May 18, 2009
May 17, 2009
May 16, 2009
May 15, 2009
But Only Because the American Nazi Party Was Taken
Today’s GOP — moving from the ridiculously stupid to the space-cadet silly
“A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the ‘Democrat Socialist Party.’”
— Roger Simon, “GOP, RNC to Rebrand Democrats as ‘Socialists,’” Politico.com, May 13, 2009.
That’s fine, the Republicans should go ahead and do that, as long as
they accept this appropriate title as well:
“Things for the Republicans are bad, very bad. It is worse than just about any Republican wants to admit.” [...]
“…But the big picture is clear for all to see: Under Republican rule,
government got bigger and more intrusive.
“Which brings us to personal freedoms: From the legislating of
morality (Schiavo as the prime example), to the various conservative-led state bans on gay marriage, the Republicans did very little to
expand personal freedoms and if anything looked like the party trying
to take freedoms away.” [...]
“No one is stepping up and accepting any responsibility. The public only sees a bunch of cowards afraid to take responsibility.”
— Chuck Todd, “Yes, It’s That Bad for the GOP,” NBC News, May 14, 2009.
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May 14, 2009
Pardons to Balance Budgets
So many states have budgets deficits and are trying to figure out how to bridge the gap.
I have an easy solution to some of their problems. Pardon all the minor, non-violent offenders who were jailed because of the “War on Drugs.”
There is great support to decriminalize marijuana. So, governors, pardon all those people in jail for minor drug-related charges.
Get them out of the system and save all of us money.
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May 13, 2009
May 12, 2009
Gullibility Test
At the same time that John Demjanjuk has been extradited from Cleveland to face trial for things he did as a German soldier during World War II, Americans believe it when the news media reports that due to the statute of limitations, time is running out as far as indicting and prosecuting George W. Bush because of his torture policy. Why do citizens in other countries believe that Americans are very stupid and gullible?
May 11, 2009
The Tattlesnake – I Heard It Through the Grapevine Edition
There’s nothing more reliable than anonymously-sourced comments, as readers of the NY Times well know…
Item 1. “Here’s the way it worked in the GOP when Bush Junior was in office: If some Republican senator or representative threatened to vote against the White House on an important issue, they’d get ‘The Call,’ which went something like: ‘Okay, you vote any way you want but, when you’re up for re-election, don’t count on any help from the RNC, and we’re gonna call the big money donors to the party and tell them to take you off the list. Oh, and we’re also gonna run a heavyweight Republican against you in the primary, so you may not even get to run for re-election. So, you go on and cast your vote however you want.’ You could count the number of Republicans who crossed the line on one hand. I don’t understand why the Democrats can’t do this with the Conserva-Dems.”
Item 2. “These big biotech companies like Monsanto have labs down in Mexico that experiment on all kinds of weird sci-fi stuff they couldn’t get away with in the States. This new Swine Flu virus – H1N1 — is some kind of mutant combo of bird flu, swine flu and a human flu. How did those three get together naturally? If one of these weirdo genetic combos got loose outside the lab and started making people sick, you really believe in your wildest dreams that Monsanto or whoever is going to fess up and say ‘Whoops – our bad! We goofed and this genetically-altered mutant virus we created got loose!’ Sure — the billions in lawsuits and bad PR would bury them.”
Item 3. “Arlen Specter’s dreaming if he thinks he’s going to win the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. Off-year primaries are where the real party faithful vote and some of these folks still remember when Specter jumped from the Democrats to the Republicans in 1965, and they’re still pissed about it. Any credible Democrat could beat him. Hell, Chris Matthews could beat him. Specter could maybe save his bacon if he became a real progressive Democrat, but he’s already shown he’s not going there. Obama and [PA Gov. Ed] Rendell will say a few good words about him, but that’s not going to save him. That old man’s living in a fairyland. His ass is astroturf in 2010, in my opinion.”
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May 10, 2009
The Origins of the Two Mother’s Days
Before becoming the commercial holiday it is now, the Mother’s Day we celebrate on the second Sunday in May was originally about other issues, such as battlefield hospital sanitation and world peace. As Mother’s Day on the Net says in “The History (AKA Her-Story) of Mother’s Day”:
“In the United States, Mother’s Day experienced a series of false starts before eventually transitioning into the “Hallmark” holiday that we celebrate today. In 1858, Anna Reeves Jarvis was the first woman to hold an official celebration of mothers, when in her home state of West Virginia, she instituted Mothers’ Work Day to raise awareness about local sanitation issues. During the Civil War, she expanded the scope of Mothers’ Work Day to include sanitary conditions on both sides of the battlefield.”
In 1870, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” author Julia Ward Howe, appalled at the bloodshed of the American Civil War, proposed making it a Mother’s Day for Peace, as “Julia Ward Howe: Beyond the Battle Hymn of the Republic” at About.com states:
“In 1870, Julia Ward Howe took on a new issue and a new cause. Distressed by her experience of the realities of war, determined that peace was one of the two most important causes of the world (the other being equality in its many forms) and seeing war arise again in the world in the Franco-Prussian War, she called in 1870 for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what divides us, and commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts. She issued a Declaration, hoping to gather together women in a congress of action.”
Not surprisingly, a world Mother’s Day for Peace never received the support of the politicians that the later commercialized version would. From the About.com article:
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May 9, 2009
Does Fox News Know Junior Bush Used Dijon Mustard?
If you go to White House Recipes from George Bush and take a look at their devil egg recipe … you see the following:
12 large eggs, boiled hard and peeled
1 Tbsp (plus) soft butter
1 Tbsp (plus) mayonnaise
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard **
1/2 tsp Yucatan Sunshine Habanero sauce
Salt to taste(remainder omitted for brevity)
Really? Is George Bush elitist too? Please someone let the Daily Show and Huffington know if they aren’t aware of this already : ).
– Posted by AEnan at The Huffington Post, “Hannity Attacks Obama for Putting Mustard on His Hamburger,” by Jason Linkins, May 7, 2009.
**Emphasis mine.
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May 8, 2009
May 7, 2009
Restoring the Bush Family Dynasty
The public relations campaign for the restoration of the Bush family to its rightful place in the Oval Office started last Sunday. On Monday, Rush Limbaugh saw that calling the effort a “listening tour” incorrectly gave the impression that the Democrats could say something worth hearing, so he decreed that henceforth the project would be called a teaching tour.
The new name will invite subconscious images portraying the Republicans doing with facts and wisdom what Jesus did with loaves and fishes when he performed a miracle.
If the Democrats manage to learn what the Republicans are attempting to teach, that would also be classified as a modern miracle.
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The Tattlesnake – Suspicious Minds Edition
Big Media ‘Pandemania’ Hides More Important News
Instead of ‘Swine Flu’ how about ‘Hamthrax’? **
For a couple of weeks in late April and early May, American news consumers were fed a near-constant diet of panic-stricken speculation by the US Big Media of an approaching Swine Flu bug that could have killed millions. Yes, it could have, but it didn’t. As tragic as it is that any have died from the H1N1 flu virus, only three Americans, and fewer than 100 people worldwide, have been killed by this flu. Many more die of car accidents, malaria and tuberculosis in a month than have expired from H1N1, yet cars are not banned and extraordinary precautions are not prescribed to save us from the ravages of malaria and TB. For that matter, about 3,000 people die each month of complications from conventional flu in this country.
One moment for a definition of terms: News is a declarative statement that ends in a period: Such-and-such happened to so-and-so at this-or-that place due to these conditions. The old ‘who, what, when, where, why, and how.’ Speculation, on the other hand, ends in a question mark. News is supposed to be what already happened, and the facts thereof. Speculation considers the endless possibilities of something that happened, or might happen in the future. That’s not news; that’s basically gossip. Look at how much of the ‘news’ these days on the cable channels and in the broadcast media ends in a question mark, especially where the H1N1 virus is concerned.
Our if-it-bleeds-it-leads Big Media love this kind of doomsday scare story: they can invite on legions of junk scientists trailing random letters of the alphabet after their names to nod sagely at how awful things might turn out in the various ‘worst case scenarios,’ engage in endless solemn crosstalk between earnestly-doltish anchor-jocks and speed-freak peppy anchorettes designed to make them appear as if they were born with frontal lobes, and suck in those viewers who don’t pay any attention to the world around them unless terrified by Hollywood disaster-movie plots, thereby cranking up ratings for the bottomless pit of ennui that is the cable TV 24/7 news cycle.
But there’s another aspect to this Swine Flu distraction that is little noted by the overpaid glitz-blisters and schlockmeisters who have floated to the top of the American media septic tank.
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