labor more vigorously than we tax the gains from capital — resistance to continuing the payroll tax cut is a case in point — and we hide workers away while lavishing attention on those who make their livings by moving money around.

More more more more more....

Labels: America Gone Mad, capitalism, greed, organized labor

Nice to know the D.C. park police are protecting us from Dancers of Mass Destruction:

The guy on the ground is lucky these cops let him live.

Just in case you thought anything would be different just because the president has a "D" after his name.

All this in the shadow of a statue of a man who said this:

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. "

More here.

Labels: America Gone Mad, fascism

If there is one good thing that can be said about today, it's that thanks to Donald Trump, we're one step closer to what the REAL teabagger objection is to Barack Obama, and it has nothing to do with birth certificates or college transcripts or, as Orly Taitz tried to present tonight before Lawrence O'Donnell went all Howard Beale on her, Social Security numbers:

(You SURE it was such a great idea to shitcan Olbermann, guys?)

Either Trump is the most loathsome kind of narcissistic self-promoter on the planet (worse than we already know), or he's a mad genius. Because once you stop talking about legal birth certificates and open the door that allows known racist Pat Buchanan to start frothing at the mouth again about affirmative action, you're one step closer to talking about what the REAL problem is that the Tea Party has with Barack Obama, and it has nothing to do with policy or ideology.

Someone is setting a trap for Republicans and for the Tea Party. The question is whether Barack Obama is actually playing eleven-dimensional chess for real this time, waiting until the birth certificate nonsense reached Peak Wingnut (® John Cole and became part of accepted Republican doctrine to bring out the long-form certificate; or if Donald Trump is doing the kind of street theatre worthy of the late Andy Kaufman, getting Obama to release the birth certificate, moving on to affirmative action, and getting the racist Teabaggers to shout "Fuck Yeah!"

And I have absolutely no idea what it is. Occam's razor indicates that this was Obama simply once again trying to be the only adult in the room and Donald Trump is the same kind of famewhore that he's always been. But do we know for sure?

Of greater interest to me is what I heard on Randi Rhodes' show today about what happened to Nicole Sandler yesterday when she attempted to ask a question of her Congressman, Allen West, the psychopath that Teabaggers in Fort Lauderdale elected to Congress last November:

Got that? For the "crime" of daring to question the lies spewing from the mouth of a sadistic war criminal who claims that liberal women are neutering men and who IS SUPPOSED TO BE A PUBLIC SERVANT, an American citizen, Nicole Sandler, was jailed for 17 hours, held in solitary for three, and maced.

From the above link, Sandler spoke with Brad Friedman about what happened:

I just got out of jail. Just had a Five Guys burger and fries, my first meal in the last 24 hours or so. First thing I did, I had CBS meet me as I was leaving. They'll be running a story later today. We're heading home now.

You'll love this. You know that old 'presumed innocent until proven guilty' thing? They don't do that down here in Broward County.

Now I understand what Bradley Manning was going through because I was put in solitary confinement. After bitching about it, I was maced. After being stuck in jail after about 3 hours, it was lunchtime. I said "can I please come out now, I'm really really sorry".

I had been in the women's area, there must have been 25 or 30 women in there. All but 4 of us were eventually called this morning to go before a magistrate.

Even though $25 bond was posted last night at 2am, and it's 8am I'm still not released. They said the bond takes about 6 to 8 hours process.

So then they're coming in to clean the cells. So they stuck all 4 of us in this one cell where they store the mattresses. A 12 by 7 feet. So they put the 4 of us in this cell with the 50 mattresses being stored, no air circulation, for a few minutes while they cleaned. And then they forgot about us.

After a while I see the women sent to the magistrate returned. We're still stuck in there for at least an hour. I said to the guard, "You forgot about us." He said "Oh, well, that happens."

"That happens?!," I said, "I think you owe us an apology. "You want an apology?," he said. "You see that cell up there? #1? You can have all the air you want. There's your apology." And he put me in there for like three hours. Solitary.

After being in there for hours with nothing to do, your mind plays tricks on you. In fact, while in there, they called my name, and I'm screaming "I'm in here! I'm in here!" They didn't let me out. And another hour went by.

Lunch was then served, and I asked "can I come out?" The guard said "NO!" I said, "Well, do I get to eat?" He said yeah, he handed me some food and then the door opened again, and I sat on the top step outside the cell, and he said "GET BACK IN THEL CELL!" ... And before I knew it, they were spraying me with mace. Not just once, but sprayed and sprayed to where I'm like screaming.

I can't believe this happened. I said, "I'm in here because I tried to ask my Congressman a question at a town hall."

Here's the thing, Brad, it wasn't a town hall meeting. He gave a presentation, and then he gave a speech. If I had known that, I wouldn't have gone. But he billed it as a town hall meeting, where there are usually questions back and forth. It's amazing.

And these fuckers DARE to say that it's Barack Obama who's un-American?

Oh, and by the way? While the media were giving Trump more camera time, and O'Donnell made the foolish mistake of thinking a crazy woman was going to admit that she's crazy, the Supreme Court gave corporations another blowjob today.

But on the other hand, there's this.

Thanks to Derek at Cheek and Bluster for the last two links.

Labels: "birthers", America Gone Mad, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, atrocities, batshit crazies

Remember that video I posted the other day, in which one vapid, slack-jawed mouthbreathing teabagger after another said that they liked Trump for president? Here's the business genius they're supporting:

Trump has built an American empire from Las Vegas to New York with towering hotels and sparkling casinos. Forbes estimates he's worth $2.7 billion. But not all of Trump's business ventures have been constant money-makers. In 1991, 1992, 2004, and again in 2009, Trump branded companies or properties have sought Chapter 11 protection.

"I've used the laws of this country to pare debt. ... We'll have the company. We'll throw it into a chapter. We'll negotiate with the banks. We'll make a fantastic deal. You know, it's like on 'The Apprentice.' It's not personal. It's just business," Trump told ABC's George Stephanopoulos last Thursday.

A business declaring bankruptcy is nothing new in corporate America, where bankruptcy is often sugar-coated as "restructuring debt." But it might seem alarming to everyday Americans who can't get a bank to restructure their home loans. If you want to get Donald Trump hot under the collar, accuse him of declaring bankruptcy.

Read the whole sordid story here. It's as much about how the laws are rigged so that people like Donald Trump never have to accept the consequences of their own folly as it is about Trump's own multiple bankruptcies. So here we have a bunch of idiots, many of whom are probably underwater on their own houses if they haven't lost them already, whose own retirement accounts have lost much of their value, supporting a guy who's been able to game the system over and over again for his own advantage.

And they don't even see any irony in this.

Labels: America Gone Mad, American Idiots, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, self-important blowhards, Teabag America

I'm not a J. Crew shopper. Frankly, I don't think much of their stuff, at least not from what I've seen on their web site; I don't care that Laurent Hutton DOES model for them. Usually you'll find me on the sale pages of J. Jill or the 30% off all clearance pages at Coldwater Creek. But tonight, I'm making a statement against idiocy by buying a shirt from J. Crew. In fact, I'm buying two. Want to know why? Here's why:

Use code MUSTHAVE to get 30% off all clearance through tomorrow night.

Labels: America Gone Mad, American Idiots, batshit crazies, homophobia, right-wing hatemongers, wingnuttia

In a country gone completely, utterly, batshit crazy, Arizona is even crazier than the rest of it:

The Arizona Senate formally passed the "Birther Bill" today, but not in its original version.

Apparently, requiring presidential candidates to provide a long-form birth certificate before allowing their names on the ballot in Arizona -- despite it already being a federal requirement to run for president -- was a bit too much for a few GOP lawmakers. So they made some amendments: if you can't find your birth certificate, and you have a penis, a document describing your lack of foreskin will suffice.

A circumcision certificate -- a document given to the parents of a male Jewish child after his foreskin is snipped off during a circumcision ceremony --  is not a legal document (see an example of one here)
but if you have one, under the amended bill, it's apparently enough to prove you're a U.S. citizen and your name can be permitted on the ballot in Arizona.

Pulling out your penis in front of election officials, however, will not prove citizenship -- and, in the worst case scenario, could get you labeled a sex offender.

Some other ways to prove that you're not a Kenyan version of the
Manchurian Candidate, as spelled out in the ridiculous bill, could be to provide a hospital birth record, a postpartum medical record, or an early census record.

The above is NOT from The Onion.

So a state government-issued birth certificate from the state of Hawaii won't suffice, but an easily-forged medical record or certificate from a mohel will? Why don't they don't just come out and pass a bill saying "Black Democrats may not be on the ballot in Arizona"? It would be a lot less complicated and a lot closer to the true spirit of this ridiculous law.

Labels: America Gone Mad, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, batshit crazies, institutionalized racism

In case you haven't had your fill of Republican horseshit today....

At ThinkProgress, read how during the Bush years, the current leaders of the House GOP voted 19 times in favor of increasing the debt limit -- to the tune of $4 trillion. But let a black Democrat be elected, and suddenly it's OK to risk global economic collapse just to score cheap political points with a bunch of uneducated mouth-breathers.

And speaking of uneducated mouth breathers (you know, the guys with emphysema and cirrhosis of the liver whose spouses have cancer from working in toxic factories, who are diabetic and have macular degeneration and need knee replacements), when the Tea Party revolution reaches fruition, they're going to be the first casualties.

Lindsey Graham is playing "Mine's Bigger" with Paul Ryan by demanding that Social Security be cut too!

New Jersey governor, thug, and mainstream media mancrush Chris Christie advocates taking a bat to 76-year-old state Senator Loretta Weinberg.

Alan Simpson is still an asshole, but he smacked around Rick "Man On Dog" Santorum (who thinks he can become president and force women to make lots of babies to pay Social Security taxes) pretty good this week.

And you morons couldn't see this last November? Sheesh.

I think Matt Taibbi has been attending the Driftglass school of Refined Rantin'.

Never believe a guy who promises it'll be different this time, baby.

OK, now my head really exploded.

Enough of that.

Fortunately, it's Thursday night, so I can put my cranium back together with the one thing that always restores my sanity. Bassets.

Labels: America Gone Mad, American Idiots, Greedy Republican Bastards, just another outrage, You can't make this shit up

I can't even begin to tell you how many arguments I've had with people who are my FRIENDS about how they think everyone born during the post-WWII baby boom is responsible for everything that's wrong in the world, and how we're clogging up the workforce and hogging all the good jobs and we didn't have to deal with AIDS and we had it so good and left them nothing and why don't we just die already.

And these are people who are FRIENDS.

I have a boss in her 40's. All of my colleagues in my department at work are significantly younger than I am. The next youngest one is 51.

Imagine what my life at work is going to look like when this becomes reality:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitted Sunday that he didn't expect Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare to be around when he retires.

"What we [House Republicans] have said is this: We'll protect today's seniors and those nearing retirement, but for the rest of us, all of us, who are 54 and younger, I know the programs are not going to be there for me when I retire," Cantor told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

"They can't," he added.

Cantor is 48. No wonder he takes so much money from the securities, real estate, and insurance industries. He's lining his own pockets for when he's successful in dismantling Social Security. Oh, and by the way, HE gets a government pension and taxpayer-funded health insurance FOR THE RESET OF HIS LIFE after he leaves office.

You think everyone hates baby boomers now? Just wait.

This is how Republicans are scapegoating public sector workers now:

Wait till you see what they say about those of us who manage to slip in under the wire. Wait till you see what they DO to those of us who manage to slip in under the wire. Rest assured, if you are in your mid-fifties or early sixties and you think you have nothing to worry about, guess again. The public sector workers who are now being scapegoated for the misdeeds of bad state governments making bad investments of pension fund money with sleazy bankers and hedge fund managers are the canary in the coal mine for tomorrow's Social Security recipients.

If you were making plans for your elderly years that included Social Security, you'd better start making other plans. Because you might get your check for a couple of years, but there are going to be a lot of angry younger people coming after you; some of them your own kids.

And the bankers are going to be grabbing the Orville Redenbacher and laughing as we tear each other apart.

Labels: America Gone Mad, economic death watch, social Darwinism, Social Security, We Are So Screwed

Perhaps while Barack Obama and Harry Reid were congratulating themselves over their achievement of capitulation to Republican insanity striking a budget deal, they forgot that there's another battle coming:

Congressional Republicans are vowing that before they will agree to raise the current $14.25 trillion federal debt ceiling — a step that will become necessary in as little as five weeks — President Obama and Senate Democrats will have to agree to far deeper spending cuts for next year and beyond than those contained in the six-month budget deal agreed to late Friday night that cut $38 billion and averted a government shutdown.

Republicans have also signaled that they will again demand fundamental changes in policy on health care, the environment, abortion rights and more, as the price of their support for raising the debt ceiling.

Because ensuring that the poor and the elderly die off instead of costing billionaires a few more bucks a year in taxes, trying to prevent future generations from having to try to survive in an uninhabitable world, and most importantly of all, bitchslapping the sluts, are the only priorities right now for a Republican party that has turned into a pack of rabid dogs.

Of course Congressional Republicans are still pretending that the years 2001-2008 never existed; you know, those years when George W. Bush cut taxes and started two wars without paying for them. But hey, if you have Democrats who refuse to fight back, you can get away with saying shit like this:

“We want to see real structural, cultural-type changes tied to this debt ceiling. We’re not interested in a one-off kind of savings, or anything small,” said Representative Mick Mulvaney, a first-term Republican from South Carolina. “There has got to be game-changing kinds of changes to get us to vote for it.”

He dismissed warnings about default as “just posturing,” and said Democrats should bear the responsibility for passing any measure to increase the borrowing limit.

“It’s their debt,” he said. “Make them do it. That’s my attitude.”

It's a miracle that the New York Times actually responds to this with actual facts, given that in today's media, provable facts and utter horseshit are given equal credibility:

Of the nearly $14.2 trillion in debt, roughly $5 trillion is money the government has borrowed from other accounts, mostly from Social Security revenues, according to federal figures. Several major policies from the past decade when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress — tax cuts, a Medicare prescription-drug benefit and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — account for more than $3.2 trillion.

The recession cost more than $800 billion in lost revenues from businesses and individuals and in automatic spending for safety-net programs like unemployment compensation. Mr. Obama’s stimulus spending and tax cuts added about $600 billion through the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

Got that?

Bush administration contribution to the debt: $5 trillion.

Obama administration contribution to the debt: $600 billion.

And yet, you know as well as I do that if you ask your wingnut friends, they'll tell you that this is ALL OBAMA'S DEBT, that George Bush balanced the budget. Of course they have to wipe Bill Clinton out of existence in order to compress two decades like that, but then consensus reality never mattered to the right anyway.

So what does all this mean for thee and me?

Once the limit is reached, the Treasury Department would not be able to borrow as it does routinely to finance federal operations and roll over existing debt; ultimately it would be unable to pay off maturing debt, putting the United States government — the global standard-setter for creditworthiness — into default.

The repercussions in that event would be as much economic as political, rippling from the bond market into the lives of ordinary citizens through higher interest rates and financial uncertainty of the sort that the economy is only now overcoming, more than three years after the onset of the last recession.

But that's the whole point, isn't it? Put the economy back into recession, blame Barack Obama, and take over the Senate and the executive branch, so that it can become a Republican dream world of oligarchs living in gated mansions, stuffing themselves silly while the rest of us dumpster-dive?

Here's what the Republicans in Congress don't understand: The oligarchs; the Lloyd Blankfeins and the Jamie Dimons and the Koch brothers and the rest of their ilk don't regard the Republican legislators doing their bidding as their peers in the oligarchy either. Do you believe for one minute that when completely unfettered corporate power is the rule of law in this country, that these Captains of Industry are going to welcome the likes of John Boehner and Scott Walker and Paul Ryan to their groaning table? Hardly. They'll be out there dumpster diving with the rest of us.

Maybe we can turn them into Soylent Green.

Labels: America Gone Mad, america R.I.P., budget, debt, repub

Sometimes reading what's going on in this country makes me want to just crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

From the "I'll find a way to get knocked up for $262,000" file, a teen abstinence advocacy program funded by Candie's shoes paid teen mom Bristol Palin seven times what they devote to, say, actual pregnancy prevention programs.

He's only THREATENING a veto? Obama is only "threatening" to veto an anti-EPA bill. I'll believe it when I see it, after all, if he vetoes it, Republicans will say mean things about him.

Why don'tcha get a REAL job, you lazy-ass slacker? James O'Keefe is begging for money again.

Now they're telling us that estrogen replacement LOWERS cancer risk. I give up.

I won't be satisfied until Driftglass succeeds in driving David Brooks out of the punditry business.

That's it. There's only so much outrage one person can take in a day.

Labels: America Gone Mad

The relentless march of the Christian Taliban continues:

Out in South Dakota, you can't legally kill abortion providers yet, but if you want an abortion, you have to listen to proseletyzing and conversion attempts before you can get one:

In our new era of relentless, abusive laws aimed at curtailing women’s reproductive rights, it takes a lot to stand out from the crowd, but South Dakota managed to do just that on Tuesday, when Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed into law a bill requiring a three-day waiting period -- the longest waiting period in the nation -- for any woman seeking abortion.

But even that is not what makes this law stand out. That honor goes to the requirement that women seeking abortion must go to a crisis pregnancy center, to submit to a lecture on the supposed evils of abortion; a lecture that will almost surely include misinformation on the dangers of abortion. In passing this law, South Dakota hit a triple, attacking reproductive rights, privacy rights and religious freedom with one law aimed at the single abortion clinic left in the entire state of South Dakota.   

That the anti-choice movement is mostly a Christianist movement bent on imposing its religious beliefs on the public at large is one of the most under-discussed aspects of the abortion debate. This law should highlight the theocratic underpinnings of the anti-choice movement. Most and probably all crisis pregnancy centers are religious organizations that object to abortion because it conflicts with their religious dogma about female sexuality, women’s roles, and their belief about when the soul enters the body. Requiring women to sit through a lecture on Christian ethics about sexuality before getting an abortion should be a clear-cut case of a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, even if the crisis pregnancy centers are careful to avoid saying the word “Jesus” too much.

And in Texas, they want to ban discrimination against people who believe that a giant man in the sky created the earth and everything in it in six days and then on the seventh day sat on the couch with the remote getting corn chip crumbs all over the carpet (just kidding about the second part):

Unlike many other states, Texas does not ban workplace discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation, or marital status. But don't be alarmed; the Lone Star State is working on that whole civil liberties thing. Last week, Republican State Rep. Bill Zedler introduced HB 2454, a bill that would establish new workplace protections for proponents of intelligent design. Here's the key part:

An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

America: continuing it's relentless march into the 15th century.

Labels: America Gone Mad, Christofascist Zombie Brigade

Yesterday I heard Admiral Mike Mullen say on Face the Nation that Muammar Gaddafi has stockpiles of mustard gas, and that he WILL use them. For a minute I forgot what decade I was in. I mean, here we are with a new Muslim boogeyman who's sitting on huge oil stocks, we have a name for an ill-defined and open-ended military involvement with a name that sounds like a new Norwegian Cruise Line ship, and we have an administration that's rotten to the core with the very same bankers that drove the economy off a cliff (and have rewritten history to convince the denizens of Glennbeckistan that it was black people wanting to buy houses who did it). The only thing that made me realize that it's a different decade and a different president is the fact that Republicans are baying at the moon calling this one a socialist and a Nazi all at the same time.

So the results of a recent Newsweek survey are hardly surprising:

They’re the sort of scores that drive high-school history teachers to drink. When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.

[snip]

To appreciate the risks involved, it’s important to understand where American ignorance comes from. In March 2009, the European Journal of Communication asked citizens of Britain, Denmark, Finland, and the U.S. to answer questions on international affairs. The Europeans clobbered us. Sixty-eight percent of Danes, 75 percent of Brits, and 76 percent of Finns could, for example, identify the Taliban, but only 58 percent of Americans managed to do the same—even though we’ve led the charge in Afghanistan. It was only the latest in a series of polls that have shown us lagging behind our First World peers.

[snip]

The current conflict over government spending illustrates the new dangers of ignorance. Every economist knows how to deal with the debt: cost-saving reforms to big-ticket entitlement programs; cuts to our bloated defense budget; and (if growth remains slow) tax reforms designed to refill our depleted revenue coffers. But poll after poll shows that voters have no clue what the budget actually looks like. A 2010 World Public Opinion survey found that Americans want to tackle deficits by cutting foreign aid from what they believe is the current level (27 percent of the budget) to a more prudent 13 percent. The real number is under 1 percent. A Jan. 25 CNN poll, meanwhile, discovered that even though 71 percent of voters want smaller government, vast majorities oppose cuts to Medicare (81 percent), Social Security (78 percent), and Medicaid (70 percent). Instead, they prefer to slash waste—a category that, in their fantasy world, seems to include 50 percent of spending, according to a 2009 Gallup poll.

Needless to say, it’s impossible to balance the budget by listening to these people. But politicians pander to them anyway, and even encourage their misapprehensions. As a result, we’re now arguing over short-term spending cuts that would cost up to 700,000 government jobs, imperiling the shaky recovery and impairing our ability to compete globally, while doing nothing to tackle the long-term fiscal challenges that threaten … our ability to compete globally.

Given our history, it’s hard to imagine this changing any time soon. But that isn’t to say a change wouldn’t help. For years, Stanford communications professor James Fishkin has been conducting experiments in deliberative democracy. The premise is simple: poll citizens on a major issue, blind; then see how their opinions evolve when they’re forced to confront the facts. What Fishkin has found is that while people start out with deep value disagreements over, say, government spending, they tend to agree on rational policy responses once they learn the ins and outs of the budget. “The problem is ignorance, not stupidity,” Hacker says. “We suffer from a lack of information rather than a lack of ability.” Whether that’s a treatable affliction or a terminal illness remains to be seen. But now’s the time to start searching for a cure.

Arguing ignorance vs. stupidity is like a chicken/egg argument. Ignorance left unchecked becomes stupidity. I do question, however, whether the results that James Fishkin has found over time still hold up -- that opinions evolve when people are forced to confront the facts. Perhaps it's because here in the U.S. we have the mammoth media monster that is News Corp., which between its Fox News behemoth and a number of "newspapers" like the New York Post, push out into the ether daily a load of horsepuckey masquerading as facts. For the Fox News viewer, ideology trumps EVERYTHING, and "fair and balanced" simply means that when you have demonstrable fact on the one hand, and demonstrable falsehood on the other, you still have to present both sides. The ideologues of the right (and let's please stop this "both sides do it" nonsense; show me the knee-jerk Obama support in the same significant numbers as those on the right who still think George W. Bush was a great president, and show me the same significant number of people on the left who still believe proven falsehoods as opposed to those on the right) will now cling to their ideology no matter what -- because there is now an echo chamber that will reinforce it even in the face of facts to the contrary.

I understand why people might want to be ignorant of current affairs. When you have kids that you're going to try to put through college when an in-state school is going to cost you six figures over four years; when your house is worth less than you owe on it after taking an equity loan to remodel the kitchen four years ago; when your spouse lost her job last year and now yours is on shaky ground; when the little you've been able to squirrel away for retirement is now showing minus signs again because the markets panic every time someone says "Boo!"; when being informed means having to confront the realities of the Middle East and what nuclear power means, and half of Japan being obliterated, and this winter's weird weather being not just a fluke but an ominous sign of things to come; when it costs you forty bucks to gas up a Honda Civic but you can't car-pool because you never know how late you're going to have to stay at the office; it's not surprising that people would prefer to stay ignorant and just watch Dancing With the Stars.

But to do so is to participate in the continued handing over of our country to the oligarchs. And when we are all scrambling for the scraps left after the oligarchs can't stuff themselves with another bite, perhaps Americans will wish they'd paid more attention instead of watching Extra every night.

Labels: America Gone Mad, American Idiots, Certain Doom, willful ignorance