So True

Been There

Bat Shit Crazy: U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (A Reminder)

Just thought I'd throw this great caricature up here. Every time I hear her on the news it's always something so wacky it sounds like a satirical send-up of wingnuts. She's part of the Beck/Family/Palin right so despite being batshitcrazy she may very well stay in office because they know how to speak code to the lunatic religious fringe while merely coming off as sincere and poorly spoken to the idiot middle of American voters.

Hanging Death of Census Worker Ruled Suicide

It would appear that census worker Bill Sparkman faked his own murder. Truly excellent thread here* on this subject with great arguments and tons of links. Multiple law agencies agree he staged this, taping his hands shoulder length apart so he could complete the plan, wrote from the bottom to the top, taped his glasses to his face, was able to stand, and had just taken out two large accidental death insurance policies on himself. And there was no other DNA or other forensic evidence at the scene than his.

There are a few conspiracy grumbles but without massive collusion between several different crime labs, police forces, etc. on what they knew was going to be a closely watched case none of them holds up. Sometimes desperate people do really desperate things.

The only thing this negates about my rant on this subject is the name of the person killed/building bombed. More awful things will happen spurred on by the vast right wing echo box.

The original story has gone from scary to sad. I guess that's an improvement?

*Thanks, John.

The Milky Way

So when you look up at the night sky in a really dark place like in a desert the number of stars is simply overwhelming. Now with the aid of really good telescopes and digital technology, over 3,000 pictures of the entire night sky have been stitched together to display this incredible mosaic. Here* is a zoomable version that lets you see stars not visible to the human eye. Pick a dark spot and zoom in, for instance the lower right hand corner. Amazingly enough there are thousands of points of light, mostly red. Almost all of these are extremely distant Galaxies which are collections of billions of stars. Billions of stars in each galaxy. The bright band across the full picture is our view of the Milky Way from inside. Again, billions of stars.

So what kind of god makes a universe of this magnitude and age just to fuck with some humans and test their belief? A True Believer knows from the Bible that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around the earth. They are not allowed to question.

via
*This site is slow to load but worth the wait.

Incitement 4 - Rape - Beck, Limbaugh, Savage, Boortz, Steele

First seen on the Rachel Maddow Show. more

KKK Booed off Ole Miss Campus

Apparently the little group of bigots was inaudible above the shouts of the students. The above video starts midway but reports are the Klan members left after less than 10 minutes. They march out at around 7:00 in the vid. Kudos for the kids though it seems a shame these bastards were given a large police escort in riot gear. Let the hateful bastards fend for themselves. I bet the African American soldiers at the school might like to teach them a thing or two about supremacy.

One thing I heard, "This shit pisses me off [inaudible] it will be all over CBS ... Ole Miss." I hate to tell ya, buddy, but there's a big bunch of Ole Miss sports fans that agree with the Klan. Open your eyes to the world outside your campus. Every Confederate flag bumper sticker, t-shirt, or beer huggie is another bit of that good ole Deep South rot and hate.

Incitement 3 - Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8

"Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8"

There’s a new slogan making its way onto car bumpers and across the Internet. It reads simply: "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8"

A nice sentiment?

Maybe not.

The psalm reads, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office."

Presidential criticism through witty slogans is nothing new. Bumper stickers, t-shirts, and hats with "1/20/09" commemorated President Bush’s last day in office.

But the verse immediately following the psalm referenced is a bit more ominous: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." more

Incitement 2 - Bill O'Reilly against Dr. Tiller

OK. So, I'm the fascist, I'm the bad guy, I'm the problem. Not Tiller. No, he -- no, no, no. He's a good guy. Now, Tiller's pumping all kinds of money into obviously the attorney general race. He wants the guy that's gonna let him off the hook to win. Those of you listening in Kansas, you ought to know that. You know, I don't -- I'm not gonna tell you who to vote for. You guys know these guys better than I do, but I tell you what, anything Tiller wants, I'm voting the other way. And if I could get my hands on Tiller -- well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech. But despicable? Oh, my God. Oh, it doesn't get worse. Does it get worse? No
--Bill O'Reilly

Right Winger's Guide to International Etiquette

Pre-Existing Condition

Incitement 1 - Limbaugh Incites Terrorism

Those of the far right have been inciting their lunatic followers (the McVeighists) to violence for years now, but the din of wingnut pundits has never been so loud or continuous as it is today. Some examples of what I consider to be incitement would be Bill O'Reilly's ruthless verbal attacks on Dr. Tiller which led to his death, Glenn Beck crying about how "we" need to "take our country back," and (in addition to his already vociferous and vile attacks on immigrants) Lou Dobbs's howling accusations that an illegal alien tried to assassinate him (thus inciting his gun crazy, xenophobic, racist followers to protect him). To me this all echoes the propaganda campaign that resulted in Kristallnacht; an increasingly vitriolic rhetoric composed of inuendo and belief, attribution of all negatives to the opponent even if the negative is a result of their actions, inventing facts to fit their argument, and inventing incidents that prove the guilt of the enemy. It doesn't take a lot of armed zealots to fuck things up in a big way.

So I will now begin a list of language that I consider to be an incitement to violence. Each post in this series will be named "Incitement #" and will link back to here. When I have time I will go into the past and dig up some specific language for the above examples as well as other examples.

We begin this series with the King of Hate:

...what's happening here -- this is an in-our-face weakening of our security, which means that if a civilian target is hit again, particularly New York City, Obama is toast. He's done. The American people will tolerate a lot, but not a grotesque mishandling of security based on a contempt for your own country. -- Rush Limbaugh 11-16-2009

This sounds to me like he's prodding someone out there to hit a civilian target. There are more McVeighists out there than we care to think about.

Screw Apple

Fucking brilliant:

Charlie Brooker in the Sydney Morning Herald:
I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's grim, it's slow, everything's badly designed and nothing works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn't change it for the world, because I'm an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life... -Better the broken Windows than life with the Mac monks

Lou Dobbs, Will He Rise Again?

I don't think very highly of Lou Dobbs. He's an angry, opinionated bigot with a cable television show. Since the 70's he has moved from a poverty advocate and young journalist to a xenophobic, creationist, birther

As of today he no longer has a job at CNN. I'm sure this is in large part due to his hateful attitude, big angry mouth, racist talk, and wingnut beliefs like supporting the "birther movement."

The problem is that this won't shut him up. He still has a radio show. It is vaguely reported that he may be moving to Fox Noise. I guess it will make it even easier for him to be ignored but in a way it will amplify his angry, hateful message to the True Believers out there. Are people like him still listened to just because they're listened to? Does being a celebrity make increasingly offensive and ignorant opinion still worth attention? More importantly, what value do people like him actually bring to our society that warrants the astonishing amount of money they are paid?

Odd that this video ties nicely into the preceding post about Glenn Beck as well as our boy Lou Dobbs:

The Born Identity

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It's All His Fault!

Another Reason to Hate the South

After living in Savannah, Georgia for a year, the stupidity of Southerners is no surprise to me. I'm perhaps more surprised at the Midwest numbers which I would have expected to be closer to even (I'm not sure if they're counting Kentucky in the Midwest or South). Can the GOP widen their appeal to more than just the ignorant bigots that support them now? Do they even realize their support is now limited to inbred southern whites? Or have they gone so far down the path of whoring to the ultra-right wing zealots of the country that they have begun believing their own rhetoric? This is, after all, the party that called a fraction of a percent, hotly contested victory "a mandate." More than a few times I heard Republicans refer to Bush's "election" as a vote by "the vast majority of Americans." The last I heard, 50.2% is not a "vast majority" of anything. Personally I'm just fine with the GOP continuing to become further right, more white, and more stupid. Now if the Democrats would just grow some balls and get to work.

[I posted this a few weeks ago on Facebook before I realized it's a worthless forum for political musings. I prefer to type to myself.]