Friday Reads
Posted: November 30, 2012 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: crazy Ken Cuccinelli, Fox Faux Wars, Republicans, witch hunts 35 Comments
Good Morning!!!
Well, the brain of Fox Propaganda network is all on wars these days. First, there’s a “war on white men” and of course, women–those emasculating bitchy feminists–are in charge of it all. The Colbert Report has a nice send up of this side splitter.
Women are far more interested in getting married than men, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center .
But who’s fault is the discrepancy? Last night, Stephen Colbert teamed up with his buddy at Fox News, Suzanne Venker, to explain why the sisters are doing it to themselves.
With biting irony, Colbert praises Venker’s argument, which claims that since the sexual revolution “men haven’t changed much …. but women have changed dramatically. In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive.”
Plus, as Colbert can testify firsthand, men want to work out of the house, pushing paper for the Man while crammed into a tiny cubicle.
“What man wants the woman to provide the money while the man stays home to do what? Witness his child take the first steps? I’ve witnessed people walk before, and frankly babies aren’t that good at it,” said Colbert.
And yes, it’s time for Bill O’Reilly to reignite the War on Xmas. If only it were true! It would be great to go to the store without having your senses assaulted by songs, sales, and crap related to national Crass Consumerism Season, wouldn’t it? Yes, atheists are stopping xmas celebrations all over the country!! It’s a huge atheist conspiracy!!! Plus, O’Reilly doesn’t understand the first amendment issues surrounding it at all since christianity is just a philosophy! Tear down those philosophical nativity scenes in front of all those churches, gawddammit!
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly was more than happy to bloviate about the topic on Wednesday’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” getting into a near shouting match with David Silverman, president of American Atheists.At first, things started out cordial between the two as they discussed “this year’s Christmas controversy situation.”
“You’re an atheist, a nonbeliever, and I respect that, that’s fine. I don’t look down on you,” O’Reilly told Silverman. But later, after Silverman attempted to define what O’Reilly cared about, the caustic commentator characterized Silverman’s point of view as “insane” before flat out calling him a “fascist.”
Interestingly enough, during the course of the interview, O’Reilly also said, “It is a fact that Christianity is not a religion. It is a philosophy.”
So there you have it. Bill O’Reilly calls the leader of an atheist organization a “fascist” over “philosophical”—but not religious—differences.
Yes, it’s an atheist, fascist, philosophical kinda conspiratorial war thing!
So, just when you think the crazy can’t get any crazier … you find out that it’s DEMON sex that makes one gay! Wow! Isn’t scientific inquiry wonderful? Out, out damn demons! Quit making all people gay with your bad, bad demon sex!
The reigning scientific consensus on sexual orientation is that it’s an inherited, biological trait, but that’s just because scientists don’t know how to party. A far sexier explanation has been offered up by Christian magazine Charisma, which conducted its own investigation into the origins of homosexuality to reveal the real culprit: sex with demons.
“Can demons engage in sexual behaviors with humans?” the magazine asks. Why yes, they can! At least according to the article’s primary source, a former stripper-turned-ministry leader named Contessa Adams. Adams shares her decades-long struggle with demon sex, sparing no horrible, sexy detail …
Hey, just tell your parents a Demon made you do it!!!
So, more irrelevant Republicans are making pronouncements about fiscal policy. Newt Gingrich thinks the Congressional Republicans should not negotiate with the President since Republicans are the majority. Is it just me or are Republicans just really bad at math? Seventeen Republican Congressmen out the door in 2 years and we say hello to Speaker Pelosi again. All it takes is 25 House Republicans right now to wake up and care about the country.
“One of the things I would say to House Republicans is to get a grip,” Gingrich said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.
“They are the majority. They’re not the minority,” he said, enunciating the words as if explaining the concept to someone who did not understand it. “They don’t need to cave in to Obama; they don’t need to form a ‘Surrender Caucus.’”
“So my number one bit of advice to the congressional Republicans is simple: Back out of of all of this negotiating with Obama. The president is overwhelmingly dominant in the news media. You start setting up the definition of success finding an agreement with Obama, you just gave Obama the ability to say to you, ‘Not good enough,’” Gingrich said.
The onetime presidential hopeful ridiculed the idea of the fiscal cliff, saying it was a manufactured crisis.
Rushie Limbaugh–who makes tons of money off of stupid–tells the Republicans to just walk away too. I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t know that the deal cut by republicans that caused the fiscal cliff deadline hurts them worse than it hurts the dems. Tax rates go back up to the Clinton years and we get a big ol’ fat cut in military spending. Hey, I’m just fine with that. The question is why are Mr. Limpballs and the Newt? Perhaps its because they’re part of the right wing outrage entertainment business and they’re probably out shorting US equities as I write this.
Would somebody explain to me how the people who elected Obama, who support Obama, who love Obama in the media, in the universities, who write the history, are going to write anything critical of the guy no matter what happens? Even if there is a second term recession, you’re gonna need a telescope to find it reported, just like you need a telescope to find Oprah’s network now. It won’t be reported as a recession. So what is the leverage that the Republicans have? To my mind the only leverage they’ve got is to walk away from this, to stop playing, to stop talking, to stop playing this game.
The Republicans lost. Now, they still control the House of Representatives but Boehner still runs the show there. But the only leverage that I can see that they’ve got is to back out of this and make sure that whatever happens, they don’t have any fingerprints on it. I know what you’re saying, and you’d be right. You’re saying, “But, Rush, but, Rush, no matter what the Republicans do, they’re gonna get blamed for it.” Yes, totally true. No matter what happens. If there is a reported recession, in fact, it will be said to be the Republicans in the House fault. No matter what happens, that’s going to be said, and no matter what happens, as we sit here now, the American people, the majority of whom, are gonna believe that.
So back out of this and make sure you don’t have any fingerprints on this at all. “But, Rush, but, Rush, aren’t your fingerprints going to be on it if you back out? Couldn’t the case be made that Republicans backing out and letting Obama have his way is, in effect, allowing this transformation to happen, can’t you say there would be fingerprints there?” Yes. But I’m telling you there’s another aspect to this that Obama is attempting to pull off here, and if the Republicans aren’t careful, it’s going to happen. Not only is he not worried about a recession in the second term, ’cause even if there is one, it will not be reported as such.
Part of Obama’s transformation of America is wiping out the Republican Party. And anyone who fails to understand that that is also part of Obama’s agenda at this moment, anybody who fails to understand that is really not paying attention and is too caught up in traditional conventional wisdom about, “Well, it was just another election. Well, yes, Obama won. Yes, we marshaled our forces, but we need to stand for pro-growth policies and all that rotgut.” Yes, we do. There’s no way we’re ever gonna be tied to pro-growth policies if our fingerprints are on this coming disaster.
For the life of me, I cannot in any way shape or form figure out what is wrong with these people. I just see vendettas and personal power grabs. As Harry Reid said yesterday: “I don’t understand John Boehner’s brain”. I swear they all must be sots like Boehner.Even the normally reasonable Republicans seem bonkers these days. I think they’ve all just gone nuts on ODs. They’re not even making sense. Susan Collins has decided that a Secretary of State or UN Ambassador should never go on a Sunday Show because it’s too “political”. John McCain and Lady Lindsey Graham think that giving misinformation on Sunday Shows–like say, Saddam Hussein definitely has massive amounts of WMDS and deserves to have his country invaded because of them--should be removed from consideration for any office.
Here’s a good example of crazy from Senator Jim Inhofe: Benghazi Will ‘Go Down As The Biggest Coverup In History’. Obviously, he’s forgotten the Iran-Contra affair which would have been a whopper had our president not been so damned senile during his last term. Then, there’s Watergate and oh, the crap they made Colin Powell tell the UN about Iraq. But, oh, no …Benghazi is a cover up and the worst.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) on Wednesday made a strong claim about the Obama administration’s handling of the Sept. 11 anniversary terrorist attack on an American compound in Benghazi, Libya, declaring that it was a conspiracy of historic proportions.
“This is gonna go down as the biggest coverup in history,” Inhofe predicted during an appearance on Fox News. “The administration deliberately covered this up and misrepresented what happened in Benghazi.”
He later stood by his claim when pressed by Fox News’ Bill Hemmer.
Does having black people in office make these guys lose their marbles? How do they all seem to have such a tenuous grasp on reality? Is it they see that the 1950s or the 1850s are finally gone? WTF is it with these folks? They LOST. THEY LOST. They lost by A LOT!!!
What can you do with pretzel logic like this? Republican Rep. Chris Gibson says he won’t be bound by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist’s pledge not to support any tax increases because his congressional district number changed. Yup, the pledge only was good for one set of geography and not the new one.
I wish that I was a world famous fantasy or SF author so that you could think this was all satire, or Huxley-like, or some kind of dysfunctional dystopia novel, but it ain’t and I’m not. This is the ONE of TWO political parties that call the policy shots in our country. Nope, Republican office holders have turned our country into the Great Zombie Wasteland. They are all completely delusional.
And, now for yet another result of Fox convincing all the white men of Angry White Menistan to think the country is against them … one more old angry white man shoots a young black teenager.This time its about loud music coming from a car in a convenience store parking lot. He’s going all in for the Stand Your Ground defense. Yes, this is the dysfunctional dystopian American created by the likes of the Southern Strategy, the repeated meme that some foreigner stole the presidency, and there are wars on Xmas, Guns, and White Men. Don’t like some one’s music? Shoot now and say you saw a gun later. Don’t ever think we solved a lot of this with the the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. We’re taking their freedom to stomp us all under their boots. Seventeen year old Jordan Davis is dead because some drunk white dude felt put out by a car stereo in a parking lot.
In what could become another test of Florida’s broad self-defense law, a software developer charged with killing a Jacksonville teenager said he reached for his gun and fired eight rounds only after he was threatened with a shotgun.The suspect, Michael Dunn, 45, of Satellite Beach, was arrested Wednesday on charges of second-degree murder and attempted murder.
Dunn told his lawyer that the victim, Jordan Davis, 17, who was parked at a convenience store in Jacksonville on Friday night with three other teenagers, pointed a shotgun at him through a partly rolled-down window, threatened to kill him and began to open the door. The shooting occurred after a dispute over loud music coming from the teenagers’ sport utility vehicle.
Davis, a junior at a Jacksonville high school who had moved from Georgia two years ago to live with his father, died after being shot twice.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said officers had not found a shotgun in the car.
Dunn and his fiancee, Rhonda Rouer, fled the convenience store in his Volkswagen Jetta after the teenagers left because he was afraid they would return, his lawyer, Robin Lemonidis, said. He did not call the authorities; the police arrested him the next day, finding him because a witness noted his license plate number.
This is what we get when folks like Limpballs, Jim Imhofe, Susan Collins, Bill O’Reilly, the Lady Lindsey, McGrumpy and the lot of those so-called conservatives lie their customers into angry paranoia.
Susan Rice. Eric Holder. Van Jones. Lisa P. Jackson. Valerie Jarrett. Shirley Sherrod.
What do these folks have in common?
They are all black public servants appointed by Obama and witch hunted by Republicans on completely bogus story lines. Sixty Six percent of that list are also women.
How much crazy do we have to put up with? You’d have think the last election would’ve told Republicans something loud and clear but it obviously didn’t. Some people never learn.
Meanwhile, Fox says there is no war on women and Mississippi is one JUDGE away from ensuring women can’t access their constitutional right to abortion. Virginia Republicans are likely to nominate Ken Cuccinelli, Va. Attorney General for Governor next year.
IN THREE YEARS as Virginia’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli II (R) has demeaned his office by using it as a blatantly partisan bully pulpit to attack Obamacare, illegal immigrants, homosexuals and climate-change scientists. Now he has managed to bully Virginia’s Board of Health into a stance — unprecedented in state history — that could force most of the commonwealth’s 20 or so abortion clinics to close.
The fight is not over yet. Not by a long shot. Some constitutional rights are more equal than other. Two legs good. Three white legs better. What is on your reading and blogging list?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Great post, and were is Fox condemning Chick-fil-a on the chicken chains war on xmas. Remember, their christmas ad has Happy Holidays on it.
It’s about time the pagans took the solstice back from the Roman Empire and the Mithras Cult took December 25th and the holy night story back from the same. This gets so old.
Here, here! It’s about time that history reasserted itself! I’m all for it. Not that I think it would convince most of the fundies, but if the Romans could usurp centuries of pagan worship to turn it into pablum for the masses, then why can we not follow their road maps and turn the tables on the newer religions that used pagan rituals and history. Today it’s called plagerism.
I don’t know how in the world people listen to Limpdick 12 hours of the day, they really get to me. Let the republicans walk away……….the taxes will go up to 39.6%, and ain’t nothing they can do about it when it happens.
And capital gains will go from 15% to 20%, and since most of the income of the top 0.01% comes from investment income and not earned income, that will have more impact than 35% to 39.6% regular tax increase.
Whew that list of Rethuglican crazies and their insane pronouncements just grows and grows every day. Frankly I hope they keep it up – eventually a light bulb might go off in some Fox-watchers’ heads.
O’Reily is an idiot. I’m an atheist and I am going to put up my Christmas tree this weekend. I have an extensive collection of vintage glass tree ornaments. I am also going to buy presents for a few close friends and relatives and we’re going to have a big Christmas dinner. I’ll bet there are millions like me who aren’t Christians but who do the Santa Claus thing. I also believe Jesus was a real human being but not divine. I only wish Christians would actually follow his teachings.
Amen.
What NW Luna said!
“I only wish Christians would actually follow his teachings.”
They’d prefer to follow the teachings of Saul/Paul, harsh, unforgiving, misogynist who didn’t know jesus (if jesus even existed) I’ve wondered for many years why most christians even bother to call themselves followers of christ, they should call themselves followers of Paul or Paulians.
My thoughts exactly. When I used to go to bible school and all that I always considered the new testament to be the gospels and it ended there. I saw no use for the rest of it other than to put people into slavery and keep them there. I was a kid at the time too. If I could figure out most of that was claptrap and my daughters did too at roughly the same age, I keep wondering wtf is wrong with every one else? Who could take all that contradictory stuff literally?
But, basically the bible as we know it was put together by the Nicene Council to make sure Roman slaves and Roman conquered territory became Roman. It’s a propaganda tool from the 4th century.
I am also an atheist, and for every year of my children’s life I bought a samhain ornament so they could decorate their own tree when they got of age. Of course, I lean toward the matriarchial pagan customs, so to me it was a natural progression while still letting my children pass as Xians if they so chose. They didn’t, yet we still put up a tree, decorate and celebrate the coming together of family – it’s a pagan ritual after all. Seems that the Xians are worried about losing their grasp on their rituals, which have been stolen from many other preceding rituals. I don’t care – with us it’s about family, not about a manufactured tale and a manufactured consumer cesspool.
Santa Claus can exist without any connection to religion. For instance, in the rather atheist Soviet Union there was a Santa-like bearded old man, who left presents under the decorated New Year’s tree (rather than the Christmas tree, because there no Christ in Soviet Union). But since new years are counted from the birth of Christ, whether you believe in him or not, the communist Christ-less Christmas wasn’t really that different from the Christian Christmas.
Hostess lays off 18,000 workers but can pay big bucks to corporate officers.
WTF is wrong with that judge?
What’s almost always wrong in these cases? The judge is acting to protect his peers, the owners, while screwing over the peasants. This is easy since the judge probably doesn’t count any peasants among his friends but does count the wealthy as his people.
Moron GOP Governor Blames Teenagers For His Failed Abstinence Only Sex Ed Policy Instead Of His Own Anti-Science Policy http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/11/30/1264421/mississippi-teens-care-birth-control/ …
“Don’t try and cover up” evidence of evolution & “make like everything was 6,000 years.” — Pat Robertson, amazingly http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/29/pat-robertson-challenges-creationism/ …
Reminder: Top economist Mark Zandi says going over fiscal cliff won’t be big deal in short term: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/why-dems-shouldnt-blink-in-battle-over-tax-hikes-on-rich/2012/11/19/9bc7d4c0-3273-11e2-bfd5-e202b6d7b501_blog.html …
I love this post!
For the past few days, I’ve been asking myself why the Republicans are acting even crazier than usual. The thing about attacking only African American members of the administration is so bizarre. It has to be unconscious. Someone on MSNBC said the other day that these objects of attack are surrogates for Obama. They can’t get rid of him, so they try to get rid of all the black people who work for him.
What bothers me most of all is that the corporate media goes along with the insanity. Why aren’t they ridiculing the war on Susan Rice?
Eric Boehlert on how unprecedented the GOP obstructionism on Rice is.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/susan-rice-and-how-the-pr_b_2211988.html
It really makes me wonder if McCain and crew aren’t deflecting attention away from some other part of the mess which would look bad for them or the CIA. I don’t believe there was a state dept office in Benghazi, outside of a CIA front with a couple of state people there as cover. If I had to guess, I would say the security screw up is squarely on them, but we may never know it.
Amanda Marcotte @AmandaMarcotte
http://slate.me/11s3cUK White male anger finds outlet in Susan Rice. She really was just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Kaplan article is great
and from Marcotte’s article:
and from Marcus’ article:
Thanks … it came from our discussion last night. I just can’t believe the insanity …
I’ve decided to embrace this:
I will display baddassitude from having doing the required research to justify it. Trickle down economics in all its forms is nothing but magical thinking and has been debunked over and over again for 30 years.
There is nothing I can see that’s substantive about these attacks on Rice or any other black folks appointed by Obama. It’s racism and misogyny.
“Two legs good. Three white legs better,” — Republican Party philosophy.
I love this post to and it seems that Obama being reelected has driven some in the GOP completely around the bend. It’s like they can the end coming for them and can’t get out of the way.
A little too little and a lot too late:
HuffPost Politics @HuffPostPol
BREAKING: Boehner appoints a woman to chair a House committee. Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan will chair House Administration.
“BREAKING: Boehner appoints a woman to chair a House committee. Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan will chair House Administration”
House Administration? You sure she’s not going to chair the House Keeping committee? And it only took Boehner 3 weeks and the attention of every damn news outlet in the U.S. to push him to make that appointment. I’m not impressed.
But, but – does she prepare and present Coffee at their meetings – after all, that seems to be all that women in their minds, are good for because for sure these women have been indoctrinated and will not go against the policies that have been hammered out by their old white male masters. No wonder Olympia Snow left.
Hilary Rosen @hilaryr
The House Admin Ctte? Was the Home Ec Ctte taken? “Speaker Boehner appoints Candice Miller Ctte Chair” http://huff.to/SvBhRh
http://theadvocate.com/home/4557918-125/judge-rules-vouchers-are-unconstitutional
I hope that the whole voucher system is thrown out into the garbage where it belongs, and little Bobby follows post haste. Disgusting what he is trying to do, even more so as he was a minority student who capitalized on the public system for his own benefit, then decided that he would screw everyone who followed. Sorry for the foul language.
If you haven’t already read this, I highly recommend Ezra Klein’s interview of Chrystia Freeland. It’s more about Obama than Romney and I adore Freeland’s take on him and his administration.
‘Romney is Wall Street’s worst bet since the bet on subprime’
AlterNet @AlterNet
‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’ — that Made Couples Study the Bible — Now Suing for Taxpayer Dollars: http://www.alternet.org/gender/crisis-pregnancy-center-made-couples-study-bible-now-suing-taxpayer-dollars?akid=9738.1085969.Ag-eNK&rd=1&src=newsletter753119&t=13 …
Billy Boy and Dr Strangelove Ablow don’t speak Korean therefor there is no meaning in the song Gangnam Style.
Psy has explained what it means a lot on TV but, hey, who knows more Fox News or the artist?