Full Disclosure

Since the President saw fit to release his Long Form Birth Certificate today to satisfy The Crazy, I felt as a responsible blogger I must present mine as well. So without further ado:














Oh, wait... wrong one - give me a minute here....

Zombie Jesus Day!

Completely Stolen from the Original Zombie Jesus Day! Click and go see the real thing - it's very good.

Many people have been celebrating Zombie Jesus Day for years without even realizing it. Honestly, let's face a few facts:
	Everything that rises from the dead is a zombie.
	Easter is touted as the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
	So let's call a spade a spade...
	...eat lots of chocolate...
	...and celebrate Zombie Jesus Day!

Back To Our Scheduled Holy Week Expose

There's nothing Christian about these people:


Conservative Christians Mark Holy Week With An Attack On Our Rights
By Rmuse via Politicususa

"This week is a special time for bunnies, peeps, and colored eggs as well as all of conservative Christendom who are celebrating their special holiday with the facsimiles of the instrument of torture that killed their religion’s namesake."

"In regional newspapers around the country churches have taken out full-page ads touting “holy week” and the wonders of knowing that a mythological character was tortured to death on a cross only to miraculously rise from the dead three days later."

"However, resurrection aside, there isn’t too much for conservative Christians to be proud of as of late based on the evil assault on women’s rights being waged by conservative Christians in Congress and state legislatures around the country. In fact, conservative Christians have targeted the LGBT movement and the American Cancer Society as well as women in their “holy war” on all things not emanating from the Christian bible."

"There are many different ways to be holy, but conservative Christians in America have bastardized the meaning of the word holy as well as the message of their savior who taught that neighborly love, charity, non-violence, and acceptance exemplifies what it means to be holy. Although there are a few conservative Christians who epitomize the embodiment of Jesus and his teachings, the majority are judgmental, mean-spirited, and vindictive toward anyone who refuses to go along with their satanic leanings."

"The Christian bible characterizes Satan as an angry, jealous being in opposition to god and his plan for humanity that Jesus personified. Based on the level of hate most conservative Christians have for non-compliant human beings, it sure appears that holiness has been redefined to mean something very different from what Jesus preached."

[snip]

"In California during the Proposition 8, same-sex marriage debate, Catholics and Mormons poured millions of dollars into campaign coffers to deny gay couples the right to marry. Besides forcing their holy belief system on all Californians, the groups used the pulpit to inform congregants on how to vote and aired fallacious television ads warning that second graders would be indoctrinated into the gay lifestyle. In the same elections, there were several holy priests that warned parishioners that if they voted for Barack Obama, they would not be allowed to partake of the cracker and grape juice or confess their transgressions."

"In the House of Representatives, holy Christian-conservative Republicans led by Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) are attempting to use their holy mandate to defund Planned Parenthood and deny access to birth control, cancer screenings, and pre-natal care for millions of poor women. Obviously, the holier-than-everyone Republicans have insight into the scriptures that unholy people lack because for the pittance Planned Parenthood receives from the government, there must be a command in the bible that informs Christians it is holy to deny poor women access to life-saving cancer screening. Who would believe that anyone, holy or not, would oppose cancer screening or cancer research for that matter?"

[snip]

"It is too bad that conservative Christians aren’t limited to just having one big holy week. If they were limited to just seven days of holiness, America would be a much better place. It would certainly be safer for women and gays if holiness abounded for a week instead of year-round. But the holy-roller Republicans practice their brand of holy all year and not just during holy week."

[snip]

"If conservative Christians were serious about being holy, they would follow Jesus’s example and not worry about telling the world they’re holy. They would stop being judgmental and start expressing neighborly love instead of being vile, vindictive fear mongers to gain power and riches. Republican legislators claiming to be holy would not deny poor women cancer screening or poor children food and shelter. A holy person would not call for a boycott of the American Cancer Society or compare cancer research to Nazis. But then again, there are very few holy people in America; if there are any, they’re not conservatives, Republicans, or teabags. As Jesus said, the holy are poor, tired, and hungry and they don’t have to announce that it’s holy week."

So - "Fuck off you opportunistic leeches", Jesus did not say but really, really wanted to.

Read the whole thing here.

"Throw the Money Changers Out of the Temple, I hate Banks it's Just that Simple", Mojo Nixon and Chris Hedges

Throw Out the Money Changers

By Chris Hedges

These are remarks Chris Hedges made in Union Square in New York City last Friday during a protest outside a branch office of the Bank of America.

[Excerpts from this article below. I recommend reading the whole thing.]

"The two most destructive forces of human nature—greed and envy—drive the financiers, the bankers, the corporate mandarins and the leaders of our two major political parties, all of whom profit from this system. They place themselves at the center of creation. They disdain or ignore the cries of those below them. They take from us our rights, our dignity and thwart our capacity for resistance. They seek to make us prisoners in our own land. They view human beings and the natural world as mere commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. Human suffering, wars, climate change, poverty, it is all the price of business. Nothing is sacred. The Lord of Profit is the Lord of Death."

"The pharisees of high finance who can see us this morning from their cubicles and corner officers mock virtue. Life for them is solely about self-gain. The suffering of the poor is not their concern. The 6 million families thrown out of their homes are not their concern. The tens of millions of pensioners whose retirement savings were wiped out because of the fraud and dishonesty of Wall Street are not their concern. The failure to halt carbon emissions is not their concern. Justice is not their concern. Truth is not their concern. A hungry child is not their concern."

"The priests in these corporate temples, in the name of profit, kill with ruthlessness, finesse and cunning. Corporations let 50,000 people die last year because they could not pay them for proper medical care. They have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, Palestinians and Pakistanis, and gleefully watched as the stock price of weapons contractors quadrupled."

"And after looting the U.S. treasury these corporations demand, in the name of austerity, that we abolish food programs for children, heating assistance and medical care for our elderly, and good public education. They demand that we tolerate a permanent underclass that will leave one in six workers without jobs, that condemns tens of millions of Americans to poverty and tosses our mentally ill onto heating grates. Those without power, those whom these corporations deem to be ordinary, are cast aside like human refuse. It is what the god of the market demands."

"The bankers and hedge fund managers, the corporate and governmental elites, are the modern version of the misguided Israelites who prostrated themselves before the golden calf. The sparkle of wealth glitters before them, spurring them faster and faster on the treadmill towards destruction. And they seek to make us worship at their altar. As long as greed inspires us, greed keeps us complicit and silent. But once we defy the religion of unfettered capitalism, once we demand that a society serve the needs of citizens and the ecosystem that sustains life, rather than the needs of the marketplace, once we learn to speak with a new humility and live with a new simplicity, once we love our neighbor as ourself, we break our chains and make hope visible."

Read the entire article here

Looks Like It's Holy Week at Salmon Alley

I am especially pissed this year and cannot stand all the Jesus-ey crap around Easter with the extended family. How can one believe in a deity that has the power of life or death and lets the mother of two teenagers die well before her time?

There is no God as they understand him and if there were he would be one hell of an asshole.

Years past I have been able to hold my nose and nod my head at the yearly Zombie Jesus Easter family gathering. Not this year. I won't be attending.

Christianity, A Progrom of Promotion Rather Than Attraction With Passive-Aggresive Assimilation

My daughter and her boyfriend were perusing the stacks at Borders on a lazy Saturday when they found themselves in the religion section and decided to check out a Quran. They selected one from the shelf, opened it and a million dollar bill fell out. It was a fake, of course, but the printing on the back was a litany of Christian propaganda ending with a website where one could go to repent where they ask, "Are you a good person?".

C'mon, cater to the insecure much?

The Christians and conservatives have a pact made in hell. The marraige of ideology and greed. That's why the million dollar bill. The Conservo-Christians project their love of money into outreach programs. I was disgusted as were my kids.

Is It 'Grease My Palm' Sunday Already?

More Neighborhood Excitement

I was driving my daughter to school this morning, had stopped at the first stop sign of three on the straight shot to school when what looked like an old Cordoba was backing up the street on the block ahead of us weaving slowly in our direction. They veered off well before they reached us and backed over a basic, cast-iron, yellow fireplug embedded in the sidewalk. It broke off at the stem and I thought for sure the water was going to fly. Much to our disappointment, the plug did not shoot geysers of water into the sky like Old Faithful. We waited a good three minutes to see when the water would come but it never did.

Mythbusters - WTF is up with this?

No-one was hurt or got wet and the driver was kind enough to place the plug back on it's base before he drove away.

FACEBOOK SUCKS

'nuff said - I'm done with it.

Finally, A Human Centered, Middle Class Enhancing,Common Sense Solution to the US Budget Issues

House Progressives Offer Budget plan: Tax the Rich, End the Wars, Slash Oil Subsidies, Invest in Jobs

What a novel idea. A budget that will actually help the plight of the average American. How quaint, like the Geneva Convention. Most conservatives seem to be only invested in rich people and corporations. How do they manage to bullshit their base into believing them over and over again? (see post below on conservative brains).

Here we go:

"The broad sketch proposes to end the Bush-era tax cuts on high income earners, enact a surtax on millionaires and billionaires, increase the the estate tax and eliminate corporate tax loopholes and subsidies for oil and coal companies. It also aims to create a public health insurance option, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and invest $1.45 trillion in "job creation," energy, housing and education programs."

"The revenue-heavy proposal (PDF) stands in stark contrast to the spending cuts-oriented plan put forth by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) -- and championed by GOP leaders -- that slashes $6 trillion in federal programs (including Medicare and Medicaid) while significantly reducing taxes for wealthy Americans and corporations."

The Ryan Plan - Virtually a Turd with Sprinkles (Thanks Dr.Zaius)

The Progressive budget, on the other hand...

"This budget is transparent, straightforward and realistic about where we are in America right now," Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), co-chair of the progressive caucus, told Raw Story.

"The Ryan plan, for all the credit it gets for thinking big, doesn’t reflect the reality of the American economy. It destroys the successful programs that made this country strong, especially Medicare and education, and doesn't even try to explain how it creates jobs. It reflects a faith that making government disappear will somehow create prosperity."

Unfortunately,

"The plan is a nonstarter in the GOP-led House and would have a hard time winning over more than a handful of Democrats in the Senate. But Grijalva and his progressive caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) wrote a letter urging Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the top Democrat on the budget committee, to consider their ideas in the Democratic counter-offer this week."

And the Suck continues.

The Police State in Action

I had a hell of a surprise today when three Police Cruisers (reasonable facsimile thereof - pic on the left) graced my driveway behind one of my son's friend's car that had just pulled in. Now, I didn't panic - I know these kids. they are good kids, a little misguided like all of us these days, but good kids and I've known them for years.

Three, no four cruisers counting the cop who showed up late, Four fucking cruisers for two skinny teenagers. What the fuck.

I saw it all:

cops: "Hands on the hood!!! What weapons do you have? " LOUD

Jesus jumped up christ - I almost had a cow. These geeky kids wouldn't know a weapon if it bit them on the leg. They think a plastic broadsword at comic-con is lethal.

Search was non-conclusive - thank FSM they didn't have any weed on them.

At one point I did ask if they thought they had enough cops here. Luckily they did not come after me.

Then they split them up - asked lots of questions, filled out their little fucking notebooks, asked the same questions twice and three times.

Come to find out, one of them had taken a baseball bat to a construction marker after his girlfriend had broken up with him earlier in the day.

30 minutes later they let them go with a warning not to act like teenagers and grow the fuck up. Well, not exactly but that's what it sounded like to me.

The police state trying to justify their sorry existence. I imagine someday someone may ask, " Why do we need all these fucking cops?". And the cops will show them "The Notebook".

Fuck them - they are a revenue generation machine for the city - state, and that is all. They have never found any of the stuff that was stolen from me several times over the years and the cops have only cost me money in fines, lawyer fees etc. ALWAYS. That is not public service that is revenue generation. They excel at arresting teenagers and other harmless victimless crime suspects but where are they when something serious happens? They run, hide and plead impossible.

We do not need their police state. The town I grew up in was about the size of this town and we had two cops. There are WAY too many cops in this small town with not enough to do so they PREY on the locals.

I am appalled.

I told the boys this:

"Our town is a fishbowl. You boys need to know that there are way too many cops with not enough to do as evidenced today by the whole fucking force showing up to talk to two skinny teenagers so you need to not be stupid in public."

Actually, that was the whole message of today - Do Not Be Stupid In Public because someone in this police state fishbowl is always watching.

This is Why Conservatives Hate Science

Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study

WASHINGTON — Everyone knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.

Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study on Thursday in Current Biology.

"We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala," the study said.

People with a large amygdala are "more sensitive to disgust" and tend to "respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions," the study said.

Liberals are linked to larger anterior cingulate cortexes, a region that "monitor(s) uncertainty and conflicts," it said.

"Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views."

"Our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty," the study said.

The Myth of a "Classless America"

Robert Scheer outlines the blatant robbery of the hope of the middle class in this article:

The Peasants Need Pitchforks

A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.”

And THEY did it.

“They did it. Yes, there is a ‘they’: the captains of finance, their lobbyists, and allies among leading politicians of both parties, who together destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning splendidly. …” They got to rewrite the laws to enable their massive greed over everything from the tax codes to the sale of toxic derivatives over the past quarter century, smashing the American middle class and with it the nation’s experiment in democracy." More here.

There is a club....

New Poll: After Promoting Birther Conspiracy, Donald Trump Vaults Into Statistical Tie For 1st Place

This is just sad. Ignorance and avarice combined into one package - the republican Donald.

Embracing the crazy birthers pole-vaults Trump into a tie for first in the primaries. Disgusting and telling. Birthers do not care about governing, only that there is an "uppity nigger" in the White House that needs to be shown his place.

And for our follically challenged readers - Trump's elaborate comb over instructions here.









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Update

From Zandar:

"Yet, Donald Trump has basically bet his career on becoming a professional Birther. But instead of being shunned by our "liberal media" who is "in the tank for Obama" Trump gets regular chances to say that Obama is conning the American people and keeps getting invited on TV again and again to peddle his own snake oil games."

"Don't think Trump is a serious threat yet? I do. He's running on Obama Derangement Syndrome, and entire campaign built on a single massive lie. And yet he's gaining on the GOP front-runners simply by giving into the far right-wing hatred of Obama."

"Do not underestimate this hatred. Nothing good will come of it."

Zandar has a valid point there.

DNC Chair: Ryan's GOP Budget - "Path To Poverty"

More like this please.

"Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) comments on Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget proposal for FY 2012."

"Representing a large number of seniors in south Florida, I can tell you that this budget would be devastating for seniors and older Americans. This Republican path to poverty passes like a tornado through America's nursing homes, where millions of America's seniors receive long-term and end of life care," Rep. Wasserman Schultz said.

Video here.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the new DNC chair. She has more balls than past chair Tim Kaine will ever have. Get ready for a progressive run.

Nowhere Man - Remind You Of Someone?

Glenn Beck To 'Transition Off' His TV Program

"Fox News and Glenn Beck's production company have announced that Beck will "transition off" his daily television program later this year..."

My liberal dream come true!! One down, Rush and Ailes to go...

Glenn Beck and Fox News is the slime oozing out of your TV set. (Span. cap for your convenience).

Beck stole his blackboard gig from Frank. Check it out.

This Would Be So Cool

With 100% of vote counted, Kloppenburg clings to narrow lead; recount expected

"Madison — Unofficial results Wednesday showed Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg with a paper-thin lead over Justice David Prosser after a race marked by massive voter turnout, Gov. Scott Walker's union bargaining plan and record spending by outside interest groups."

Please, oh please please please let this happen. (not begging, much).

Outrage Overload

I can't stand it. The sheer volume of potential conservative destruction is hard to comprehend. If they love this country so much why are they destroying it? My head may explode. My own governor is one of the worst offenders. I'll be posting the LePage page to out that crass, ignorant son-of-a-bitch soon.

Been offline for a while (outrage overload) but I find that blogging is cathartic and may prevent head explosions.

House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R) is Pond Scum

Or at least has the intelligence of pond scum. Republicans are not fit to govern this great country. This fact has never been more obvious than right now.

Here's Robert Reich:

"Case in point: House Budget Chair Paul Ryan unveiled a plan today that should make every American cringe. It would turn Medicare into vouchers whose benefits are funneled into the pockets of private insurers. It would make Medicaid and Food Stamps into block grants that allow states to ignore poor people altogether. It would drastically cut funding for schools, and much else Americans need. And many of the plan's savings would go to wealthy Americans who'd pay even lower taxes than they do today."

Scum - plain and simple. I wish there was a cure for Ryan's affliction that we could administer to conservative assholes everywhere and turn them into caring human beings again.

More from Reich:

"Obama must show America that the basic choice is between two fundamental views of this nation. Either we're all in this together, or we're a bunch of individuals who happen to live within these borders and are mainly on their own."

And this is the crux of the biscuit - Do you believe in society and civilization or barbaric Randian individualism and greed?

Reich:

"The president needs to remind us that as members of the same society we have obligations to one another -- that the wealthiest among us must pay their fair share of taxes, that any of us who loses our jobs or homes or gets terribly sick can count on the rest of us, and that we have collective obligations to our elderly, our children, and the rest of the planet.

This is why we have government. And anyone who wants to shut it down or cut it down because they say we can't afford it any longer is plain wrong. We are the richest nation in the world, richer than we've ever been. We can afford to remain a society whose members are in it together."

Will we hear this kind of talk from the Obama administration? It would be nice for a change wouldn't it?
____________________________________
UPDATE:

Johnston and Gerard on the Devastating Effects of Ryan's Budget on the Elderly, the Disabled and Children

Concise and to the point - Ryan's proposal is cruel and unacceptable by any measure for civilized human beings