Fox News pretends to blow a gasket

Terrible, isn't it? Of course, Fox deliberately edited Barack Obama's quote so that it seems to say something different than what he really said:

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

"So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the G.I. Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President -- because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together."

According to Fox, that's un-American  Does that really seem un-American to you?

Well, Fox edited that quote to say only, "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen." It seems like Barack Obama is saying that you didn't build your own business, doesn't it?

Of course, if you read even the short sentence preceding that, you'll understand Obama was saying that you hadn't, yourself, built the roads and bridges that you use. We all built them. We all invested in roads and bridges.

How is that un-American? How is this un-American?

"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires."

But Fox has no interest in the truth. Fox is determined to elect Republicans, no matter what it takes. A deliberate lie is certainly nothing new at Fox.

Here's another video clip of Fox 'News' pushing this lie, this manufactured outrage, for all they're worth. I wonder how it feels to have no conscience, no morality, no ethics? How does it feel to lie for a living?

The red scare

RED with Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Linda Cardellini from Jesse Tyler Ferguson

As a fellow redhead, I urge this candidate to abandon the bigots on the right. In the Democratic Party, your hair color is your own business. :)

Welcome to the Endarkenment

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - On the Straight & Narrow-Minded
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Yes, kids should come out of school as ignorant as they entered it. We don't want teachers messing with their "fixed beliefs," do we?

Well, you can understand Republicans, can't you? Reality isn't how they wish it was, so they just believe whatever they want. And I'm sure it's embarrassing to have their children laughing at them.

The solution? Make sure that their children are as ignorant as they are, of course. (Or they could just educate themselves, but they don't want to do that, do they? It's not that they're dumb, but that they want to believe what they want to believe.)

Bain damage

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Democalypse 2012 - Bain Damage
www.thedailyshow.com
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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Democalypse 2012 - Bain Damage - Romney's Blind Trust
www.thedailyshow.com
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Jon Stewart was on vacation for two weeks, but he came back with a bang, didn't he?

Republicans are faith-based, so they expect that we'll take Mitt Romney on trust. He's supposed to be a businessman, but he's keeping all that behind a curtain.

The Senate won't even confirm a Cabinet member without seeing his tax returns, but we're supposed to pick a president on faith?

Note that John McCain did see Mitt Romney's tax returns, when McCain was looking for a vice-presidential candidate. As James Carville said, "The only person who has seen Romney's taxes is John McCain and he took one look and picked Sarah Palin."

Mitt Romney gets tax breaks for taking his horse to the prom, as Jon Stewart puts it, and he thinks that's just fine. He thinks the rich should pay a lower tax rate than you do. And he thinks that shipping American jobs overseas is the kind of business experience a president should have.

But it's really hard to imagine how the Republicans can convince anyone else that's true. On the other hand, they've got a lot of money from billionaires to push their guy night and day (not to mention all of Fox 'News').

PS. Here's Stephen Colbert's take on the same issue.

God and the existence of evil

This is Clay Farris Naff, from here in Lincoln, Nebraska. (He's on a panel - the other panelists had a religious perspective - speaking to an ethics class at Doane College.)

I liked the lightning statistics, which is why I'm posting these two video clips. But there's a third clip to the series here, if you're interested.

Chemtrails

"By anyone's standards, that is an epic fail. And you'd really hope that an international conspiracy of evil billionaires could do better than that. It's depressing. I mean, if evil billionaires, with the vast resources they possess, can't achieve their goals, what hope is there for the rest of us?"

Heh, heh. I also liked where he's just fine with "any attempt at widespread human cull." As long as we're not the ones culled, right? :)

iPhone 4s Mitt Romney ad

Q&A with Chris Rock

(Details)

You know, I have zero interest in celebrities. But I stumbled upon this interview with Chris Rock, and I thought his answers were very interesting.

Re. Barack Obama:

Dude, being the first black anything sucks. But the country was in shambles, and he's cleaning it up. If you properly clean a room, it gets dirtier before it gets cleaner. Ever come back to your hotel room before the maids are finished? My God! Republicans are complaining. Romney's complaining. But Romney's rich. He doesn't know shit about cleaning.

Re. the Trayvon Martin shooting:

When you get old, it's like, "Damn it, I've seen this." I'm from Bed-Stuy. I marched for Yusuf Hawkins, you know? I don't totally agree with Bill Cosby. He said it wasn't racial, it's a gun issue. Well, it's a gun-racial issue. You know what makes you approach a six-foot-three black guy in the middle of the night? A gun.

Re. money:

My first year on SNL, I made $90,000 dollars. And I bought a red Corvette for $45,000 dollars. I'm thinking, "I've got 45 grand left!" Taxes didn't even come into my equation. At the end of the first year of making 90 grand I was 25, 30 in the hole. We live in this baller, spend-money culture. But they never show you the outskirts of Vegas or Atlantic City. That's what most of the country is becoming.

Re. his childhood:

I was bused to a school in Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn in 1972. I was one of the first black kids in the history of the school. There were parents with signs: nigger go home. For all intents and purposes, the United States had been practicing apartheid until '68. I was spit on every day. I had water balloons with piss thrown at me. I was fucking Carrie.

That last part is what got me. Sorry, but I don't think of 1972 as being that long ago. Do you think those racists aren't still around? Do you think they didn't raise children?

Remember, in 1972, the Republican Party was busy wooing white racists in their notorious 'Southern strategy.' That was their brilliant plan to take control of the South and then control America.

And it was brilliant - politically, at least. It worked like a charm. Those racists are now the GOP base. The Republicans took the South from the Democrats and, with relatively brief exceptions, have dominated politically ever since. They've turned America to the right, the hard right. Even the Democrats have moved to the right.

Now, sure, they didn't bring back segregation. That was a lost cause. They don't even argue for such things anymore. They're very careful to pay lip service to racial equality, even as they wink and nod.

They're busy losing on other fronts, too - like gay rights. But they've used their political power to get what the GOP establishment really wanted (like tax cuts for the rich, plenty of wars, and a Supreme Court that equates money with speech).

Don't think that 1972 is gone and forgotten. Chris Rock hasn't forgotten it, I'm sure. I haven't forgotten it. Those racists haven't forgotten it. Even if you weren't born then, the past is in all of us. As William Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Presidential home shopping

Presidential Home Shopping - watch more funny videos

Jonathan Krohn - the end of a GOP crush

Andrew Breitbart, Jonathan Krohn, James O'Keefe, and Karl Rove.

(TPM)

That was Jonathan Krohn at 13, when he was the conservative wunderkind, the great white hope of America, the talk of CPAC.

TPM has a whole slideshow of this kid hobnobbing with Republican celebrities (including Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and Bill O'Reilly, among others).

It's really pretty funny now, four years later, given the uproar over his changed political views:

Jonathan Krohn, the teen conservative idol turned liberal heretic, is on the receiving end of a world of abuse from right wing pundits this week. Fine by him. But please folks, lay off his mom.

“My mother had a friend today who said she can’t be friends anymore because of me,” said Krohn, who described her as close to tears. “She texted her and said ‘Have a nice life.’ It’s a friend she’s known since before I was born!” Krohn told TPM Tuesday.

Republicans had largely forgotten about Krohn since turning him into a star speaker and author in 2009 at the tender age of 13. But that didn’t mean they were happy to let him go, reacting to a Politico interview in which he said he now supported President Obama with a torrent of unrestrained rage.

The Daily Caller led the charge. Gregg Re started things off with a profanity-filled screed from a spurned conservative who attended Krohn’s big CPAC speech in 2009 and apparently demanded anonymity to tell Re the 17-year-old was a “douche.” ...

“Nothing’s really stung me, all of it's just so absurd,” he [Krohn] said. “My favorite was someone who tweeted at me ‘You betrayed God and William Bennett, you little bastard!’ Because apparently they’re on the same plateau in this person’s mind.”

Well, you know how nasty these breakups can be. Teen crushes can seem so serious to Republicans and 13-year-olds! But the hysteria surrounding a teenager changing his mind seems a little... um, crazy, even for the right-wing, don't you think?

Luckily, Krohn seems to be keeping this all in perspective. Here he is in a column at Salon:

My involvement at such a young age happened for manifold reasons: I always enjoyed writing (I had gotten my first paid writing gig when I was 9), I enjoyed politics (or at least the theory of politics), and I grew up in Georgia, where conservative ideologues dominated the radio and the populace. Mix those things with the naïveté of a kid and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a fresh, right-wing pundit. My star role worked out well for a while. I didn’t have to question any of the talking points I’d made in my speech, and I got to drone on and on about them at numerous Tea Parties and other conservative gatherings. I felt justified in my beliefs if for no other reason than no one actually told me I was wrong. Instead, men like Bill Bennett and Newt Gingrich hailed me as the voice for my generation and a hope for America.

But then, earlier this week, Politico released an interview in which I announced I wasn’t a conservative anymore — and the proverbial crap hit the fan. Since then, I have been treated by the political right with all the maturity of schoolyard bullies. The Daily Caller, for instance, wrote three articles about my shift, topping it off with an opinion piece in which they stated that I deserved criticism because I wear “thick-rimmed glasses” and I like Ludwig Wittgenstein. Why don’t they just call me “four-eyes”? These are not adults leveling serious criticism; these are scorned right-wingers showing all the maturity of a little boy. No wonder I fit in so well when I was 13. ...

I was tired of the right using me as an example of how young people “get” what they’re talking about — when it’s obvious that I didn’t get what I talking about at all. I mean, come on, I was between 13 and 14 when I was regurgitating these talking points! What does a kid who has never paid a tax bring to the table in a conversation about the burden of taxes? What does a healthy child know about people who can’t afford healthcare because of preexisting conditions? No matter how intelligent a person might be, certain political issues require life experience; they’re much more complicated than the black and white frames imposed by partisan America.

Here's that interview at Politico that got the right into their bullying mode:

But a quick rundown of his current political stances suggests a serious pendulum swing away from the right.

Gay marriage? In favor. Obamacare? “It’s a good idea.” Who would he vote for (if he could) in November? “Probably Barack Obama.” His favorite TV shows? “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” His favorite magazine? The New Yorker. And, perhaps telling of all, Krohn is enrolling this fall at a college not exactly known for its conservatism: New York University.

“One of the first things that changed was that I stopped being a social conservative,” said Krohn. “It just didn’t seem right to me anymore. From there, it branched into other issues, everything from health care to economic issues.… I think I’ve changed a lot, and it’s not because I’ve become a liberal from being a conservative — it’s just that I thought about it more. The issues are so complex, you can’t just go with some ideological mantra for each substantive issue.”

Come on, he's still only 17. He can't even vote yet! So who knows where his political views will end up?

Unfortunately, Republicans don't take rejection well! "You're either with us or against us." You're either a right-wing true believer or a socialist, a terrorist, a traitor. And I guess that's the case even if you're just a kid.

Still, the reaction to the end of their crush really is pretty funny. I'm sorry that Jonathan Krohn is on the receiving end of all this, but I still have to laugh.

Behind the curtain

(Deep Cover)

Mr. Deity and Hitch

Be sure to hang on for the advertisement at the end, too.

Betty Bowers explains abortion

Don't watch if you're easily offended. :)

I must admit that Christianity and anti-abortion activism seem like a weird match to me. Don't these people know their own Bible?

Heck, don't Catholics know the history of their own church? The idea of personhood at conception is a relatively recent invention of the Catholic Church.

But the answer in both cases is no, they don't. Supposedly, this is the most important thing in the world to them - heck, the world itself is just a minor detail - yet they can't be bothered to learn anything about it.

Well, that's far from the only thing that makes no sense about religion,  huh?

The difference between a cult and a religion

(almightygod)

Via Pharyngula, of course.

Are these your people?

I've been really busy this summer - even busier than usual - so I haven't had time to post much. I keep collecting links, but they go in my 'temp' folder for... later (which usually means that they get deleted en masse sometime in the future).

But here's one from clear back in December, so you never know.

The first post is just Ashley Miller wondering, "Why does anyone like Ron Paul?" I wonder, too. I just don't get it.

At any rate, agree or not (and I do agree), she makes some perfectly reasonable arguments. But this is Ron Paul she's talking about. So I'll bet you can guess what happened next...

The overall sentiment is that I am an idiot typical woman who takes money and support from unsuspecting, trampled upon men, an uninformed cunt, a mentally retarded liberal arts failure, a really ugly troll, I should either be raped or kill myself and I should definitely never reproduce.

Now, I'm not a libertarian. I'm definitely not a libertarian. I think that libertarians miss the simple fact, the basic fact, that we human beings are social animals. We live in groups. We survive, we thrive - or not - as part of a society.

We've always been social animals. We evolved as social animals. That's how we survived as a species. We've always had governments - or some kind of organization which allowed us to live together, to cooperate for our mutual benefit.

All too often, that organization was authoritarian, with a few people at the top dominating the majority. Thankfully, we have much more democratic societies these days. But, if anything, it's even harder to live as an isolated hermit (although, as I say, that's always been aberrant behavior for human beings).

Still, even if I were a libertarian, I don't know how I could overlook Ron Paul's viciously racist newsletters, his votes against the separation of church and state, his disbelief in established science, or his crazy conspiracy thinking, among other things Ashley capably pointed out.

But here's the thing. When people make the slightest criticism of Ron Paul, the crazies seem to come out of the woodwork with vicious personal attacks. Read those comments. Are those really your people?

Sure, everyone gets embarrassed sometimes by supporters of their own side. But libertarians seem to take this to a whole new level!

Ron Paul supporters are notorious for this kind of behavior. For every rational reply to criticism, there seem to be a dozen people frothing at the mouth in frantic hysteria - and with absolutely nothing to offer but personal attacks and crazy conspiracy-thinking.

Birds of a feather flock together. There's considerable truth behind that old saying. No, you are not responsible for what someone else says,... but doesn't it bother you that these are the people who agree with you?

I'm a skeptic, I'm an atheist, I'm an environmentalist (not an animal rights supporter, which is different) - I 'belong' to a lot of different groups, in a way. I've certainly been embarrassed at times by my fellows, but it hasn't been anywhere near as common as this.

In fact, it's often been the other way around, that I'm impressed with the knowledge and the clear-thinking of my fellows. Frankly, if 'my group' were this full of such vicious crazies, I'd really want to do some serious thinking about whether I had a rational reason to be there myself.

I've mentioned something like this before, in regards to political parties. As maddening as the Democrats can be sometimes, at least their heart's in the right place. And they're not actually insane. I know there are still sane conservatives out there - a few of them, at least - but I would be embarrassed to be a Republican these days.

And I would really be embarrassed to be a libertarian. Don't you think there might be something wrong with a philosophy that appeals so greatly to crazies? Are they really your kind of people? Really?

Muslims ruining plans to destroy public education

Another one from Indecision Forever:

Recently, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal signed into law a voucher program allowing state educational funds to be used to send students to schools run by religious groups. The plan is set to be a model for the nation, with Mitt Romney's education policies calling for the adoption of similar school choice schemes across the country.

And so far, things have been going swimmingly. Thousands of students are set to enroll in private Christian academies, where they can learn about dinosaurs (more appropriately called Jesus Horses, I believe) such as the Loch Ness monster and their relationship to evolution. It's complicated.

But one Louisiana legislator has noted a wrinkle in the state's plan to subsidize the teaching of the most backward elements of the One True Faith…

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal's overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.

"I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America's Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools," the District 64 Representative said Monday.

"I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school," Hodges said.

Hodges mistakenly assumed that "religious" meant "Christian."…

"Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders' religion," Hodges said. "We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana."

I blogged about this last month, but I just wanted to say that it's high time the Democratic Party stood up and thanked the GOP for taking all those dumb Dixiecrats off their hands.

Just think. If it hadn't been for selfless Republicans wooing those crazy people, the Democrats would still be stuck with them. Now, instead of solidly Democratic, the South is solidly Republican.

It's time the Democratic Party said "Thank-you!"

Exploding toilets more common than voter fraud

From Indecision Forever:

As noted by Mother Jones, actual instances of voter fraud are remarkably rare, with "13 credible cases of in-person voter impersonation" occurring between 2000 and 2010, compared to 47,000 reported UFO sighting.

As it turns out, many more Americans are impersonating Elvis than illicitly pretending to be a voter. Here are 10 other occurrences more common than voter impersonation…

1. Babies named Unique (228 during the 1990s alone)

2. Shark attacks in the US (36 in 2011)

3. People Jack Bauer personally killed in one season of the TV show 24 (38)

4. Americans crushed to death by their furniture or televisions (about 15 per year)

5. Flushmate toilets that exploded on unsuspecting Americans before being recalled by the manufacturer ("304 reports of the product bursting, resulting in property damage and 14 impact or laceration injuries")

6. Being SET ON FIRE by your doctors during surgery (at least 100 surgical fires per year)

7. People claiming "Elvis Impersonator" as their primary occupation (84,000)

8. Americans killed by lightning (441)

9. Lemonade and other child-run snack stands shut down by government officials (dozens)

10. Americans who have a favorable view of North Korea (13%)

So what is the Republican reaction to 13 cases of voter fraud in the past ten years? They plan to disenfranchise 758,000 legal voters in Pennsylvania alone!

Of course, there's more to it than that:

In Philadelphia, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 6-1, 18 percent of the city’s registered voters do not have the state photo ID, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The data could have implications in the presidential race, in which presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney has been trailing President Obama in Pennsylvania by an average of 8 percentage points. ...

This year, 32 states introduced voter ID legislation, either new proposals or amendments to strengthen existing laws.

To lower the number of Democrats voting, all you have to do is make it more difficult for Democratic-leaning constituencies to vote. Most people, after all, won't jump through hoops to vote.

So line up those hoops, Republicans! Who says you have to win ethically? Heck, if you cared about that stuff, you wouldn't be Republicans in the first place, would you?

Give me that old-time religion

The Catholic Church has stopped burning heretics and 'witches' alive. That's progress. But sometimes I get the idea that they'd still do that if they could.

Isn't it just that they no longer have the power to impose their will on everyone else?

Take this situation in India, where a man is facing arrest for pointing out that a Catholic 'miracle' was just a leaky pipe:

Last month we started a petition in support of Sanal Edamaruku, the President of the Indian Rationalist Association facing charges of “deliberately hurting religious feelings" over his exposure of a supposed miracle at a Catholic church in Mumbai. Edamaruku pointed out on TV that the source of "holy water" dripping from a crucifix in the church was in fact a leaky pipe, and this prompted three local Catholic organisations with close connections to the Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay to file complaints against him with the police.

Having been denied "anticipatory bail", Edamaruku was at risk of being held in custody ahead of any trial, and was forced to avoid his home whole he filed for anticipatory bail with the High Court in Mumbai.

Unfortunately, the situation has now worsened – his appeal for anticipatory bail with the High Court has been tossed out again (the higher court insists it goes through the lower courts first), which means arrest will lead to certain imprisonment for an indeterminate period. In the last two days police have turned up at his home in Delhi twice with an arrest warrant. He is currently in Europe (at an undisclosed location) but is worried that the Indian authorities will insist he returns to India to face the charges.

"Deliberately hurting religious feelings." How many Americans would eagerly vote for a law prohibiting that?

Of course, it seems obvious to me that you only need that kind of protection if you know your religion is just bullshit. Why would you need protection from criticism otherwise?

Be sure to sign the petition.

Creeping Sharia law

From Indecision Forever:

It's well known that hot and dry places filled with religious extremists often produce judicial rulings that sound anomalous to Western ears. We've seen the phenomenon from Saudi Arabia to Iran to Pakistan and Sudan.

South Carolina is not going to buck that trend…

What would Jesus do?

A South Carolina judge not only sentenced a woman to eight years behind bars for driving drunk, but he also ordered the woman to read the Bible.

According to the Herald of Rock Hill, Circuit Court Judge Michael Nettles wants Cassandra Tolley to read the Old Testament and write for him a summary about Job.

I guess this is what creeping Sharia looks like. It's fun to substitute "Quran" for "Old Testament" and "Surat Al-Fatḥ" for the "Book of Job," and imagine whether people would be so sanguine about a civil official mandating that course of religious study, even if, as in this case, the defendant gave her consent.

Though at the same time, this woman can learn some powerful lessons from the Book of Job. After all, it's a story about a powerful, unaccountable authority figure being a dick to people under his command in order to teach an obscure lesson.

It's funny, but the people who scream hysterically about Sharia law in America tend to be the same ones eagerly chipping away at the wall of separation of church and state in this country, our bulwark against religious fanatics of all stripes.

And the Book of Job? Heh, heh. What's she suppose to learn from that?

Well, maybe we should mandate the reading of the Bible more often. We'd have a lot more atheists, I suspect, if people actually read the thing they supposedly believe.

The summer in crazy

(Tom Toles)

I thought it was time for an assortment of political cartoons. Enjoy!

(The Far Left Side)

(Mike Luckovich)

(Jim Morin)

(Tom Toles)

(Steve Sack)

(Drew Sheneman)

(Steve Sack)

(Stuart Carlson)