Things Only A Republican Can Believe

[Hmofstralian Shepherd]

Or maybe the fact that their "cause" is a load of horseshit is part of the problem.

Actually that's insulting to horses.

[random axe]

Yeah, well . . . the hippies typically weren't too focused, either.  Activism is a great idea and good for you and good for the country, but a hell of a lot of it is based on people getting excited without actually knowing what they're talking about.

The NYT also had a thing today about the GOP vowing to block unemployment extensions (yes, some more) unless the Dems give up on the Estate Tax.  Mind you, the House has already passed a bill that would exempt all households under $7 million worth, so the GOP would be screwing the unemployed and the economy to protect the richest quarter of one percent of Americans.  And lots of people are very upset about Estate Tax, without even knowing if it applies to them.

Meanwhile, the only person I've ever heard talk about it who actually is strongly affected by it doesn't care.  His dad's worth around $12 million last I heard, but they just put all their investment into commercial real estate and have never lost money at it yet -- but depreciation lets them take huge tax deductions on it, and the real estate is technically all owned by their two-person corporation anyway. 

[random axe]

Wow.

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. "And I think now, isn't that ironic?"



And Limbaugh says that if health care reform passes, he'll leave the US to go live in Costa Rica.  Is he aware of the politics in Costa Rica?  It makes Massachusetts look like Utah.  Until recently, the feds there ran the entire insurance industry directly, they're uber-Green, and they outlawed their own military right in their constitution.

[Teal Deer]

Yeah, but 11-year-old prostitues and OxyContin are probably easier to get there. Kinda like Thailand.

[Count Frightenstein]

Is it widely known David Frum is Canadian?? He and I grew up in the same hood. There is a library named after his mom a block from my mom's house. His mom was a news anchor forever....


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/25/david-frum-aei-split-cons_n_513544.html

Oh, and he's a raging douchebag.

[random axe]

Unless this report itself is a joke, Palin threatens to shoot any protester who threatens violence.

She's kidding, but I find it hard to believe she's fully aware of the irony.  Or, in fact, in general what she's talking about, at pretty much any time.

[Count Frightenstein]

http://gopclownshow.com/fox-breaking-news-obama/

[stormneedle]

It was breaking news. It's just that the organization itself was breaking, not the news.

The Founding Fathers, Bless Their Holy Names, knew that news organizations had biases, and chose not to limit them (if they had the headaches would have been incredible). I think the problem comes up that now there is so much happening that instead of using multiple sources and cross checking them, most people pick one source and accept it.

Of course, I use a four letter word website for a lot of my information, so I KNOW I'm biased towards schadenfreude.

[mybabysmomma]

It doesn't help that there really aren't any independent news sources anymore and that the media outlets are own by only a few people.

[random axe]

Fox is just the political propaganda arm of an Australian lunatic billionaire -- who's even admitted it a few times, regardless of what Roger Ailes prefers to claim.

Fox has done this We Interrupt The Obama To Go Now To Breaking Nothing several times.  Jon Stewart's mocked them for it a couple of times.

[random axe]

NYT editorial on the Republican primaries.  It's, uh, pretty awesome.  And the Republicans have no one to blame but themselves.

A political novice who made her fortune building up an entertainment business that specialized in blood, seminaked women and scripted subplots featuring rape, adultery and familial violence. In which the candidate, her husband and children played themselves. Also, the family yacht is named Sexy Bitch.

a former drug addict who, according to court documents, once referred to the United States government as the Antichrist and claimed to have personally located the Ark of the Covenant.

For governor, the Republican convention endorsed Tom Foley, a longtime party fund-raiser who was once George W. Bush’s ambassador to Ireland. Foley, whose 100-foot yacht makes the McMahons’ 47-footer look like a dinghy, instantly identified himself as an “outsider.”

[random axe]

Two quick things that caught my attention:

1)  The Family Research Council recently released a report on how many sexual assaults are reported in the US military and what proportion of them are homosexual assaults, and they came to the conclusion that gays are three times more likely to commit sexual assaults in the military.  Their reasoning is awfully poor, not to say embarrassing, but among other things it starts with the claim that 8% of sexual assaults in the military are same-sex.  This doesn't bode well for heterosexual soldiers.

The report apparently doesn't consider what proportion of assaults get reported, or which kinds of assaults are more likely to be reported, or so on.  I'd be willing to bet that the numbers are skewed in several rather overwhelming ways.  For one thing, I'd bet that a lot of 'homosexual assault' cases are the result of consensual gay sex where the participants get caught, and one of them makes a claim of assault to save his or her career.  For another, I'd bet that most same-sex sexual assaults in the military, reported or not, are committed by soldiers who identify themselves very firmly as straight.  I have no doubt whatsoever that heterosexual soldiers are much more likely to commit homosexual assaults than homosexual soldiers are.

But anyway.


2)  FOX whipped up a psychotic anti-Those-People demonstration in NYC the other day to protest the infamous Ground Zero Mosque, ie, a community center near the 9/11 site which would include a mosque.  Because, you know, those dozen lunatics were the official representatives of that entire group of religions.

Anyway, the crowd turned on two Egyptian Coptic Christians who had traveled from LA to join the protest, and the police had to save the Egyptians from the mob, who refused to believe they were Christians because, you know, they didn't look very Christian.  Very nice. 

I happened to mention this story to my brother, whose immediate comment was "They gathered a concentrated critical mass at ground zero?  They're lucky they didn't destroy the entire city."

Oy.  I feel a bit flash-burned, myself.

[random axe]

And . . . Bristol and Levi have called it quits yet again.

Who had Got another girl pregnant?  That appears to be the winner.

[mo]

I didn't know it was possible for me to feel sympathy for a Republican Representative from South Carolina.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty

Inglis is a casualty of the tea party-ization of the Republican Party. Given the decisive vote against him in June, it's clear he was wiped out by a political wave that he could do little to thwart. "Emotionally, I should be all right with this," he says. And when he thinks about what lies ahead for his party and GOP House leaders, he can't help but chuckle. With Boehner and others chasing after the tea party, he says, "that's going to be the dog that catches the car." He quickly adds: "And the Democrats, if they go into the minority, are going to have an enjoyable couple of years watching that dog deal with the car it's caught."

[random axe]

The weird part for me is thinking of this guy as a moderate, but maybe the teabaggers will drive them out into some kind of bipartisan effort.  Common enemy, and all that.

Still, it took this guy eight to ten years to figure out that combative partisan politics wasn't productive for the country?  I don't know if Congress needs a lot of slow learners.  Maybe it's true that conservatives are good because they don't get much done.