The Republi-CONs Ugly Political Cynicism

"Questioning this affirmation involves a serious charge — an accusation of the worst sort of cynicism. And it is simply not the role of a Christian layman to publicly dispute the self-identification of other Christians, especially in a political context. It is a practice that can lead down ugly alleys of sectarianism."

Read the Washington Post, Scott Walker and judging the faith of another.

Republi-cons might also read the Constitution they claim to so dearly love. 

The End of the World is Near, Again

UPDATE VIII:  Read also Wikipedia, Apocalypticism.  

UPDATE VII:   FYI, "ISIS's interpretation of Islam is not literal. It is not serious."

Read The Atlantic, What Muslims Really Want, which notes that:

"The Quran is a single volume, roughly the length of the New Testament. It is a complex and nuanced text that deals with legal, moral, and metaphysical questions in a subtle and multifaceted way. Then there are the hadith, or records of sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad, which run into dozens of volumes spanning literally hundreds of thousands of texts, each on average a few sentences long. Then there is the juridical and theological literature about the Quran and the hadith, which consists of thousands of works written throughout Islamic history.

Does ISIS cite 'texts'? Yes, though its main method is to cite individual hadith that support its positions. But remember: The hadith consist of hundreds of thousands of discrete items that range from faithfully transmitted teachings to outright fabrications attributed to the prophet, and every gradation in between.

Over the centuries, jurists and theologians of every stripe, Sunni and Shiite, have devised rational, systematic methods for sifting through hadith, which are often difficult to understand or seem to say contrary things about the same questions. They have ranked and classified these texts according to how reliable they are, and have used them accordingly in law and theology. But ISIS does not do this. Its members search for text snippets that support their argument, claim that these fragments are reliable even if they are not, and disregard all contrary evidence—not to mention Islam’s vast and varied intellectual and legal tradition. Their so-called 'prophetic methodology' is nothing more than cherry-picking what they like and ignoring what they do not. . .

What distinguishes the interpretive approach of groups like ISIS from others is not its literalism (Sufis are indeed the most 'literal' of all such interpreters of the Quran) but its narrowness and rigidity; for the adherents of ISIS, the Quran means exactly one thing, and other levels of meaning or alternate interpretations are ruled out a priori. This is not literalism. It is exclusivism."

Imam Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Truthiness and Pastor Poppins) does the same, always claiming his interpretation of the Bible is inerrant. 

UPDATE VI:  Hallelujah, we are saved.  It appears that certain claims of the end times by our local Imam Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Truthiness and Pastor Poppins) are "completely off-the-wall . . . an exercise in imagination that is going to confuse many people," so says his "dear and valued friend."

Read Lamb & Lion Ministries Blog, A Confused Book About Revelation.

One commenter even said that Imam Truthiness "wrote this book, purely to make money." Another wrote that he "has been deceived by Satan."  And yet anothers write that he "has been caught up with demonic deceits, this has happened many times over the yrs" and he is "a false prophet. Or if you don't want to go that far...at least he has lost his way on the subject matter in his book."

 

UPDATE V:  After reading The Atlantic article, it is clear that ISIS is to Islam as David Koresh was to Christianity.  

UPDATE IV:  ISIS "is a religious group . . . [that believes] that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse."

Read The Atlantic, What ISIS Really Wants, which notes that for "certain true believers—the kind who long for epic good-versus-evil battles—visions of apocalyptic bloodbaths fulfill a deep psychological need."

And just how to advance the apocalypse -- with a religious war -- which it seems Imam Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Truthiness and Pastor Poppins) would also like.

UPDATE III:  As noted before, Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) is fond of citing current events as fulfillment of 'prophesy' of the soon-to-be apocalypse (in support of his personal religious myths of course). Why are people addicted to such 'predictions?'

It turns out his ideology is shared by Islamic fundamentalist.

Read CNN, Why does ISIS keep making enemies?, which notes that ISIS "ideology is that of an apocalyptic cult that believes that we are living in the end times and that ISIS' actions are hastening the moment when this will happen."

UPDATE II:  "Bigotry has always existed, and though its techniques may change, its goal is always largely the same. The bigot, Bronner writes, 'directs his hatred against those who threaten (or might threaten) his privileges, his existential self-worth' by challenging the prevailing prejudices of the day. His beliefs are unquestionably the right ones; he 'hears the Lord’s voice and he condemns those who don’t, or interpret it otherwise.' But if you criticize the bigot for his antediluvian views, he’ll scurry behind the shield of 'traditions' and 'established habits.' . . 

So while the bigot may be a 'true believer,' he is also a pragmatist. He can twist mythologies, including religion and imagined tradition, to fit his needs in a thousand different ways. But behind the bigot’s beliefs is an all-consuming fear of modernity. It was modernity, after all, that gave minorities the tools to combat their oppression—which, in turn, led to the increasing marginalization of prejudiced holdouts.

The bigot’s fight against modernity also allows him to disguise his biases as a principled conviction that minorities are, in Bronner’s words, 'fighting against the natural order of things.' We see this casuistry deployed repeatedly in the right’s strange quest to smear and dehumanize trans people: Because conservatives have always believed in strict adherence to an unbreakable gender binary, that binary must be accurate. 'Things are the way they are,' in Bronner’s succinct phrasing, 'and they are that way for a reason.' If trans people could go millennia without demanding respect, they have no right to demand it today.

Why are bigots so terrified of modernity and its enthusiasts? Simple: As minorities capitalize upon the 21st century’s enlightened cosmopolitanism, bigots feel their power slipping away. After anti-gay activists failed to pass a gay segregation bill in red-leaning Arizona, conservatives cried foul, arguing that the measure’s demise imperiled their own 'religious liberty.' Their conception of 'liberty'—the freedom to discriminate against gay customers—might not be shared by many mainstream Americans in 2014. But conservatives are desperate to cling to this 'liberty' nonetheless; their right to deny gay people basic dignity, so uncontroversial for so many years, is tantamount to an assertion of power over the oppressed in the public sphere. With it, conservatives can cling to a shred of their former cultural dominance. Without it, their cause is revealed as a fraud."

Read Slate, Are Anti-Gay Activists Bigots? A Brilliant, Disturbing New Book Says Yes.

UPDATE:  Does "[a]ll that talk of snake-inspired subterfuge, planet-cleansing floods, and apocalyptic horsemen might hamper [some people's] ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality—or even to think critically."

Read Slate, Is Religion Good for Children?, which noted that researchers have found that the division in perceptions of reality between religiously raised and secular children was striking. Religious teaching, "'especially exposure to miracle stories, leads children to a more generic receptivity toward the impossible, that is, a more wide-ranging acceptance that the impossible can happen in defiance of ordinary causal relations.'

If you’re surprised by these findings, you probably haven’t attended a church service lately. Religions tend to be founded on miracle stories—exactly the thing religious kids had trouble distinguishing from reality. When you’ve been told that a woman was created from a man’s rib, or that a man reawakened three days postmortem little worse for the wear, your grasp on reality is bound to take a hit. Religious children are told these stories from an early age, often as though they are unquestionably true. (Some are told that questioning them might lead to eternal damnation.) If you’re expected to believe two of every animal could fit on an ark made of gopher wood, wouldn’t you have trouble understanding that magical sails don’t exist? . .

The question of children and religion, then, is really just a small part of the broader dilemma of faith versus skepticism. In the United States, the vast majority of us choose the former and push our kids to do the same. That might make them docile, obliging, and credulous. But it doesn’t make them better people."

Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man) says the end of the world is near.  But before you get swindled by this scam, or spend money on the conferences and books, get educated.

Read and/or watch PBS Frontline, Apocalypse.

There is a detailed chronology of end timers, through 1999 (when the program first aired).

You'll also understand that Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man) stands in the company of other end timers, like William Miller and David Koresh and other cultist, as well as Marx and Hitler.

He's just part of America's Doomsday Industry. 

Those Clueless Republi-CONs

UPDATE:  As noted before, Obama has fail to create the Republi-con's imaginary hyperinflation.

Is it because "[i]nflation is just a scare story [Republi-cons and] people old enough to remember the 1970s tell."

Read the Washington Post, Inflation is dead: It’s below 1 percent in the U.S., U.K., Europe, China, and Japan.

Rand Paul and the Republi-cons "have, for years, brayed about high inflation that didn't exist and currency depreciation that wasn't happening, even taking the unprecedented step of publicly warning the Fed off its stimulus efforts, all while the real problems were too-low inflation, and, more recently, a stronger dollar that's put a crimp on the recovery. But despite this, Paul wants these people who have been, to put it charitably, wrong about everything to have more of a say against the ones who haven't. And it's all in the name of 'transparency' that the Fed is already providing plenty of, which Paul would know if he actually read something about it anywhere other than the usual Austrian suspects. The worst part, though, is that we know what an economy with the kind of tight money that Republicans prefer looks like right now. It's called 'Europe,' and it has twice as much unemployment as we do. But hey, empirical evidence doesn't matter, right? Let them eat first principles!

That's the kind of crazy that would make charlatans and cranks both say Rand Paul is giving them a bad name."

Read the Washington Post, Clueless in Kentucky: Rand Paul’s ideas about the Fed make absolutely no sense.  

An Example of The Fear, Anger, Hatred Industry

UPDATE III:  As noted before, the  Republi-con Party thrives on a fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'.  Nowhere is it more evident than "on the scientifically indisputable but ideologically fraught issue of vaccination."

Read the Washington Post, Seeking a vaccine for ignorance , which notes that the GOP base "tend to be litmus-test conservatives on social issues and place Scripture above science,"

Read also the Washington Post, A GOP outbreak of scientific illiteracy, which pointed out that Christie stated "that parents need to have some measure of choice" on vaccination, "the same Chris Christie who had no hesitation about imposing mandatory, and medically unnecessary, quarantines on health-care workers returning from Ebola-ravaged countries."

UPDATE II:  Thanks in part to vaccines, "[l]ife expectancy doubled in the past 150 years."

Read Slate, Why Are You Not Dead Yet? , which notes that "[t]here’s nothing like looking back at the history of death and dying in the United States to dispel any romantic notions you may have that people used to live in harmony with the land or be more in touch with their bodies. Life was miserable—full of contagious disease, spoiled food, malnutrition, exposure, and injuries."

Or play the "Wretched Fate game and risk dropsy, quinsy, consumption, and worms," also at Slate, How Would You Have Died in 1811?

UPDATE: "Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, roughly one in five Americans believes that vaccines cause autism — a disturbing fact that will probably hold true even after the publication this month, in a British medical journal, of a report thoroughly debunking the 1998 paper that began the vaccine-autism scare.

That’s because the public’s underlying fear of vaccines goes much deeper than a single paper. Until officials realize that, and learn how to counter such deep-seated concerns, the paranoia — and the public-health risk it poses — will remain. . .

America’s public health leaders need . . . to reclaim the town square with a candid national conversation about the real risks of vaccines, which are minuscule compared with their benefits."

Read The New York Times, Why Parents Fear the Needle.

The "disturbing and well-told chronicle of the childhood vaccine wars in the United States and England" and "the media's role is unsparing; he shows how ratings-hungry news and entertainment shows kept the debate alive [by 'parroting quack claims'], even as evidence for the safety and effectiveness of the shots became overwhelming."

Read the Washington Post, Seth Mnookin's 'The Panic Virus,' on the debate over vaccine use.

Read also an article by Mnookin from The Atlantic, What Drives Irrational Rhetoric? The Case of Childhood Vaccinations.

The Republi-CON "Hardscrabble, Up-By-Your-Bootstraps Ethos" Myth

"Delivering the official Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst related tales of a hardscrabble upbringing in which she 'worked construction' with her father, took a job in the fast food industry, and placed plastic bread bags over her one pair of shoes so as to keep them dry when it rained. 'Our parents may not have had much,' Ernst said of herself and her schoolmates’ families, 'but they worked hard for what they did have.'

The takeaway, of course, was that we should all be so self-reliant, not depending on government handouts to get by. In her speech, Ernst denounced 'wasteful spending' and vowed that Republicans would cut it. The new GOP Congress, Ernst said, would work toward an America in which 'you don’t need to come from wealth or privilege to make a difference.' . .

Here’s what the GOP rising star omitted from her paean to gritty self-reliance: Hard as her family may have worked, and fierce as Ernst may be in her opposition to big government spending, her family benefited more than $460,000 in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009, per the District Sentinel. Beneficiaries included Ernst’s father, Richard Culver, uncle Dallas Culver, and late grandfather Harold Culver. The Culvers’ subsidies hardly set them apart from their neighbors; as the District Sentinel notes, Iowa ranks second only to Texas in farm subsidies, with the largely rural and agricultural state receiving $24.9 billion in subsidies between 1995 and 2012.

The revelation comes three months after Salon reported that Richard Culver’s construction company received more than $200,000 in Montgomery County contracts while Ernst was the county auditor, despite a state conflict of interest law that voids contracts awarded to family members of any county employee.

Ernst isn’t the first Republican to lambaste government spending, even as her family feeds at the federal trough. Four House Republicans who voted in 2013 to drastically cut spending on food stamps had received farm subsidies worth at least $7,883,824 combined, BuzzFeed reported at the time."


Read Salon, Joni Ernst’s family received nearly half a million dollars in federal farm subsidies.  

You Don't Know Jack

From an email:

1) How long did the Hundred Years' War last?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get cat gut?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7) What was King George VI's first name?
8) What color is a purple finch?
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?

See comments for the answers.

Banksters Win Again, While Tea Party CON'ed By the Republi-CONs Again

UPDATE:  The Republi-con "party remains at its core committed to fighting solutions that would come at the expense of the very wealthiest Americans, even at a time when that upper-upper echelon is achieving truly historic levels of affluence. Just look at what has been the first order of business for Republicans after they won full control of Congress for the first time in eight years this past fall. It’s not expanding the earned income tax credit, but rather pushing a Wall Street wish list for tweaks to weaken the Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010.

This will likely prove to be the primary achievement of Obama’s new tax proposal, which, as he bluntly put it in Tuesday night’s speech, is targeted at 'giveaways the superrich don’t need' and 'lobbyists [who] have rigged the tax code with loopholes that let some corporations pay nothing while others pay full freight.' No, it’s not going anywhere in a GOP-led Congress. But it has served to call the bluff of the Republicans now claiming the mantle of inequality warriors. The proposal has led them into a political trap, prompting them into an instinctual, reflexive defense of the wealthiest Americans. And it has thereby clarified the discussions to come on the campaign trail over the next year and a half. Talk all you want about restoring shared prosperity, Obama is saying, but this is the kind of reform it will take to bring balance to an economy that has gotten so top-heavy and out of whack.'"

Read Slate, Obama’s Tax Trap.

"'If it were done,' says Macbeth as he contemplates killing Duncan — his kinsman, his house-guest, his king — ' . . . ’twere well it were done quickly.' A similar judgment seems to inform the newly empowered congressional Republicans’ rush to roll back the modest regulations that the Dodd-Frank Act imposed on Wall Street banks. Deregulating Wall Street is distasteful stuff that can claim no real public support or economic merit, but for reasons both political and financial, the Republicans have decided it’s best done quickly.

But why the urgency? Why the rush to let the banks run amok, even before Republicans turn their attention to authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline, repealing Obamacare and reversing the president’s executive orders on immigration? Those are all causes, however, that Republicans want to highlight, for which their base is clamoring. Deregulating Wall Street, by contrast, isn’t high on the tea party’s to-do list, if it’s on it at all. By scurrying to give the banks what they want, Republicans can get it out of the way and hope that any public memory of this unseemly spectacle is eclipsed by the epic, more popular battles to come.

By pushing mega-bank welfare to the head of the line, Republicans also sent a clear signal to Wall Street that they’ll do whatever it takes to further feather the bankers’ nests"

Read the Washington Post, The GOP’s scramble to court Wall Street.  

Obama the Socialist Failure: Lower Unemployment, Deficits, Gas Prices and Inflation (What More Could He Do To Destroy America)

UPDATE XI:  Another graphic representation of Obama's failure to fulfill Republi-con delusions "about inflation, the dollar, and, well, the whole economy the past few years. . .

It was a weird thing to be worrying about. Inflation was just 1.7 percent when Ryan brought up dollar debasement (in early 2011). It's 1.2 percent now. And, as you can see below, rather than being debased, debauched or otherwise devalued, the dollar is actually up 13 percent against a broad index of currencies over this time. Even if you judge the dollar against a basket of commodities, which you shouldn't, since those prices are set in world markets beyond the Fed's control, there hasn't been anything resembling 'debasement': Brent oil has fallen from $100 to $53 and gold from $1,362 to $1,211."

Read the Washington Post, The inflation chicken littles were so wrong: The dollar is on a tear, which included the following graph:

UPDATE X:  "On March 6, 2009, former George W. Bush adviser Michael Boskin offered whatever the opposite of a prophecy is when he said that 'Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow.' Now let's set the scene. Obama had been in office for less than two months at that point, and in that time, stocks had admittedly fallen a lot as markets worried that the big bank bailout known as TARP wouldn't actually be enough to save the banks. It got so bad that Citigroup briefly became a penny stock.

Boskin, though, didn't think that this once-in-three-generations financial crisis was to blame for the market meltdown. Instead, he blamed it on Obama for ... talking about raising taxes? 'It's hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street," Boskin philosophized, "as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president's policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy.' What followed was the usual conservative jeremiad against higher taxes on the rich, lower taxes on the poor, and deficit spending. Obama's trying to turn us into Europe, and that's why markets are pricing in the possibility of a Great Depression—not the dying economy he inherited."

Read the Washington Post, Now that the Dow has hit 18,000, let us remember the worst op-ed in history, which included the following graph:

UPDATE IX:  After a weekend of price cutting at stations, gas for less than $2 can be found in 13 states across the country. Two weeks ago there was only one gas station in the country selling gas that cheap.

Read CNN, Gas for less than $2 is now widespread.   

UPDATE VIII:   What an unmitigated failure Obama has been trying to destroy the economy and country.

Gas prices continue to tumble. 

Read the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Gas prices could drop to $2 gallon in some parts of country by end of year.

And "[s]even years after the credit bubble burst, just two of the 12 countries that went through systemic financial meltdowns in 2007 and 2008 have reclaimed enough ground to reach their previous peaks in per-capita GDP: the United States and Germany. And Germany isn’t looking so hot these days, given that it’s teetering on the edge of deflation.

Many of the other countries that also went through “systemic crises” — as categorized by the work of Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff — still have years to go before fully recovering. The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Ukraine will likely wait until 2018 before reaching their pre-crisis peaks in per capita GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund. Even countries that didn’t technically experience a systemic crisis when we did (such as China and Japan) appear to be in serious trouble. As the Economist recently put it, the United States is looking increasingly like a 'lonely locomotive.'"

Read the Washington Post, How the U.S. economy got its mojo back. 

UPDATE VII:   After predictions of $5-10/gallon for gas, prices are below $3/gallon.

"The gas price tracking app GasBuddy reports that 46% of gas stations around the country are now charging less than $3 per gallon, compared with just 3% one year ago."

Read Time, Last Time Gas Prices Were This Cheap, It Was January 2011.

Another Obama failure! ;-)

UPDATE VI:  Still a socialist/communist failure, Obama can't even destroy the economy.

Read the Washington Post,  Rebounding economy fills state coffers with record tax revenues and The New York Times, Tax Revenue Rockets Up, Helping Lessen the Deficit, Treasury Department Says.

UPDATE V:  Republi-con "predictions about the impact of these policies since they first began in late 2008 have been wrong so far.

Inflation has not spiked, and the value of the dollar has not collapsed. At this point, in fact, there are more worries about deflation than inflation.

But thanks to the tea party influence in the GOP — in particular the Fed-bashing Rand and Ron Paul wing of the party — ripping the Fed and the bigger role it is playing in the economy has become more a litmus test for party loyalty, regardless of whether the dire predictions have come true."

Politico, GOP warnings have not met Fed policy reality.

With respect to David Farragut would say of Republi-cons, damn the facts, full bull ahead!

UPDATE IV:  So much for those invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'.

"The consumer-price index dropped 0.1 percent, reflecting cheaper energy, clothing and new cars, after a 0.2 percent gain the prior month, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington."

Read Bloomberg, Consumer Prices in U.S. Decline for First Time in Six Months.

Now Obama has fail to create the Republi-con's imaginary hyperinflation.  

UPDATE III:  After predictions of $5-10/gallon for gas, prices are near $3/gallon.

Read The Wall Street Journal, Halloween Treat: U.S. Gasoline May Fall Below $3 a Gallon. 

Another Obama failure! ;-) 

UPDATE II:   Another Obama's failure, and lost opportunity to destroy capitalism:  Read USA Today, S&P says shrinking U.S. deficit boosts debt outlook. 

UPDATE:  More evidence of Obama's failure:  "The S&P 500 has risen more than 25 percent over the last year. It’s risen more than 100 percent since President Obama was inaugurated. 

[Even] wages might pick up soon. After all, most everything else is. Housing prices are rising faster than at any time since 2007. Autos are doing great. Consumer confidence just hit a five-year high. These aren’t just the kinds of numbers that foretell recovery. They’re the kinds of numbers that lead to recovery. A rising stock market doesn’t necessarily mean more jobs anytime soon. Rising housing prices and car sales almost certainly do."

When will they impeach this 'Republi-con failure'? [Note: Obama has completely failed to fulfill Republi-con dreams and fantasies.]

Did you know that "the Dow Jones Industrial Average has soared an astonishing 62% (sixty-two percent!) since the Kenyan Socialist Barack Obama seized the White House in a violent Saul Alinsky coup."


The last president was a much better at destroying capitalism, when he "left office the Dow was 25% lower than it was when he took office eight years earlier", and the economy was losing nearly 800,000/month.

Read Wonkette, Dow Soars 62% Since Obama Took Office; Do Stocks Have Liberal Bias?

For more on Obama's socialist failures, read The Republi-CON 'Obama's a Socialist' Myth.

Republi-CON "Not Being Nice Enough to the French" Hypocrisy

UPDATE:  "GOP prez hopefuls like Rick Perry now love France more than anything, as long as it allows them to attack Obama."

Read Salon, GOP’s new French love affair: The romantic story of how it fell in love with an old foe.

"The conservatives are guilty of a bit of inconsistency, if not hypocrisy, in criticizing the Obama administration for snubbing a people they not long ago called cheese-eating surrender monkeys."

Read the Washington Post, Republicans’ inconsistent attacks on Obama’s Paris response. 

2014, You Are History!

"Did data breaches, ice bucket challenges, and the wild events of 2014 really #BreakTheInternet?

Find out in JibJab's 2014 Year in Review -- it's one for the history books!"

Watch, JibJab, 2014, You Are History!:

No Justice For Victor Steen

UPDATE III:  Republi-con "illustrates just how much the Garner case really is about race. Had Eric Garner been a rural white man with a cowboy hat killed by federal agents, instead of a large black man choked to death by the NYPD, his face would be on a Ted Cruz for President poster by now."

Read The Atlantic, If Eric Garner Were White.

UPDATE II:  Note also, Wilson's testimony is tainted by racism.

Read Slate, Michael Brown Wasn’t a Superhuman Demon.  

UPDATE:  Note, the link below is the sequence of events laid out by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, who has "a long record of protecting police in such cases." 

Read also VOX, Officer Darren Wilson's story is unbelievable. Literally. and Michael Brown spent his last day with his friend Dorian Johnson. Here's what Johnson saw.

I am not surprised that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was not indicted, considering what happened in that case. 

Heck, in NW Florida, police can shoot an unarmed black man in his own driveway, or kill a young black man for riding a bicycle.

Does anyone remember Victor Steen, a 17 year old young black male, chased, then crushed under a Pensacola Police cruiser on October 3, 2009.

Why you might ask?  Because Pensacola Police Officer Jerald Ard saw Steen ride a bicycle through an empty construction site.

Ard pursued Steen in his police cruiser, attempted to fire a Taser weapon from the window of the moving cruiser, and drove the cruiser on the side walk, and against traffic, trying to knock Steen off the bicycle.

Don't take my word for it, watch the video:



For more on this case, read Do Anyone Really Care?

Goldman Sachs is a Criminal Racket [And Owns the Fed]

UPDATE III:  "During the financial crisis in 2008, the government made a supremely generous move that most likely saved Goldman Sachs from collapse.

Six years later, Goldman is still reaping benefits from the special provisions that came with that act of mercy, according to the findings of a Senate report that was released on Wednesday."

Read The New York Times, For Goldman, Government Gift From 2008 Crisis Keeps Giving.

Read also, CNN Money, Did Goldman Sachs rig commodities markets?

UPDATE II:  The "New York Fed is effectively captured. It consistently takes the side of the major banks it regulates, whatever the motives happen to be."

Read The Atlantic, How Not to Regulate.

UPDATE:   They call it Government Sachs for a reason.

Read Politico, Why the Fed Will Always Wimp Out on Goldman. 

As noted extensively before, financial institutions, like Goldman Sachs, caused the financial crises. As recently as Februaury 2010, I even stated "Goldman Sachs is a criminal racket and should be prosecuted under RICO statutes."

And a former customer agrees, stating: "'Goldman Sachs is a racketeering entity that does whatever they can to make a dime without conscience, thought, foresight or care about ramifications.'"

Read The New York Times, Anger at Goldman Still Simmers.

Weather Predicting Advice

From an email:

To tell the weather, go to your back door and look for the dog. If the dog is at the door and he is wet, it's probably raining.

But if the dog is standing there really soaking wet, it is probably raining really hard.

If the dog's fur looks like it's been rubbed the wrong way, it's probably windy. If the dog has snow on his back, it's probably snowing.

Of course, to be able to tell the weather like this, you have to leave the dog outside all the time, especially if you expect bad weather.

Sincerely,

The CAT

Today's Punnies

From an email:

Energizer Bunny arrested - charged with battery.

A pessimist's blood type is always b-negative.

Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.

I used to work in a blanket factory, but it folded.

Marriage is the mourning after the knot before.

Corduroy pillows are making headlines.

Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?

Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

Banning the bra was a big flop.

Sea captains don't like crew cuts.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor.

Without geometry, life is pointless.

When you dream in color, it's a pigment of your imagination.

Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.

Reading whilst sunbathing makes you well-red.

When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.

BREAKING NEWS! -- Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo Gang and Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man) Engaged in a Scam and Swindle to Get Birthers' Money!!

UPDATE IV:  Told ya so, it was all about money, and lies to get money.

"After two years of denying he personally profited from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office investigation into the validity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate, the head of the sheriff's Cold Case Posse admitted to CBS 5 Investigates that he accepted a large monetary gift from one of the sources in the investigation.

Mike Zullo is the man Sheriff Joe Arpaio tapped to head the investigation. Zullo manages the Cold Case Posse and is in charge of the posse's fundraising and financial management.

In response to questions emailed to him last week regarding personal use of the posse's money, Zullo responded on Tuesday:

'My answer to this question is emphatically No! These accusations that you claim you have heard are absolutely unfounded, slanderous and completely fabricated.  They are designed to cast me and this organization in a disparaging light. I am appalled at this accusation!'

One day later, after faced with evidence provided by CBS 5 Investigates, Zullo sent another email. . ."

Read and watch KPHO, Birther posse chief: I accepted $10,000 from source.

UPDATE III:   More Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man) "doublespeak, double-talk and jive" saying nothing, and more proof that  Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo Gang and the Pastor are engaged in a scam and swindle.

Listen to Birther Report,  Fireworks: Carl Gallups Takes On Col. Lawrence Sellin; Sheriff Arpaio's Obama ID Fraud Investigation.

Doublespeak is "language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words."

And double-talk is "a form of speech in which inappropriate, invented or nonsense words are used to give the appearance of knowledge and so confuse or amuse the audience."

UPDATE II:  When warned that birther 'nuts' could damage his campaign, 'Sheriff' 'Scooby Doo' Arpaio responded "There ain't gonna be no damage control, you'll get more money [in campaign contributions] than you'll know what to do with."

How much money?  How about $7-8 million!!

Read Obama Conspiracy Theories, Arpaio’s millions.

I wonder what the cut is for Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man)?

UPDATE:  Since breaking the news that Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo Gang and Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man) were engaged in a scam and swindle to get birthers' money,  Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man) has gone silent.

What happened to the criminal investigation(s), "the two news conferences, one with Arpaio and one with Zullo", and the universe-shattering disclosures?

 Of course, since it is/was all a scam and swindle to get birthers' money, none of it will ever happen.

Birthers, hear me now, can you say sucker?

"How a power-abusing scoundrel such as Arpaio turned the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office into a 20-year-plus reign of self-aggrandizement is the subject of a new documentary, aptly named The Joe Show, which [had] its world première on Wednesday, February 26, at the Sedona International Film Festival."

Read Phoenix NewTimes News, The Joe Show Documents a Measly Sheriff's Rise to Celebrity and Power-Abusing Tyranny, which notes that part of the show is "declaring Obama's birth certificate a fraud."

An earlier post that discusses a 64 page article with a complete timeline of the delusions and lies promoted by Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang and Pastor Truthiness aka Huckster and Con Man, and concludes by asking whether Birthers are idiots, racists, or simply engaged in a scam and swindle.

In the movie the Sheriff confirms it is the later, designed to pull in campaign donations. 

From Read Phoenix NewTimes News, Joe Arpaio's Investigating Federal Judge G. Murray Snow, DOJ, Sources Say, and Using a Seattle Scammer To Do It:

"[At] a strategy meeting during Sheriff Joe Arpaio's 2012 re-election campaign that included Arpaio, his top flack, Lisa Allen, Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, and campaign manager Chad Willems.

The group huddled in the back of a Fountain Hills restaurant to discuss how to spin Joe's negatives -- the misspending of more than $100 million, the deaths in the jails, the scores of millions in lawsuit payouts -- for the public.

At some point, Arpaio's 'birther' investigation came up. You know, the one in which President Barack Obama's birth certificate gets investigated by both the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's Cold Case Posse, a nonprofit organization, and MCSO Deputy Brian Mackiewicz, whom Arpaio flew to Hawaii as part of this snipe hunt, at a cost of nearly $10,000 to taxpayers.

Arpaio's March 2012 press conference -- in which the sheriff and the Cold Case Posse's 'lead investigator,' ex-used-car salesman Mike Zullo, declared Obama's birth certificate to be a forgery -- was in the planning stage when the scene was filmed.

At the mere mention of the birther investigation and the future press event, Allen and Willems practically rolled their eyes.

Willems called the birther probe 'nuts.'

Allen said the sheriff might as well go the press conference 'in big ol' clown shoes.'
Arpaio shrugged, literally.

'There ain't gonna be no damage control,' Arpaio promised Willems. 'You'll get more money [in campaign contributions] than you'll know what to do with.'

Wilier than the cartoon coyote, Arpaio had tapped into a nationwide right-wing anti-government, anti-Obama feeding frenzy with his birther probe and with his tirades against the U.S. Department of Justice, which was investigating him for abuse of power and other issues and is now suing him in federal court.

'The DOJ is a hot item everywhere,' Joe told his flunkies.

See, whenever Arpaio's never-ending political campaign sends out an e-mail blast begging for loot from Obama-haters, it reels in contributions from retired, far-right ofays all over the country.

Willems essentially admitted as much in another scene from the film.

'Now, with Arpaio going to battle with Barack Obama,' Willems said, 'it's meant literally millions of dollars for his campaign.'

As everybody knows, Arpaio was re-elected in 2012, but the investigation into Obama's birth certificate continues apace, according to both Arpaio and Cold Case Posse 'commander' Zullo.

At the beginning of May, Arpaio mentioned the birther probe during a speech before a group of Silicon Valley conservatives.

Around the same time, he appeared on The Right Side, a conservative cable-access show in Mountain View, California. He told host Chris Pareja that the inquiry into Obama's birth certificate was going strong.

'I'm not done with that yet,' Arpaio insisted. 'People think I surrendered. No . . . I'm trying to find out who's behind it now. That's the key. You can always have a crime to investigate, but I think you would like to know who did it.'

The sheriff said he was after whoever created this 'forged, fraudulent document,' meaning a computer scan of the president's long-form birth certificate, released by the White House in April 2011.

Arpaio's statements have paralleled assurances from Zullo during periodic interviews with Florida pastor/radio host Carl Gallups that new revelations concerning the Obama birth certificate are on the way.

Critics of birthers regularly mock Zullo's vague pronouncements on Gallups' show as never resulting in any 'new' finds.

Why, even the information disclosed during Arpaio's two birther-themed press conferences in 2012 were a rehash of debunked conspiracy theories. . .

Zullo promised to release 'universe-shattering' results of these investigations in March, a deadline Zullo since has extended indefinitely."

The article goes on to describe how Arpaio is "getting played" by "person who purportedly convinced Arapio of [his] paranoid fantasy . . . [a] computer fraudster [who was ] the subject of a 2010 Playboy exposé titled 'The Man Who Conned the Pentagon', and concludes:

"Arpaio's racist, wing-nut supporters would consider it an act of bravery that their hero is investigating federal officials getting in the way of keeping despised Latinos in their place.

Meaning more money in the sheriff's perpetual re-election kitty and proving that bogus investigations continue to pay off."

The Nonsense of Pastor Poppins

UPDATE VI:  "A German scientist named Klaus Conrad coined [the term] apophanie (from the Greek apo, away, and phaenein, to show) in 1958 . . . [to describe] the acute stage of schizophrenia, during which unrelated details seem saturated in connections and meaning. Unlike an epiphany—a true intuition of the world’s interconnectedness—an apophany is a false realization. . . . a weakness of human cognition: the 'pervasive tendency … to see order in random configurations,' an 'unmotivated seeing of connections,' the experience of 'delusion as revelation' . . . 'the tendency to be overwhelmed by meaningful coincidences.' . .

expert detectors of conspiracies in random events, whispers in radio static, and the Virgin Mary in grilled cheese."

Read Slate, It’s All Connected. 

UPDATE V:  Extraordinary coincidences are not godly miracles, in fact "extremely improbable events are commonplace. Since that may sound like a contradiction, let’s take a closer look.

The improbability principle is composed of five laws, analogous to the four laws of thermodynamics or Newton’s three laws of motion. These laws, the law of inevitability, the law of truly large numbers, the law of selection, the law of the probability lever, and the law of near enough, explain exactly why we should expect to encounter highly unlikely events, and indeed why we should expect to do so on a regular, even frequent, basis. Any one of the laws acting by itself can lead to a highly improbable event—like people winning the lottery twice, or 26 black numbers coming up one after another in roulette. (The details of these as well as many other apparently extraordinarily unlikely events are given in my book.) But the impact of the principle gets even stronger when the laws intertwine and work together."

Read Slate, It’s Not Actually a Miracle.

UPDATE IV: Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) is fond of citing current events as fulfillment of 'prophesy' of the soon-to-be apocalypse (in support of his personal religious myths of course). Why are people addicted to such 'predictions?' Read The New York Times, Bold Predictions: Always Enticing, Often Wrong.


UPDATE III: Mike did a beautiful take down of Bob's complaint that he wasn't getting a social security COLA increase, pointing out that people are fiscal hypocrites.

The scary part, neither of them thought it was the lest bit ironic. Bob and Joe (who called later), people like him, and Pastor Poppins of Pensacola are clueless.


UPDATE II: Then Pastor Poppins of Pensacola spoke approvingly of the Republi-con bestiality candidate.

I wonder if his church members would agree?


UPDATE: On today's show, Pastor Poppins of Pensacola just said there were WMDs found in Iraq after the invasion.

Still makin that bitter medicine of the truth (there were no WMDs in Iraq) go down, with those spoons full of lies.

What do Pastor Poppins of Pensacola and Paul the octopus have in common? Nonsense correlations. Read The New York Times, The Oracle of Oberhausen.

So Thursday's question will be:

Is God speaking to us through Paul and oil spills and our very own Pastor Poppins, Pensacola's prophet with 'special insight', or

Is it just ""temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events," also known as synchronicity.

Tune in from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY (and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers) and find out.

The House of So Many Republi-CON Lies

Bob McDonnell was once "a popular governor once considered a rising star in the Republican Party. He had chaired the Republican Governors Association, and he was on the short list to be Mitt Romney’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election."

At his corruption trial, the McDonnell strategy to explain $100,000+ in loans and gifts, including  golf trips, Rolexes, vacations, checks, vacations, Ferrari rides to everyone in the family was an attempt to "explain lies with lies . . . : 'We couldn’t have been lying to you about our finances, Virginia, because we were too busy lying to you about everything else. We lied about our marriage for years. We lied about our values and our integrity. We lied about our political and economic convictions. We lied about the centrality of family and marriage to our vision of governance.' In the end, when the jurors were asked to believe one more lie—that the McDonnells’ whole life was an 'act' (a lie that may or may not now come true, if the McDonnells’ marriage fails to survive this spectacle) to explain the other lies—it may have been too much to sanction."

Read Slate, A Shameful Defense Fails. 

Of course, the other guys are no better.

Is Palestinian Terrorism 'Justified'?

UPDATE II:  "Six months ago, after Vladimir Putin annexed part of Ukraine, President Obama authorized sanctions against Russia. 'The basic principles that govern relations between nations in Europe and around the world must be upheld in the 21st century,' said Obama. 'That includes respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity—the notion that nations do not simply redraw borders or make decisions at the expense of their neighbors simply because they are larger or more powerful.'

The United States has defended that principle in Ukraine and Iraq: You can’t use force to grab territory or change borders. But Israel, a U.S. ally, continues to violate the rule. This weekend, Israel claimed yet more Palestinian territory: nearly 1,000 acres, its biggest land grab in 30 years.

The land isn’t in Gaza, where Hamas has been firing rockets and digging tunnels. It’s in the West Bank, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been preaching nonviolence and trying to negotiate a peace agreement. Israel controls more than 40 percent of the West Bank, using its army to facilitate the occupation of this land by Jewish settlers. This is land never granted to Israel under any agreement. It’s theft. . .

This isn’t a Putin-style invasion or an ISIS-level bloodbath. But it’s offensive for many reasons. It’s a slap at the United States, which stood with Israel in its latest war in Gaza, and at European countries that cut Israel lots of slack during the lopsided conflict. It’s a thumb in the eye of Secretary of State John Kerry, who keeps trying to restart peace talks. And it discredits Abbas, sending every Palestinian a message that negotiation is for suckers."

Read Slate, Why Israel Is No Better Than Russia.  

UPDATE:  "The Middle East has been trapped for decades between repressive dictatorships and illiberal opposition groups — between Hosni Mubarak and al-Qaeda — leaving little space in between. The dictators try to shut down all opposition movements, and the ones that survive are vengeful, religious and violent. . .

In the Palestinian territories, Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is indeed a moderate. But notice that the Israeli government and the West have happily postponed elections in the West Bank year after year — because they know full well who would win. Moderates don’t do well in an atmosphere of despair and war.

Perhaps the biggest stretch of all is the idea that the moderates could win in Syria. It is one thing to believe that moderates can organize well, make their case and get to the polls. But the Bashar al-Assad regime turned its guns on the opposition from the start. In that circumstance, the groups that are going to gain power are those that will fight back with ferocity. . .

And who are those people? After the Syrian struggle began, the Associated Press reported that the opposition to the Assad regime could be characterized as 'poor, pious and rural.' Describing these people in Aleppo, it said, 'They frame the fight in a religious context and speak of martyrdom as something they wish for.' University of Oklahoma scholar Joshua Landis points out that of the four largest and most effective rebel forces in Syria, not one espouses democracy. . .

Asserting that the moderates in Syria could win is not tough foreign policy talk, it is a naive fantasy with dangerous consequences."

Read the Washington Post, The fantasy of Middle Eastern moderates. 

In answering the question, does it matter that Zionist paramilitary groups used terrorism "to drive Britain from the region in the 1940s."

Read The New York Times, Israeli Columnist Is Fired for Writing That Palestinian Terrorism Is 'Justified', which quotes "Ehud Barak, the current defense minister, who during a 1998 TV interview was asked what he would do if he were born a Palestinian. His response, immediately controversial, was: 'If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would join, at some point, one of the terrorist groups.'"

Romney 2016

Says one pundit:  "Romney’s struggles in 2012 flowed from his defensiveness and his fear of alienating Tea Party conservatives he didn’t truly understand. When Romney was himself, as he was during his first debate with the president, he seemed solid and self-assured. If Romney did indeed decide to run again, he’d be wise to jettison his old playbook and to instead detail how he, as a practitioner of creative destruction and disruptive innovation and all the rest, can help make these powerful economic forces work for all Americans. He could build a new presidential campaign around the need to reform and renew America’s safety net, to make it fiscally sustainable while also making it more effective. Imagine if Romney, having been caricatured as a cat’s-paw of the Wall Street overclass, decided to rail against the outsize power of the megabanks and in favor of a more competitive and inclusive capitalism. If we let Romney be Romney, we might find the populist the party needs."

Read Slate, Romney 2016!

The problem is, of course, the so-called Tea Party would never go for it.

Republi-CON Fear, Anger and Hatred, Courtesy of Officer Dan Page of the St. Louis County Police Department

"Does it come as a shock that Officer Dan Page, who was suspended by the St. Louis County Police Department after shoving CNN correspondent Don Lemon mid-reporting, has some bizarre and offensive ideas about blacks, women, and the government? . .

In a handful of interviews unearthed by Rachel Tabachnick of Political Research Associates, Pages further opines that there is a military plot to overthrow the United States and establish a one-world government".

Read Slate, Dan Page’s Deeply Disturbing Views on Race, Sexual Assault, and Government.

Anyone want to guess the type of radio and TV that Dan Page frequents?

Without fear, anger and hatred, where would the Republi-cons be.