Dec 062015
 

Almost every week, Republicans join a competition to see who can say the most outlandish things, and in the process, they push the envelope on just how shameful InsaniTEA can become.  I trust that you will believe it, when I tell you that last week was no exception.

1206fiore

Nevada lawmaker posts festive, armed-to-the-teeth Christmas card.

Nothing says Christmas like a family cradling their firearms.

Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore captured the true meaning of Christmas with her 2015 family Christmas card, which she posted on Facebook this week. In it, every member of her clan above the age of toddlerhood is packing. And so many different kinds of weapons to choose from! There’s a Beretta, some Glocks, a Walther P22 for 5-year-old Jake, and for Michele, a Serbu Super-Shorty 12-gauge shotgun. Woohoo.

This marvelous public servant was a big supporter of wonderful, law-abiding Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. She told MSNBC, “Don’t come here with guns and expect the American people not to fire back.”

For the holidays, she went with a much sweeter tone. “It’s up to Americans to protect America,” her festive message said. “We’re just your ordinary American family.”

Oh, good God, no.   [emphasis added]

inserted from <Think Progress>

This is the Republican War on Christmas.  This is also only the fourth of five shameful moments from last week alone.  Click through for the other four.

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Dec 062015
 

I’m already in rush mode, so I’ll be brief.  Today is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  My Broncos meditate with the Chargers, but I can’t watch it.  Crying face The network is showing the Chiefs and Raiders instead.

Short Takes:

From Bernie Sanders: Say You Support Commonsense Solutions to Make Our Country Safer From Gun Violence

1. We can expand background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill. This is an idea that over 80% of Americans agree with, even a majority of gun owners.

2. & 3. We can renew the assault weapons ban and end the sale of high capacity magazines — military-style tools created for the purpose of killing people as efficiently as possible.

4. Since 2004, over 2,000 people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list have legally purchased guns in the United States. Let’s close the “terror gap” and make sure known foreign and domestic terrorists are included on prohibited purchaser lists.

5. We can close loopholes in our laws that allow perpetrators of stalking and dating violence to buy guns. In the United States, the intended targets of a majority of our mass shootings are intimate partners or family members, and over 60% of victims are women and children. Indeed, a woman is five times more likely to die in a domestic violence incident when a gun is present.

6. We should close the loophole that allows prohibited purchasers to buy a gun without a completed background check after a three-day waiting period expires. Earlier this year, Dylann Roof shot and killed nine of our fellow Americans while they prayed in a historic church, simply because of the color of their skin. This act of terror was possible because of loopholes in our background check laws. Congress should act to ensure the standard for ALL gun purchases is a completed background check. No check — no sale.

7. It’s time to pass federal gun trafficking laws. I support Kirsten Gillibrand’s Hadiya Pendleton and Nyasia Pryear-Yard Gun Trafficking & Crime Prevention Act of 2015, which would “make gun trafficking a federal crime and provide tools to law enforcement to get illegal guns off the streets and away from criminal networks and street gangs.”

8. It’s time to strengthen penalties for straw purchasers who buy guns from licensed dealers on behalf of a prohibited purchaser.

9. We must authorize resources for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study and research the causes and effects of gun violence in the United States of America.

10. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are over 21,000 firearm suicides every year in the United States. It’s time we expand and improve our mental health capabilities in this country so that people who need care can get care when they need it, regardless of their level of income.

 

Please join me, and click through to sign! Bernie is spot on!!

From TPM: The head of Oklahoma’s prison system, who presided over two botched lethal injections and a third that was called off because the wrong drug was delivered, announced his resignation Friday amid an investigation into what went wrong with the executions.

Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton said in a news release that he will resign effective Jan. 31, but will begin taking accrued leave on Dec. 25. He said he has accepted a position in Arizona to be closer to family.

While this murdering Republican may be incompetent, his resignation does not solve the problem. End state sponsored murder.

From Think Progress: Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. urged more students to carry guns on Friday, arguing that if the victims of Wednesday’s attack in San Bernardino, California were armed, they would have been able to protect themselves from the attackers.

“I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed them,” he said during the school’s convocation, before teasing the students about his own gun.

That’s the Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian solution: Assume that Muslims are terrorists and murder them.  Kill a Muslim for Republican Supply-side Jesus (the opposite of the real Jesus).

Cartoon:

1206Cartoon

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Dec 062015
 

It’s Sunday, with many of us heading off to church.  In more churches than we’d like, Christians will hear how evil Islam is.  But here’s an experiment done by a couple of pranksters from the Dutch internet show “Dit Is Normaal” (“This is Normal”) that shows we’re not so very different. 

[Islam] has been under huge scrutiny lately and is often [criticized] for being an aggressive religion… but what about Christianity? In this video we disguised a Bible as a Quran and read some of its most gruesome verses to the people. This is what they had to say.

It wasn’t a bit difficult to convince the people on the street that the violent, misogynistic, unforgiving passages were straight out of the Quran. 

Bible_v_Quran-Koran_Dutch-Prank

But what is heartening are their reactions when they learn that it’s actually from the Bible …

“WTF?!?”

“That’s just sick!  Really sick!!”

… And how objective they were in assessing their shock.

TWO BONUSES …

To save you all the time and trouble, I Googled the Bible passages they used so you don’t have to – with a few surrounding verses where appropriate:

(NOTE: They were all New International Version [NIV])

◄ Leviticus 26:15 ►

http://biblehub.com/leviticus/26-15.htm

15: and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant …

◄ Leviticus 26:29 ►

http://biblehub.com/leviticus/26-29.htm

29: You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.

◄ 1 Timothy 2:12 ►

http://biblehub.com/1_timothy/2-12.htm

 [11: A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness.

12: But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

[13: For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.]

◄ Deuteronomy 25:12 ►

http://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/25-12.htm

[11: "If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals]

12: then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity.

◄ Leviticus 20:13 ►

http://biblehub.com/leviticus/20-13.htm

13: If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

Second Bonus:

How well do you know your Bible?  Here’s a pretty tough quiz TEST with 50 questions.  Or you can skip it and just click the “Submit” button at the bottom to find the Answers.

I scored 22, and 15 is the average.  How did you do?

https://ffrf.org/legacy/quiz/bquiz.php

 

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Dec 062015
 

It has been a relatively busy day with 2 meetings at the church and set up for tomorrow's worship.  Tomorrow afternoon late, I will be heading up to visit my mother, which means I'll undoubtedly be very tired.  This coming week is already full of appointments as is the following week.  Sigh . . .

Puzzle — Today’s took me 2:38 (average 4:59). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes

The Nation —  With Utah’s ratification of the 21st Amendment to the Constitution on this day in 1933, the prohibition on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States ended. Long after most on the left had given up on the idea of Prohibition as a remotely liberatory policy, The Nation, under the ownership and editorship of lifelong teetotaler Oswald Garrison Villard (whose mother had warned him in his childhood never to touch strong drink) stuck by the idea, …

prohibition_cc_img

Orange County, California, sheriffs dumping out illegally made alcohol during a 1932 bust.(Orange County Archive) 

Well the temperance movement failed to get the country on its side.  But think of all the tax revenues that would have been foregone.  Dump prohibition and get tax revenues from sales, or keep prohibition, have bootleggers selling liquor, the government spending money to enforce prohibition, and receiving no tax revenue.  Nothing is ever quite that simple but . . .   I wonder if a similar system could work with marijuana, medicinal or recreational?

Mother Jones — HOW MUCH DOES gun violence cost our country? It's a question we've been looking into at Mother Jones ever since the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, left 58 wounded and 12 dead. How much care would the survivors and the victims' families need? What would be the effects on the broader community, and how far out would those costs ripple? As we've continued to investigate gun violence, one of our more startling discoveries is that nobody really knows.

Each year more than 11,000 people are murdered with a firearm, and more than 20,000 others commit suicide using one. Hundreds of children die annually in gun homicides, and each week seems to bring news of another toddler accidentally shooting himself or a sibling with an unsecured gun. And perhaps most disturbingly, even as violent crime overall has declined steadily in recent years, rates of gun injury and death are climbing (up 11 and 4 percent since 2011) and mass shootings have been on the rise.

Click through for the rest of the story.  Attempts to study gun related violence have been blocked by the NRA and gun activists through lobbying lawmakers.  It is time for that to end, but how?  It certainly won't happen with Republicans dominating the Congress.  And Democrats are not immune to NRA lobbying either.

The Hill — While the measure is complicated and largely unknown to the American public; if it passes into law it will significantly increase the influence of wealthy donors on elected officials. 

Under the current law, political parties are limited to spending $48,000 in coordination with candidates running for House seats, and varying amounts based on population for Senate candidates. 

But if McConnell gets his way, the parties would be allowed to spend as much as they please in coordination with the candidates. 

The upshot, says the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center’s policy director Meredith McGehee, is that donors would have “much closer proximity” to the lawmakers they want to influence. 

McConnell is at it again!  He's trying to make it even more unbalanced.  This time, he has a fight on his hands, but not just from the left.

Trendingninjas.com — Famous NRA member and rocker Ted Nugent has said that Donald Trump deserves a Medal of Freedom. He writes for the conservative site World News Daily and frequently expresses his extreme views. In one column he wrote: 
"Donald Trump is running strong in the early polls because Americans are fed up with the political status quo, especially from left-leaning GOP Fedzillacrats who want to feed us cow dung while telling us it's a cheeseburger."
Image title

In another Nugent said, "[Trump] should be given the Medal of Freedom for speaking his mind in such a bold, honest, and straightforward manner."

OK, you're thinking "Has she lost her marbles posting this?".  But I saw the headline "Celebrities Who Support Donald Trump" and I just had to look. When I saw the first one of 13, Ted Nugent, I started laughing.  The laughter continued even through the lies.  But one thing to note, there were no women amongst the so called celebrity personages.  Any wonder?

My Universe — Who hasn't experienced this type of situation before?  I think dad handled it well.

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Tis the Season?

 Posted by at 10:00 am  Politics
Dec 052015
 

Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree: A New Record for DC Cynicism?
“As Thomas Jefferson put it 200 years ago, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Right now is a good time to pay that price. Don't let the ultimate cynics in DC get their way: When leaders like Senator Warren ring the alarm, we all better answer.

tree13

"In token of the season, just to help you remember, here's this year's American Family Voices version of O Christmas Tree:
Oh, G-O-P, these Christmas trees,
are gifts you're soon exchanging
Down on Wall Street, these Christmas trees,
are gifts you're soon exchanging.
Lots of green when campaigns are here,
Also at budget time of year.
Oh, G-O-P, these Christmas trees,
on must-pass bills for spending.
Oh, G-O-P, these Christmas trees,
Take down the C-F-P-B.
Down on Wall Street, these Christmas trees,
Relax rules at S-E-C.
For every year these Christmas trees,
Bring bankers such joy and glee.
Down on Wall Street, these Christmas trees,
Such profits do they bring thee!
Oh, G-O-P, these Christmas trees,
reforms you're soon upending.
A symbol of your Big Bank love,
reforms you're soon upending.
Each spending fight,
Each budget bill,
Lobbyists take Capitol Hill
Oh, G-O-P, these Christmas trees,
are gifts you're soon exchanging.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/christmas-tree-oh-christm_b_8687648.html

Click on the link for more than you probably want to hear about why this is so fitting that is as grating on the nerves as how early we are inundated with holiday songs these days…

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Dec 052015
 

RepublicansOnParade2

Here is the eightieth article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Virginia resident Jack Eugene Turner. He is so honored for his Republican approach to race relations.

1205jackVirginia resident Jack Eugene Turner drew community outrage after he put up a racist, threatening display in his front yard—for which he was eventually charged and convicted of a felony:

Turner was arrested in June after he used a piece of rope to hang a dark-colored, life-sized dummy from a tree. Witnesses at his trial said the display was a response to an ongoing dispute he had with his next-door neighbors, who are black. They testified Turner had sent them strange notes and frequently flipped his middle finger at them and at their relatives, who also live on the street…

…“He stated that he was a racist and he did like black people but did not like n—–s,” Caldwell said in court. After his first arrest, witnesses said, Turner also started draping Confederate flags in his windows.

After he was found guilty, the judge let him free on bond with the condition he didn’t put up any other symbols or messages on his property. Apparently unable to control his racist rage, he is back in cuffs after putting up another heinous display:

On Tuesday, police said Turner was arrested for a second time after he put up a sign in front of his home that read “N—– lives don’t matter. Got rope?”

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

I have little add, except that  it’s hard to find a more accurate example of today’s Republican Party.

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Dec 052015
 

Yesterday the hospital pulled a fast one on me.  Although they have told me that they will mot discharge me until my bed arrives later this month, my insurance decided that I can rent a bed, while waiting for my bed to arrive, so they are discharging me next week.  I’m feeling a bit freaked, because there is so much I don’t know how to do.  I’m not confident that I’m ready.  I may be intermittent over the next few days, as I attend to the details.  I’ll keep you posted.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: A Missouri state representative has pre-filed a bill that would make it as difficult to buy a gun as it is to get an abortion. According to St. Louis Magazine, Democratic State Rep. Stacey Newman’s bill would “require anyone buying a gun to follow the restrictions required of women seeking abortions, including a 72-hour waiting period.”

Newman is a longtime advocate for common-sense gun laws, and also a pro-choice activist, which makes her a fish out of water in the predominantly right-wing-Republican Missouri legislature, where she is regularly subjected to jeers, sneers and outright insults. Still, she has courageously drafted House Bill 1397.

Kudos to Stacey Newman! Click through for the details of her bill.

From NY Times: Only hours after news broke that a suspect in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., had a Muslim name, the well-practiced organizations that represent American Muslims to the broader public kicked into action, as they routinely do after each terrorist attack attributed to Muslim extremists.

They issued news releases condemning the attacks as inhuman and un-Islamic, posted expressions of grief on Facebook and held news conferences in which Muslim leaders stood flanked by American flags alongside clergy of other faiths and law enforcement officials.

“Groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda,” Salam al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said at a news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday, “are trying to divide our society and to terrorize us. Our message to them is we will not be terrorized and we will not be intimidated,” either by the terrorists or, he said, “by hatemongers who exploit the fear and hysteria that results from incidents like this.”

But the message is apparently not getting through. Muslims and leaders of mosques across the United States say they are experiencing a wave of death threats, assaults and vandalism unlike anything they have experienced since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

Authentic Muslims are not responsible for the terrorist acts of extremists , who twist Islam to suit their own hateful agendas, in the same way that authentic Christians are not responsible for the terrorist acts of Republicans, who twist Christianity to suit their own hateful agendas.

From Alternet: Cops Turn Off Body Cams Before Killing Man, Witnesses Watch Them Plant Gun and Drugs

Witnesses say they watched in disbelief as cops killed a man, then planted a gun and drugs ‘within arms reach’ of his lifeless body.

Click through. Another day, another murder committed by Republican racist police.

Cartoon:

1205Cartoon

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Everyday Erinyes

 Posted by at 9:16 am  Politics
Dec 052015
 

More incidents which seem to me to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with. Just as a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

Last week there was a shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs.  One activist who serves and has served as a Clinic Escort called it out as domestic terrorism.  Then –

"A stunning number of Twitter cretins accused me—& maybe you?—this weekend of 'making up' the US anti-abortion violence problem.  My next 100 tweets will be the citations they needed—from 4 decades of antichoice violence, near-misses, threats & incitements."

Using the hashtag #is100enough, she continued "My hashtag is also my question: If 100 examples won't convince you that antichoice violence is real, how many do you need?  I included a sampling of arsons & firebombs in my list. They're threats, they're dangerous—& often a middle step in escalation.  So miss me with derailing on how OMG THAT BOMB DIDN'T HURT ANYONE DOESN'T COUNT."

Calling herself just "Clinic Escort," she then proceeded to list 100 anti-abortion terrorist events, from "3/1976: Joseph Stockett commits the 1st reported abortion clinic arson at a Eugene, OR PP—not his last." through "11/24/15: Repeat clinic vandal at Louisville clinic, 1 day after jail release on condition he stay away."  For good measure, she throws in a few examples of how officials simply will not take anti abortion violence seriously.  "Operation Rescue had a saying: 'If you believe abortion is murder, act like it's murder.' Now, what could that possibly mean?"  "In 1984 FBI head William Webster said antichoice violence wasn't terrorism—wasn't a priority. His negligence fueled escalation."  "Last month, FBI's James Comey said criticism of cops could grow crime—where's his denunciation of antichoice 'murder' rhetoric?"  She also pointed out that 100 incidents was a mere scratch of the surface.  "That's all. But that's not all. I left SO MUCH OUT."

It just never quits, does it?  Alecto, if you click through, you will find a goodly number of individual names to start on.  But you will also find groups, and that will lesd to more names, and more.  I would not be surprised if you needed to bring up reinforcements.  It's not obviously her thing, but La Llorona might be available – she was all in favor of wanted children.

When I look at the phrase "vengeful destruction," I tend to think of "getting back" at someone.  You know, "an eye for an eye" (which in time, of course, makes the whole world blind).  But, of course, vengefulness can also be more precautionary.  As an opera lover, I'm familiar with the Italian word "vendetta," which can actually mean revenge, as in Rigoletto.  But then there's MacBeth, where it seems instead to mean getting them (in this case Banquo's descendants) back first. 

And then there's pure meanness.  Which seems to be the case with Johnny Mount of Mississippi.  From Raw Story:

"An enraged Waffle House customer shot and killed a waitress early Friday who asked him not to smoke.

"Police said Johnny Mount was eating about 1 a.m. at the restaurant in Biloxi, Mississippi, when he lit a cigarette, reported WLOX-TV.

"A waitress asked the 45-year-old Mount to put out the cigarette or smoke outside, and he began arguing with her.

"Police said Mount then pulled out a 9 mm handgun he had concealed under his shirt and shot the 52-year-old waitress in the head.

"She was taken to a nearby hospital but died from her wounds.

"Mount was arrested as he tried to leave the restaurant and has been charged with first-degree murder.

"He remains held on $2 million bond."

BTW, smoking in restaurants and other enclosed public spaces is against Mississippi law.  Maybe he was just trying to take out a witness.  Yeah.  Right.

He's all yours, Tisiphone.

Megaera is the Fury associated with "grudging."  I associate that with an attitude of "I've got mine, screw you."  But there's no reason "I can do whatever I want because I'm so special, screw you" can't also be grudguing.

As The Free Thought Project reports, Bill Furay is the head of the DEA's office in Beaumont, Texas. 

"For many years, Furay styled himself the implacable scourge of drug dealers, becoming a familiar presence at triumphant DEA press conferences announcing mass arrests and seizures of contraband and proceeds."  I'll spare you the details of Operation Blood Loss and Operation Agent Orange.  But they did take out the Pineda organization and a whole lot of meth and coke.

Ah well.  "Taking out a drug syndicate is an exercise in futility akin to baling (sic) out the Pacific Ocean with a thimble. When the DEA 'decimated' one narcotics syndicate, all they did was create an opportunity for another one to fill it. While Furay was busy with sting operations, controlled buys, and self-aggrandizing press conferences, he apparently neglected to supervise his young daughter Sarah, who was arrested at her College Station home on November 8 and faces a variety of narcotics-related charges."

Apparently, "(P)olice found '31.5 grams of packaged cocaine, 126 grams of high grade marijuana, 29 "ecstasy" tablets, methamphetamine and 60 doses of a drug similar to LSD' in Sarah Furay’s bedroom. They also reported finding two digital scales, packaging materials, and a handwritten drug price list. Police also found text messages in her phone discussing drug transactions. Miss Furay faces at least three felony charges that could – and, given the renowned severity of the Texas justice system, ordinarily would – result in long prison time: The aggregate maximum sentence would be 215 years behind bars and a $30,000 fine."

That terrifying prospect notwithstanding, the winsome Miss Furay can be seen smiling broadly in her booking photo, which has been called the “happiest mugshot in America.” After spending a day in jail, the 19-year-old, referred to in press accounts as an “adorable drug kingpin,” posted $39,000 bond and was released.

"Having a mom and dad with well-established positions within departments of law enforcement and education certainly doesn’t hurt when it comes to getting your drug-dealing ass out of jail."

Owing to her privileged status, Sarah Furay has a very good chance to escape the ruinous punishment that would be inflicted on most defendants in her situation. There is a strong possibility as well that her less-than-admirable life choices reflect the fact that her father was too busy putting other people’s children in prison to give his own daughter the parental attention she needed.

And her name even looks like "Fury"!  Have fun, Megaera, with her – and her father.

 

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