Random Thoughts

Following the Christmas bomber's failed attempt to bring down an airplane in Detroit, the TSA is talking about subjecting travelers to full-body x-rays as part of the pre-flight security rigamarole. Ignoring the dangers inherent in exposing people to yet another source of radiation, because Americans aren't fond of admitting that environmental exposure is one of the big three reasons we develop cancer (along with genetics and lifestyle), let's think about the issue of effectiveness. As I understand it, those x-ray machines can't identify objects in body cavities. You see where this leads, right? Straight to the exploding suppositories...

I imagine the next step will be cavity searches, which I'm pretty sure will spell the end of air travel.

Okay, so fine. We go to high-speed rail, and international travelers start crossing oceans in the way God intended - on boats. The atmosphere breathes a little sigh of relief.

Sadly, there will soon be attacks on trains and boats, which will lead us to a whole new round of security ridiculousness.

Or maybe we could address the root causes of terrorism - poverty and ignorance, and the very bad habit the industrialized nations have of exploiting the Third World and then patting ourselves on the back for our cleverness.

Hm. Not likely to happen, I suppose. But, this being the last day of the worst decade since the '30s, a girl can dream.

Oh, for pity's sake. Grow up, Sarah.

Sarah Palin thinks President Obama based his Nobel speech on something she said in her book. And if that doesn't crack you up enough, think about this: she thinks he read her book. Heh. Heh.

Faith this

This annoyed me. And it's difficult to write about because it was foisted on me by people I love.

I belong to a bunco group - twelve women who get together once a month to play a silly dice game, overeat, and be remarkably open with each other about our troubles and our triumphs. We've been doing this for decades. Together we've done weddings, divorces, births, graduations, sickness, death, and a bunch of other stuff I should write a book about. We call bunco our therapy group.

Every year we do a special Christmas bunco. We get together a little earlier than usual, have dinner, roll the dice, exchange gifts, have dessert, and go home a bit later. Some years we dress up; some years we don't. Some of the ladies bring small gifts for everybody; most are too overwhelmed with other holiday stuff to manage that. Somebody nearly always asks for the floor at some point during the evening to say how glad she is that we're still together, and how much she loves each and every one of us. It's as much a part of Christmas for me as the Christmas tree and I love it.

But this year somebody decided that we should add a prayer to the festivity. Not only that, but the prayer would be offered by three members of our group who are fundamentalist, evangelical Christians who attend a church I won't name here, but of which I strongly disapprove. (I wouldn't dream of expressing my disapproval; we don't normally interfere in each others' closely-held beliefs. And if I disapprove of their church, they are certainly free to disapprove of my own practice, which is strongly anti-church. It doesn't matter. We're friends, and friends don't discuss religion.)

So we joined hands and our three evangelicals spun a prayer. 'Father, this, and Lord, that, and Bless these women whom I hold dear,' and so on. All well-intentioned and sincere.

I was so irritated I could barely hold my tongue. The underlying assumption to this strange spectacle was that the rest of us - those who attend non-fundamentalist churches on a regular basis and particularly those who don't - are somehow not faithful enough to lead a prayer. That God listens to the Christian fundamentalists and turns a deaf ear to the others. That the dogma issued from the pulpit at the evangelical church is more spiritual than a walk in the canyon to appreciate the beauty and diversity of our world. That faith has to imply judgment and rejection rather than tolerance and inclusion. That having faith in kindness and fairness and the essential goodness of other people isn't enough.

So here's the gist: I don't need evangelical Christians, particularly those who practice a harsh brand of religion which is unrecognizable when compared to the sensible and tolerant example set by Jesus himself, to ask God's blessing on me. I have been blessed and I'm humbly and utterly grateful for the beauty of life and the world and the place I've been privileged to occupy within it. If you ask me to pray, I'll say something like that. And than I'll say, Let's go around the circle. Bonnie, you're next.

And in my opinion, that would be a prayer. And that's a perfectly fine faith to be practicing.

Today's Irritations

I'm not giving you links today. You can have Google tips in italics, and you can do your own research. Or not. Whatever.

First biggie: climate change deniers. If climate change is a hoax, then why are the trees dying? Why are we experiencing unprecedented ice loss? Why are the Maldives sinking? Why are we being hit by more frequent epic floods, heat waves, and wildfires worldwide?And why are these things happening all at the same time?

Second biggie: Why is our media so lame that it gives bigger headlines to made-up stories by oil-giant-funded deniers (ClimateGate) than to confirming events like the typhoons that battered east Asia in 2009 or the catastrophic fall in 2009 food production?

Third biggie: Must we hear more about Tiger Woods? I don't even watch golf and I don't care whether he's a chaser or not. That's his wife's problem, not mine.

Ah, that's better

I love a day that starts with a bit of good news:

Beck’s ‘Christmas Sweater’ flops in major cities, just 17 tickets sold in New York and Boston.

Nice to see Glenn Beck's gigantic ego deflated, even if it's only a little bit. Heh.

Make it stop

The stupidity. It burns.

Remember, the people who talk about the melting of the glaciers and others, imagine if you were in a peninsula around 1,000 BC or so or earlier and your name was Tor and you’re out huntin’ mastadon. And you didn’t notice that the glaciers were melting and leaving the devastating flooding in its wake that became the Great Lakes in the state of Michigan. - Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)

I think they probably noticed when those suckers melted sometime between 15,000 to 10,000 BC. Especially the devastating-flood part. Idiot.

I’ve got a message for you: you’re going to die soon. - Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), speaking to seniors from the floor of the Senate.

Thanks for reminding us. Dolt.

President Obama and Washington, D.C., radicals plan to impose homosexuality and silence Christianity in workplaces. Will you help me warn Congress? - From a solicitation letter sent out by the thoroughly whackadoodle Family Research Council, and signed by FRC President Tony Perkins.

Okay, in light of the high esteem in which I hold our Bill of Rights, I will refrain from making any snarky comments about this being a pretty good argument for silencing a few selected Christians. I will settle for this: Perkins, you fracking hate-monger, perhaps you could give your country a nice Christmas present and stick to the truth from now on.

I found all of those cheery items at Think Progress.

Groan

The speech hasn't even been given yet, and people are lining up to disagree. The dependably irritating Larry Mantle is hosting a discussion at this moment on what people think of the President's new plan. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) is going on and on about not being pleased with the idea of sending new troops to Afghanistan unless there's an end game.

But wasn't the whole process drawn out specifically so an end game could be agreed upon?

Geez. What would have been the problem with holding off on this discussion until AFTER the President speaks?

Back to reality

and already I'm homesick for the blissful holiday existence in which the most annoying thing I had to confront was whether or not I'd have an operational kitchen in time to roast the turkey. For one delightful week I was too busy to keep up with dipshits like these:

Because it's better for any number of Americans to lose their lives due to a lack of adequate health care than to risk making Obama and the Democrats look good, these Republicans are grasping at yet another straw to avoid passing health insurance reform.

The yahoos at Yahoo! are highlighting this steaming pile of Politico crap on their main page today.

Did the Swiss get a Fox News channel, or something?

Talking Points Memo reports on a DailyKos poll which makes me almost as mad at spineless Democratic voters as I am at brainless Republican ones. Grow up, people. Rupert Murdoch* and Richard Mellon Scaife** are still more than willing to destroy your dreams.

And finally, is this good news, or bad? Funny, or sad? Scary, or pathetic? Maybe it's all of those, rolled into one tasty morsel.


* Employer of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Believes Obama made racist statements somewhere, sometime, although unable to actually quote them.

** Bankrolled the Arkansas Project, which led eventually to the impeachment of Bill Clinton for being a Democrat for lying under oath. Was dubbed the 'funding Father of the Right' by the Washington Post in 1999.

Wha-?!?

Think Progress reports that Glenn Beck, speaking at a rally in Florida, announced a 100-year plan to take America back to the fifteenth century to its roots, said this:

"We need to start thinking like the Chinese."

I'm pretty sure this is the same Glenn Beck who spent most of his October 15th Fox crapfest program excoriating Anita Dunn for 'worshiping' Mao.

I really wish the cognitive dissonance would make his head explode, but I'm not sure he cognates. Or thinks, even. He just spews, endlessly.

Pathological asshole.

Are you kidding me?

From Alex Koppelman, reporting on a new poll:

A majority of Republicans -- 52 percent -- think ACORN stole the presidency, while just 27 percent said they believe Obama's office is legitimately his.

Yikes. A majority? Okay. The country slapped them down pretty hard last November, but this is just ridiculous. The projection, the paranoia, the mindless willingness to embrace any kind of stupid tripe as long as it protects them from having to face the consequences of their party's colossal incompetence is nauseating.

How did we get to this place where ACORN, an organization of community activists which basically tries to give the poor a voice in our government, becomes so demonized that a measurable slice of our population believes they have superman-like powers and are able to subvert our entire democratic process? Didn't these same people believe, just a few years ago, that the process was unsubvertible, even by powerful, moneyed corporations who owned the actual physical machinery of the electoral process and promised to 'deliver' for the Republicans?

Argh. The stupidity. It burns.

Here's proof

that the fringe on the right is peopled by the delusional, the craven, and the stupid.

From Media Matters:

After the Department of Justice announced it would move toward convicting 9/11 terrorists in a New York City courtroom, Congressional Republicans raced to condemn the decision.

Because Republicans believe that their political fortunes improve when the country is fearful, party leadership jumped at the chance to scare people. Yet as is often the case, the House Republican Caucus' overzealous, far-right members crossed the line.

As Media Matters Action Network first noted yesterday, Rep. John Shadegg declared the decision meant Mayor Bloomberg's daughter would be "kidnapped at school by a terrorist."

Not to be outdone, Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas suggested yesterday that Democrats may actually want another terrorist attack because rebuilding the city would create jobs.

(My italics.)

A person who would say this to score political points is deeply unserious. A person who would believe it is unhinged.

In either case, he's an asshole, but that goes without saying.

I'll be famous!

Karl Rove's going to put me in his memoir!

(Via Think Progress.)

Former Bush adviser Karl Rove’s memoir will be released on March 9, 2010, and be titled “Courage and Consequence.” In a new statement, Rove said that the book will be “a frank account of what I witnessed and my often-controversial role.” Last year, Rove said that he was planning to “name names” of the people who never “accepted” Bush as a “legitimate president.”

But seriously. Is there some kind of significance to having been a citizen who doubted the legitimacy of the Boy Blunder's presidency? (There was that Supreme Court interference, and the fact that the Florida returns remain doubtful to this day, and the now-acknowledged Brooks-Brothers-zombies who got bused down to Florida to stop the recount. And there's the fact that by the end of those eight nightmarish years, 80% of the population just wanted to wake up and find out that none of it was real.)

So, do those of us who called foul right from the beginning get a medal or something?

Correct me if I'm wrong

but I don't remember KPCC doing endless, breathless jabber-fests on the future of the Democratic Party back in 2001. Right now Larry Mantle has his BFFs - the leadership of the California Republican Party - on his show, and they're yammering away on the subject as if their public radio audience gives a shit what happens to the GOP. (Maybe we'd care if someone could assure us that the party was going to start recruiting grown-ups again, but I don't see that happening.)

Just sayin'.

Update: Now they've moved onto a breathless analysis of Ronald Reagan's greatness in single-handedly bringing down the Soviet Union. Yeah. Because you gotta play to all those conservative public radio listeners.

Update 2: Ha! There they are! My kind of listeners, calling in to say that Reagan's speech was not the deciding factor that all those googly-eyed Gipper geeks want to believe it was. And while we're on the subject, how childish and ego-centric do you have to be to believe that any American president could persuade all those Soviets to come around to the American way of thinking? That's about as likely as the American people being so enchanted by Gorbachev that they decide to add a hammer and sickle to the one dollar coin.

Update 3: You know what killed the Soviet Union? Bureaucracy. It became so moribund with bureaucracy that it collapsed under its own weight.

Ouch. I hate when that happens.

Grover Norquist (and some other guys) said something I agree with.

In a joint statement prepared by the Constitution Project, David Keene, founder of American Conservative Union, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and former representative and presidential candidate Bob Barr say moving suspected terrorists to the Thomson, Illinois prison facility, "makes good sense." Taxpayers, they note, have already invested $145 million in the facility, which has been "little used." And the surrounding community, they add, could benefit from increased employment once the prison becomes filled.

"The scaremongering about these issues should stop," they add, noting that there is "absolutely no reason to fear that prisoners will escape or be released into their communities."

I hate having my biases challenged.

Tiny presidents don't bow.

Via Think Progress, we get some delicious irony from the Turd Blossom himself:

Calling the bow “inappropriate,” Rove wondered, “what’s that all about?” He added that Obama “simply can’t get it right” and that the bow is part of Obama’s “world-wide apology tour.”

Yeah. Apologizing for the turd-brained diplomacy practiced by your (mis-)administration. Perhaps he should have massaged the Emperor's shoulders?

A big man can show respect for others. A small one won't. Do the math.

How low can the LA Times go?

Andrew Malcolm, who needs a new day job because he sucks at the one he's got, gags up a stinking puddle of stupid and leaves it right there on the floor where those of us with more delicate sensibilities are forced to gag back in self-defense.

Malcolm doesn't think a President should observe protocol (not even a 'Democrat President.' I don't think a person without a grasp of elementary grammar should be blogging for a major newspaper. But this newspaper isn't as august as it used to be.)

Malcolm thinks we should continue to emulate the diplomatic approach of Beavis and Butthead Bush and Cheney, which can be best summed up by the phrase: "You aren't the boss of me." Apparently, in Malcolm's alternate reality, the juvenile approach was effective because it's really way better for America if the rest of the world holds us in low esteem; and the ass-whupping suffered by the GOP in the 2008 election doesn't have any policy implications whatsoever.

If you suffer from a weak stomach, by the way, don't check out the comments. Although the entire piece is a vomitous mass, the most nauseating chunks lie below the fold.

No surprise here

From Media Matters via Huffington Post:

Lynn Vincent, Palin Co-Author, Has Anti-Gay History

Not that I was going to read the book anyway. I'm just sayin'.

New category: whiny. Also, idiotic and yet darkly amusing.

Okay, so get this. Thirty Republican Senators are being harshly criticized after voting against Sen. Al Franken's (D-MN) amendment to punish defense contractors who prevent their employees from taking workplace sexual assaults to court. And guess who they're blaming?

When Al Franken ran for the Senate last year, the former “Saturday Night Live” star had to reassure skeptics that the fierce partisan attacks he lobbed at Republicans as an author and radio host wouldn’t define his style as a legislator.

But because of one of his first pieces of legislation, Democrats now have their most brazen attack line of the emerging 2010 campaign season: that Republicans are insensitive to rape victims.

Yep. That's right. Politico reports that Franken's amendment was a trick! to fool the gullible! The brazen, yet devastatingly crafty Franken doesn't care about assaults against women; he just wanted a tool his evil Democratic cohorts could use in campaigns against our innocent Republicans.

Here's the best part:

Privately, GOP sources acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the political consequences of a “no” vote on the amendment.

Gee. Ya think voting against an amendment inspired by this might make you look like a misogynist?

Now they're reportedly arguing, in delightful Thirty Stooges fashion, about just whose idea it was to agree to a roll-call vote. Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo. Jab.

(For the record, Politico, it might have been useful for you to consider the possibility that those Republican Senators are insensitive to rape victims. After all, if it walks like a duck...)

Dumb. Really dumb.

Danville TEA Party to burn Rep. Perriello in effigy

Friday, November 13, 2009 1:14 PM EST

BLAIRS - In a move sure to spark controversy, the Danville TEA Party will close their "Fired Up for Freedom" rally by burning Rep. Tom Perriello and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in effigy in response to the passage of landmark healthcare legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Via Political Animal

I just hope none of those teabaggers gets singed in the fire. Statistically, they're unlikely to have health insurance.

Dumb, mean, AND unethical.

This pisses me off. The Catholic Church I grew up with in the enlightened era of Pope John XXIII has already succumbed to the dumb meanies on the right who cling to the dysfunctional teachings of the past with respect to all things sexual. Now they hope to require intervention to keep a person breathing regardless of the hopelessness of that person's situation, the pain that person may be enduring, and the financial and emotional burdens being born by that person's loved ones, not to mention state laws, living wills, and patients' wishes.

From Crooks and Liars:

WASHINGTON-The full body of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will take into account the most recent Catholic teaching on care for the chronically ill and dying when they vote on a proposed revision of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services at their November 16-19 general assembly in Baltimore. The proposed revision states more definitively the moral obligation to provide medically assisted nutrition and hydration to patients in a "persistent vegetative state."

You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see somebody claiming to be a religious authority of any stripe who believes that taking care of the living is as important as taking care of the unborn and the dying.

This is just mean.

CBS reports that the conservative governor of Rhode Island has vetoed a measure to allow domestic partners, both gay and straight, to make funeral arrangements for each other. Since Democrats hold a veto-proof majority in the state legislature, this action was mainly intended to a) please the homophobes in the audience, and b) lash out at gays and lesbians in committed relationships who would like to be able to claim the bodies of their partners after death.

The jerk's name is Don Carcieri and he styles himself a defender of marriage, because, you know, my heterosexual marriage would be brought to its knees by my gay friends being able to arrange each other's funerals.

I dub him today's Pucker King. All hail to the giant asshole.

Diplomacy is beyond the scope of this blog.

This is my spot to speak my mind, and to point out the dumb/mean/unethical stuff people do that shouldn't be overlooked. This is where I intend to rant when I'm irritable - and lately, I'm irritable a lot.

Feel free to join me in ranting, to correct me when I get it wrong, or to offer opposing views - although if your opposing view is composed entirely of the talking points flung at us by the wingnuts on the right in Rockette-like unison, then be warned: your talking points will be flung back out. Offer reality-based opposition, or go comment somewhere else. Do not bother to quote Glenn Beck to me. That man is nothing but a giant talking prick, and I have no interest in discussing politics or media ethics with a penis.

So. There you have it. I've defined my goals. Time to get started.