It's good to be alive. This last July I underwent bypass surgery. I've worked hard at an eloquent and short description of the experience. “Beaten by baseball bats,” is the best I could imagine. It was a long summer. It surely is a strange world we live in. Christopher Hitchens died today. I won't forget him anytime soon. I too, should be dead, but because of medical science, I get to hang around for a while longer. I arrived late to the Hitchens experience. It wasn't until Jerry Falwell died that I first noticed Hitchens. I was lucky enough to find the interview on Youtube. I loved this:
Hitchens left me ablaze with schadenfreude.
Here's to Hitchens! The great seemed to be killed off early. Henry Kissinger lives on. Thank you for helping everyone stop the never ending kowtowing to ridiculous medieval philosophy.
On another note:
Christopher Hitchens made the astute observation on our ability to eliminate poverty being directly related to empowering women.
"One member of Michele's entourage talked about how he had visions, and that God spoke to him directly," recalled Denise Stephens, a parent who was opposed to the religious curriculum at New Heights. "He told us that as Christians we had to lay our lives down for it. I remember getting in the car with my husband afterward and telling him, 'This is a cult.'" - - - Matt Taibbi
Reporters need to start asking her questions like, “when God last spoke to you, what was he wearing?” or “Since it's well known that the Rapture has already happened, how does it make you feel to be left behind?”
A real question might be, “If you were asked by Jesus to do something against the U.S. Constitution, would you do it?”
I have mixed feelings about the whole “rapture” myth. Part of me is horrified that so many people believe such nonsense. The other part of me loves the idea of Christians being pulled into the vacuum of space. Things would be great without these batshit crazy nut balls.
I'm not sure about this, but this may be a picture of Bachmann as a child:
This is about the Republican character, the right-wing conservative mindset. It's about fear-based brains grasping for straws. There's a pathology that becomes brightly apparent upon a cursory evaluation of Republican criminal activity. For those that don't know, most criminals, when confronted with the evidence, will confess. Even the dumbest of criminals can recognize when they have no defense. Fear-based brains, not so much.
The pathology of apprehended Republican criminals: Lie, lie, lie. Even when facts clearly dispute your credibility, just lie. If, at all possible, point the finger at someone else. Deny ever breaking the law. Don't ever come clean. Delay, obfuscate, and politicize the trial to the bitter end.
Now on this powerless glide-path toward destruction is ex-U.S. Senator Jon Ensign of Nevada, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. It's true that not all the facts are out, so how can anyone be sure of how this train wreck will play out? Former Rep. Tom Delay – R, Texas, is a great example. For those unaware of the nuances of his trial, Tom was guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty. For nearly 100 years Texas law clearly states that corporations are not allowed to give money to candidates. As a former Texas legislator “The Hammer” from Houston knew this.
Tom Delay's case demands the question, can evidence against you be more substantial than a video tape of the crime being committed? The answer is, yes. Delay's was all on paper. More than that, the other men who signed the documents, creating the illegal PAC and paying out the money, confirmed that Delay tried to circumvent Texas law. They also testified that Delay knowingly laundered the money through the Republican National Committee. Ultimately Delay was convicted of money laundering. (3 years plus ten years of supervised probation after release.)
So, how guilty was he? Apparently, not guilty enough to ever admit his own guilt. On many occasions Delay pointed the finger at the Travis County D.A., for bringing the charges purely as a political vendetta. This went on for five years as Delay delayed his trial. As mandated by Texas law, only the Travis County District Attorney (in Austin) is burdened with policing Texas politicians. If the D.A. didn't bring charges against Delay, he himself could be charged with a crime. After being found guilty, during his allocution, Delay said to the Judge, “I don't feel like I did anything wrong,” and then claimed that the courts were criminalizing politics.
The Penis Pump Judge
Republican Judge Donald Thompson is another great example. 2006 was a bad year for the Oklahoma judge. Thompson knew his clerks had seen him naked beneath his judicial robes on several occasions, but the compulsion to enlarge his penis was too great. Weeks went by as members of the court heard a ‘wooshing’ sound coming from beneath the judge’s bench. Video tapes of the proceedings had recorded that sound. By the time Thompson was arrested the evidence was overwhelming, but it was the way he tried to lie his way out of it that best illustrates the pathology.
Channeling Austin Powers, Thompson first claimed the penis pump was a gag gift. He never used it. Most importantly, Thompson swore, by all that was holy, that he never once, not once, masturbated while on the bench. Be sure, Thompson made it clear, again and again. This was the mainstay of his defense. Not once! He would never do such a thing! Why, it was just ghastly to make such a accusation.
This went on for several months.
Cue the crime scene investigator: Your Honor, we took a look at your robes and underneath your bench. We hit it with a ultra-violet light and it lit up like someone has been shooting white neon paint balls. That’s right, semen stains fully illuminated the inside of his judicial robes. Same for the judges’ bench. If that wasn’t enough the prosecution went to the trouble of DNA testing the stains just in case another judge was sneaking into the court at night and masturbating his way around the room. Thompson would of been better off pleading a small penis. He received 4 years and a $40,000 fine.
Ego driven Senators
There is a built-in arrogance imbued to the ego of United States Senators. For those of the Republican Christian right wing, probably more so. Soon, federal prosecutors will have three huge egos entangled in a colossal mess of bad judgment, outright fraud, illegal pay-offs, corruption and a sex scandal. Every defendant and witness is white, rich and powerful with something to hide. Even before indictments have been handed down the lies are thick and transparent.
For T.V. detectives the job is easy when they have three suspects. Same is true in real life. Whoever throws their friends under-the-bus first wins a reduced sentence. No doubt this will happen, but if the pathology of ego driven republican politicians has anything to say about it, the case of Sen. John Ensign should be the longest criminal trial in the history of the United States of America. And how dare you demand the truth from these great upstanding men? Pass the popcorn.
My Christian friends get annoyed when I call their faith a 'death cult.' What better way is there to describe people who believe the experience of life is mostly about what comes next? Calling for the end of times, the return of Jesus H. Christ, has been the mainstay of Christianity, and yet, for some reason, most Christians want nothing to do with it. This is the story of how Pastor Harold Camping of Oakland, CA, has decreed our final day here on earth as May 21st, 2011. Hardly enough time to get right by Jesus. Is that silhouette on the billboard a man praying or a man pooping?
Christians today forget that end-of-days religious campaigns have been a mainstay of their faith. Why won't the Presbyterians get on board?
WILL THIS WIND
My favorite apocalyptic cult, by far, are the Jehovah's Witnesses. A cursory look at their track record for end-of-the-world prophesies read exactly like this Monty Python sketch. Founded in the late 1870's the Jehovah's Witnesses have declared the coming apocalypse for 1914, 1915, 1918, 1922, 1925, 1975. Almost every year, the God's final judgment is just around the corner. What is really weird about this Watchtower cult is that no one seems to know where the money goes. There are no J.W. / Watchtower charities. Good thing we all pay their taxes or they might go out of business.
I’ve been bitten with the morality bug. Up on my high horse, looking down at the state of things, I pass my moral judgments as if I was a god. Arrogance. Absolute arrogance, but I can’t seem to help myself.
Cruelty is wrong. It does not take a god to recognize cruelty as immoral, but I think this issue needs illumination if only because it’s not in the bible. Hurting other human beings for no reason is cruel. It shows a callous disregard for human life. A true lack of empathy.
I shouldn’t be surprised. The republicans have a long history of a callous disregard for human life. Pick any issue. Which way will the republicans vote? If the bill will make poor people poorer and/or make rich people richer - - that is how the republican party will vote. Will the bill deny rights to a minority? Mark the republican vote AYE.
I think it was Gandhi who said, “poverty is the worse kind of violence.” He was right. And yet, the republican party continues to dish out cruelty whenever they can.
Consider, we have enough food for everyone. We have enough clothing for everyone. We have enough materials to build homes for everyone. No other country on the planet will invade the United States. And, most importantly, you don’t have to believe in Jesus to do the right thing.
Two-thirds (2/3) of the prison population (over 2 million) are there for non-violent drug offenses costing us over $35,000 a year, each. Consider the cost of maintaining the current levels of law enforcement, the cost of the judicial system, and the cost of lives paid to maintain this war on drugs. Consider the cost inflicted upon our neighbors. For now Mexico is fighting our war.
Then consider what we would gain by ending the war on drugs. Instantly, world-wide terrorism would end. Drug money funds terrorist almost exclusively as does gangs. Go to the wiki page Gangs in the United States.
Since the FBI has leveled its gaze at worldwide terrorism, its mission has decreased the desire to fight the never-ending drug war. 2007 estimates place gangs at 30,000 with 800,000 active members. This has become a national security issue. And what do the republicans do? Nothing. They are happy to watch the poor and disenfranchised suffer. Cruelty is wrong.
When the republicans lost their minds over healthcare-for-all they also showed a callous disregard for human life. It is cruel to refuse medical treatment based on income. Other countries can do it. Why can’t we? Money, they say. We don’t have enough money, they say. That’s not true. That’s a lie. Truth is, they just don’t want to pay for it. They love their pennies more than the human life it could save. Cruel. Callous.
Planned Parenthood de-funding offers the republicans the chance hurt poor women. How can they resist? Knowing full well that abortions are usually done through medications now, this is a chance for republicans to deny women life saving medical procedures; to actually kill poor women. Why wouldn’t the republicans be for this? By definition this shows a callous disregard for human life.
Using my ultra-keen, ultra-conservative, ultra-atheistic, highly arrogant morality I hereby declare 46 percent of Mississippi republicans as racists. Why is this important? Slavery. I’ve been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War, again. Apparently, our country had to murder millions of each other in an effort to end the practice of total subjugation. Slavery.
Without a doubt in my arrogant mind, I deem slavery as immoral. Normal people don’t really look at such a statement as going out on a limb. Say it among Mississippi republicans and you might think different.
Thus is the plight of the republicans. Among their own they would reinstate slavery, place homosexuals in prison (if they didn’t execute them), deny healthcare to everyone but the richest elites, and take away the vote from women while subjugating them even further. Be mindful, they wouldn’t do it themselves. They’d outsource it to India.
And on we go into the Christian right-wing nugent center of the republican party as they continue to offer cover for worst of the worst. For years it has been evident that the Roman Catholic Church is a pedophile ring. This time, with 21 priests suspended in Philadelphia, the reality of a Christian NAMBLA is irrefutable. As usual the media covered it like a special interest piece; like an oddity; something unusual is happening in Philadelphia today.
How can this not outrage the public? How can anyone with a soul give money to the Catholic Church?
If we found out that employees at Walmart were raping children and that the Walmart executives, including the CEO, were helping their employees rape children, they would all be in handcuffs. The Pope and his clan of child rapists need to be arrested.
I came across a very useful website. It’s called: http://bishopaccountability.org/ Bishop Accountability .org. Wow. There it is. The entire Catholic pedophile ring, right there in one place.
A callous disregard for human life?* see: The Republican Party.
I joined in a rally for reproductive rights this afternoon. It was good to see so many people out. Using the FOX criteria for estimating crowd size, I'd put the turnout at just over 700,000. Using the Glenn Beck scale it was over 2 million.
My schadenfreude guru has been resurrected by thenational enquirer. Like a crack addict scoring a lifetime supply in a drug deal, schadenfreude has filled the pleasure center of my brain when it was reported that the happily married John Boehner was guilty of a sexual affair with two different women; Washington lobbyist Lisbeth Lyons and Leigh LaMora, the former press secretary to ex-Colorado Congressman Joel Hefley.
When republican Rep. Chris Lee resigned after placing his shirtless pic on Craig’s List, my schadenfreude was short lived. His quick resignation spiked the continuing story of what else he had done on Craig’s list. How mad were his real perversions that possible exposure calls for fleeing? Lee is a republican so imagining him to be into sadomasochistic animal necrophilia would be like beating a dead horse. Boehner of Orange
Crying as much as he does it’s not hard to wonder about the sanity of John Boehner. I’m convinced he’s an alcoholic. I think he’s drunk most of the day. It becomes very apparent if you’ve grown up around functional drunk lobbyists and politicians like myself. Overly emotional moments are just one of the signs. Drunken liaisons with power groupies are mandatory. Judging from his pallor, Boehner has been drinking orange flavored schnaps. It's not uncommon for closeted alcoholics to drinks schnaps in an effort to camouflage their breath.
Like a junkie needing his fix, I don’t think I could of sanely transversed the reality of the Bush administration without Keith Olbermann. Smart ass Olbermann was there with the facts about the naivety of the mildly retarded Dubya and his toy hammer of Christian justice, Dick Cheney. Don’t leave me for too long Keith. Sure, I can get a fix of rationality from Lawrence and Rachel, but it doesn’t taste the same. I find myself day dreaming that you and Janeane Garofalo ran away together; soon to be followed by Rachel Maddow is a spectacular three-way liberal love-fest. Leaving me with a huge ugly wart on the end of my cock named Chris Matthews. Oh, the horror. The horror.
It’s about justice!! To be tried as a black adult? How unfair is this? Scaggs is her only hope now. If it wasn’t for Brook Alverez on the fact zone, we may never have learned about this travesty of a sham of a shakedown of a travesty of a sham.
My doctor’s office is not far from the courthouse here in Austin, Texas. After my appointment I heard on the radio that Tom Delay was being sentenced after being found guilty of money laundering and giving corporate money to Republicans politicians. So, I drove over and watched the last of the trial. And there he was, in all his glory, the Houston pest control technician and former Republican leader Tom Delay. I was surprised the courtroom wasn’t full. There was plenty of sittin’ room.
I arrived during the weird defense of Delay's character. His attorney, Dick DeGuerin, was reciting all the great political wrangling Delay has done for Texas; the roads he built, saving NASA, bla, bla, bla. To me, being an exceptional politician doesn’t speak to his character; rather, the opposite seems true. Nothing out of the ordinary was said about the man.
During the breaks I couldn't help but notice he was smiling. His family was in tears, clutching each other thru the proceedings. It was that weird smarmy smile he carries that unnerved me. Also, he has an enormous head on a little stocky build. More elf-like than human.
During his alocution he argued that he really believed he did nothing wrong. (Not a smart move after being found guilty.) Not a word was said by his big head that he recognized his guilt. The facts of the case were damning. Why else would he launder the money thru the RNCC if he thought what he was doing was legal? His arrogance was insufferable. And, to my surprise, he even spoke to that. He told the judge that.. . “If I’m guilty of anything it’s arrogance. Which I like to call Texas cocky.” The judge smiled.
Delay also claimed that our society was “criminalizing politics.” A weird argument. Let’s be clear. Delay broke the law. Clearly. There was no ambiguity. Every politician has known, as did Delay, that giving corporate money to Texas politicians is against the law. Delay also claimed that his wife, who is suffering bad health, was suffering more because this trial has been looming over them for five years. Why “the hammer” would believe this was of concern to the court is strange. These were five years of Delay’s delays.
No one spoke to Delay’s real crimes against humanity. If you haven’t read the whole story on Delay check out. . . . The real scandal of Tom DeLay The following is the true story of Tom Delay: the man with a callous disregard for human life:
The real scandal of Tom DeLay
May 09, 2005
Forget the freebie trips across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Forget the casinos and the allegedly illicit contributions -- they represent only degrees of avarice.
To grasp the moral bankruptcy of the public Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, you only have to know about Frank Murkowski and Saipan.
Today, Frank Murkowki is the governor of Alaska, but from 1980 to 2002, he was a conservative Republican senator from Alaska.
How conservative? His voting record earned him zero ratings from organized labor's AFL-CIO and the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, and perfect 100s from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Conservative Union.
But as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Frank Murkowski became furious at the abusive sweatshop conditions endured by workers, overwhelmingly immigrants, in the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, of which Saipan is the capital.
Because they were produced in a territory of the United States, garments traveled tariff-free and quota-free to the profitable U.S. market and were entitled to display the coveted "Made in the USA" label.
Among the manufacturers that had profited from the un-free labor market on the island were Tommy Hilfiger USA, Gap, Calvin Klein and Liz Claiborne.
Moved by the sworn testimony of U.S. officials and human-rights advocates that the 91 percent of the workforce who were immigrants -- from China, the Philippines, SriLanka and Bangladesh -- were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed, Murkowski wrote a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.
So compelling was the case for change the Alaska Republican marshaled that in early 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill.
But one man primarily stopped the U.S. House from even considering that worker-reform bill: then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay.
According to law firm records recently made public, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, paid millions to stop reform and keep the status quo, met personally at least two dozen times with DeLay on the subject in one two-year period. The DeLay staff was often in daily contact with Abramoff.
DeLay traveled with his family and staff over New Year's of 1997 on an Abramoff scholarship endowed by his client, the government of the territory, to the Marianas, where golf and snorkeling were enjoyed.
DeLay fully approved of the working and living conditions. The Texan's salute to the owners and Abramoff's government clients was recorded by ABC-TV News: "You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system"
What a scum bag. Truly, “the hammer” is a sick twisted individual who deserves to go to prison. Three years is too short. Delay is out on bail pending appeal, but I hope some other prisoner will wipe that smile off his face when he is finally forced to do time in a pound-you-in-the-ass-prison. Good riddance.
