Bill Maher is a very funny man so I bring you his clips whenever I can find one. Enjoy!
Friday night on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” host Bill Maher pointed out that unlike most of the country, California’s economy is surging ahead, thanks to the efforts of the state Democratic Party and veteran Gov. Jerry Brown (D). California is going to drag the rest of the country kicking and screaming into the present, he said, if it can…
The key line has to be Nuts, Racists, and Assholes. However, if California is without TEAbaggers, it’s because their Baggers are in DC making the US Congress worse.
I’m writing for tomorrow, day 108. as we come to the end of another month. It’s a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid orb, and a worship service is on as I write. Later the Broncos worship with the Philadelphia congregation, and it will be televised here, so I shall be meditating deeply.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:51 (average 4:50). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Religious Ecstasy:
Short Takes:
From Raw Story (Hat-Tip to Lynn): A Rutgers University student who found himself being cited by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as a cautionary tale told MSNBC host Ed Schultz on Friday that Cruz distorted his story for the purposes of arguing against the Affordable Care Act…
Cruz is no different than any other Republican Senator in one respect. They all have to lie, because, if they told the truth, not even the most stupid sheeple would vote for them. This student’s story is a perfect example of that.
From Daily Kos: Could it be that the excoriation received by Chuck Todd by a multitude of reputable online news sources is reframing the actions of some traditional journalists? Is it the fear that as Americans see the truth they will justifiably stop accepting the traditional media as one of their major sources of information?
Lemons had recently been a ‘yes man’ for Bill O’Lielly. I’m glad he decided to come clean and hope more media people do.
From Alternet: NRA Lobbyist: Opposing Elephant Slaughter Is Hitlerian Animal Racism
Here’s the background: There’s this show on NBC Sports called “Under Wild Skies” featuring an NRA lobbyist and all the animals he likes to hunt and kill. Some people think this is fun to do and watch. But, some people also objected this week when the show featured the gun lobbyist in question, Tony Makris, shooting an elephant in the face, and then drinking champagne. About 50,000 people objected and suggested NBC cancel the show.
This upset Tony Makris, who feels, as many gun nuts do, very oppressed by the fact that people want to deprive him of his liberties to shoot and televise his kills, and celebrate afterwards. These dang animal nuts are exactly like Hitler, he said in an interview with NRA talk show host Cam Edwards.
To be clear, Makris explained, he is a hunter, a non-dsicriminatory [sic] hunter. “I hunt all things,” not just elephants. Animal rights people are too soft on elephants. Nobody objected about his shooting ducks, pigeons, rabbits and squirrels, let alone deer. “So I can shoot all of those, but not an elephant?” he asked rhetorically.
This, he said, is animal racism. And to those who would argue that elephants are different, bigger, more special, smarter and more sensitive, he said. “Hitler would have said the same thing.”
Gotcha!
This is just one of seven examples of Republican TEAbuggery in just the last week. Click through for the other six. (We need to send this elephant hunter to the US House!! ;-))
Cartoon:
Obama must not make the same mistake with Republicans.
There appears to be a conflict within the Republican Party politicians, pundits, and propagandists, between the “good, sane Republicans”, who want desperately to prevent economic catastrophe, and the evil Tea Party, who together with that vile Muslim Socialist, want our nation’s business to grind to a halt. If you believe that, see me about buying my alpine ski resort in Kansas at a great piece. The GOP can’t diverse the TEAbaggers, as Tea Party popularity plummets, because in reality, all are goose-stepping as ordered.
As Washington braces for another budget showdown, this time with the threat of defunding the new healthcare law in the mix, the key political force pushing for conservative policies sees diminished popular support. Fewer Americans now describe themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement than did at the height of the movement in 2010, or even at the start of 2012. Today’s 22% support nearly matches the record low found two years ago.
In November 2010, days after the Republicans recaptured the majority in the House of Representatives, 32% of Americans pledged support for the Tea Party, or 10 percentage points higher than in the latest survey, conducted Sept. 5-8.
Opponents of the Tea Party now outnumber supporters 27% to 22%, which is similar to their edge in 2012. However this differs from most of Gallup’s earlier measurements, in 2010 and 2011, when supporters and opponents were either equally matched, or Tea Party backers had the slight edge…
I learned long ago from Deep Throat to “follow the money”, and that adage has served me well. In this case, the same people and organizations that fund Republican Party activities and candidates, also fund the Tea Party. In addition, they caucus together, vote together and according to an acquainted in the business, even go to the cat house together.
The Tea Party has become an integral Part of the Republican Party and serves the same function that the Brown Shirts did in the Nazi Party, threatening violence and invoking fear. Like Hitler’s Brown Shirts, they are getting carried away with their own sense of importance and power. They love to follow orders, especially the one that told them to say nobody told them what to say and think.
I think that the Republican leadership is setting up the TEAbaggers to take the blame for whatever economic mayhem Republican sedition may cause, giving the rest, who are every bit as guilty, a way out. In the same way, Hitler blamed his Brown Shirts for Nazi violence and the result was the Night of the Long Knives.
In short,the GOP cannot divorce the TEAbaggers, because no one can divorce themselves.
I’m writing for tomorrow, day 107. Yesterday’s meeting was a good one, and I have enough Chinese food leftovers to feed me all day. We have a heavy wind and rain alert for today and tomorrow. I may just go out and bask in it. It’s a slow news day, as the stories dominating the news are ones I’ve already been hitting hard. How do you like today’s cartoon?
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:22 (average 6:17). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Upworthy: The Simplest Explanation Of Obamacare. Ever.
Overall, this is a good explanation that covers both ObamaCare’s strengths and weaknesses, which the strengths outweigh by a huge margin. I’m glad they are taxing tanning services. Not only does their UV radiation increase the risk of cancer, but also, at last Speaker John "Agent Orange" Boehner (R-OH) will finally pay a few pennies for his health care.
From The New Yorker: In a blockbuster documentary to be broadcast tonight, the Fox News Channel alleges that Obamacare is “little more than a thinly veiled scheme to force Americans to live longer.”
The documentary, called “The Ugly Truth About Obamacare,” claims that President Obama “is cynically using the health-care law to achieve his true objective: raising the life expectancy of Americans without their consent.”
“In America, how long you live has always been your own business,” says the documentary’s narrator, Sean Hannity. “Under Obamacare, though, it’s the government’s business—a government that wants you to live as long as humanly possible.”
The documentary lays out a nightmare scenario of Americans being saddled with sky-high life expectancies for years to come…
I bet it’s a dirty Socialist Kenyan Muslim conspiracy to delay our angelic Banksters from getting eternal dividends from Republican Supply-side Jesus!! EEK!!!! 😉 (Republican Supply-side Jesus is the polar opposite of the real one.)
From NY Times: The Senate on Friday approved stopgap spending legislation to keep the federal government open without gutting President Obama’s health care law, putting new pressure on Speaker John A. Boehner to find a way out of an impasse that had the government on a steady course to a shutdown at midnight Monday.
This is proceeding exactly as I said it would. I think Boehner will puff-up, posture, threaten, bluster, maybe even allow a very short shutdown, spelunk, and go have a another drink. He knows a longer shutdown will hurt his party, and he still has the Debt Ceiling Limit as a fallback position for Republican terrorism and sedition.
I’m writing for tomorrow, day 106, and I’m about to leave to meet with a volunteer co-worker. That will take sufficient time from my day, that this will be tomorrow’s only article. Fantasy football players, make sure your line-ups are ready for Sunday’s games.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:44 (average 5:24). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Upworthy: Teaching Children In This Awful Way Is Like Helping A Person Who Is On Fire By Drowning Them
What GW Bush and the Republican Party did not tell us, when they touted BCLB, using Texas as an example, is that the success was rigged by pushing children who tested poorly, often Latino ESL kids, out of school.
From Daily Kos: A sign of the times: Popular Science, the 141-year-old publication that’s one of my favorites to pick up at airports for in-flight reading, shut off comments on its website today. An important part of the decision was trolls and spambots, just like we struggle to keep in check through community moderation here at Daily Kos.
But there’s something else, too, about how people yelling nonsense skews the discussion away from science. Away from fact. Away from their mission, which is to promote science. Away from reality.
Republicans sure aren’t listening to Saint Ronnie Ray Gun today!! See? Yesterday I was telling you the truth about the absurd Republican wish list! I think that kid should never be allowed any control of anything again and thrown out of the House… and the Senate!!
Steve is right about the difference between past posturing and today’s Republican terrorism. Two years ago, I supported the idea of a 14th Amendment solution. I understand Steve’s objections, and agree with them, so Obama should resist that alternative, unless Republicans actually cross the line. In Saint Ronnie’s day, the Republican leaders still had moral authority. Today they have only moral deficit, and that, so great that it makes our fiscal deficit seem like small change in comparison. That should bring you up to date on the Republican debt ceiling crisis.
Cartoon:
Republicans have suggested bringing this back as civilian punishment.
Here is the twenty-ninth article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Republican Radio Host and Propagandist, Sandy Rios. She is honored for a a conspiracy theory so daft, that it proves she needs Cruz Control almost as desperately as Ted.
Yesterday, American Family Radio morning drive-time host Sandy Rios used the Westgate Mall shooting in Nairobi to promote birther lunacy. In the process, she pushed claims that have been debunked several times over–not that anyone who listens to AFR would know.
According to Rios, that reports of at least three Americans with ties to al-Qaeda raises staggering implications, given that "this is the country from where our president hails." She then doubled down, claiming that Obama’s cousin is former Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga, "a Muslim Communist." No, this isn’t snark–People for the American Way got a clip.
Odinga claimed back in December 2007, in the wake of the Kenyan presidential election, that he was Obama’s cousin. appeared to form the basis of a long-circulating email claiming that Obama and Odinga have long been in cahoots with each other, and that Obama even donated a million dollars to the Odinga campaign. Not so, says Snopes–which points out that Obama and Odinga are not biologically related and that at least one other candidate in the Kenyan election claimed to be related to Obama.
I’m writing for tomorrow, day 105. My gut has fully recovered, and the only ill effects from the bug that I still have is from the missed sleep. I’m fortunate. With those, I usually have Republicitis and need to spend hours on the throne. Tomorrow I’m meeting one of my friends, with whom I do volunteer work, for lunch, so on Saturday, I may have just an Open Thread, or nothing at all.
Jig Zone:
Today’s took me 3:24 (average 4:34). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Upworthy: Who would have thought that such a simple action can have such a profound effect on the level of happiness in our lives? Catch the setup in the first 30 seconds, the beauty of the experiment unfolding, the perfect moment at 4:25 that had me a bit choked up, and the best takeaway from it all at 6:25…
No wonder Republican politicians are such unhappy people that they feel the need to share their misery with us. They just have no gratitude for the people stupid enough to vote for them!
From The New Yorker: In what is being hailed as a rare example of bipartisan coöperation [sic], Senate Democrats and Republicans came together today on a near-unanimous vote to defund Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The measure, which shuts down all nonessential functions of Sen. Cruz, passed by a margin of ninety-nine to one.
As the final vote was announced this morning, Sen. Cruz’s microphone was unplugged and the Senate exploded with cheers on both sides of the aisle…
If only!!!!
From Daily Kos: Republicans haven’t officially unveiled their list of demands for raising the debt limit, but they are previewing them through leaks, and they are every bit as loopy as you’d expect:
House Republicans plan to demand major perks for coal companies and Wall Street banks, alongside healthcare and social service cuts and a one-year delay in the implementation of Obamacare, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling until the end of 2014, according to a source close to the House GOP leadership.
Among the other items on the GOP’s list [Propagandists delinked]: Tax reform on their terms, effectively eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Medicare means testing, blocking net neutrality, forcing approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, expanding offshore oil drilling, and, in the words of a GOP list of talking points: "Pretty much every jobs bill we have passed this year and last Congress."
Dang!! They expect THAT?!!? LOL!! That’s what smoking InsaniTEA will do!!
Anymore, a filibuster is an anti-American tactic used by Republican filibastards to prevent the majority from passing legislation much needed and supported by the American people. However, we now need a new term to describe attempts by a fools to appear heroic to stupid sheeple by pretending to filibuster, when they are not. I’m calling that a Phonybuster.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced Tuesday afternoon that he would launch a “speaking filibuster” in favor of defunding the Affordable Care Act until he is physically unable to stand.
Cruz’s speech is not technically a filibuster, as either way the Senate will vote tomorrow on the continuing resolution to keep the government from shutting down. Even though the vote will happen regardless of the length of his speech, Cruz vowed when he took the Senate floor, “I intend to speak in opposition to Obamacare, I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare, until I am no longer able to stand.”…
…Cruz stands nearly alone in his efforts to shut down the government unless President Obama agrees to defund health care reform. Manyother Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have scoffed at his plan, and even Fox News has tried to tell the Tea Party senator his plan is doomed. During the “filibuster,” Cruz compared his unlikely crusade against Obamacare to the first time men landed on the moon, joking, “The moon might be as intimidating as Obamacare!”… [emphasis added]
It’s all for show. He’s also trying to create a video library for 2016. When Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after Idiot seems sane, compared to him, it’s definitely time for a straight jacket. The Senate will amend the House CR to fund ObamaCare, probably make a few other changes, and send it back to the House as the Senate CR.
I disagree with both Lawrence and Rachel on one small point. They both say this is meaningless. Keeping the Senate open while Cruz blathers on to an empty chamber is a waste of enough taxpayer dollars to fund health care for several poor families. Even worse, the Senate could have used that time to pass meaningful legislation to meet America’s needs.
Yesterday, American Family Radio morning drive-time host Sandy Rios used the Westgate Mall shooting in Nairobi to promote birther lunacy. In the process, she pushed claims that have been debunked several times over–not that anyone who listens to AFR would know. 
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced Tuesday afternoon that he would launch a “speaking filibuster” in favor of defunding the Affordable Care Act until he is physically unable to stand.