Congratulations, Rick. You've successfully pandered to a tiny, unrepresentative, extremist fringe group. That should solidify you're loser prospects nicely.

And commute Warren Jeffs sentencing to boot!!

There used to be a difference between Republicans, conservatives, and evangelists. Now it's the Republativangelist party!

and so the Tea party gives way to the Tea-vangelists.

Electing one theocentric, economically confused, right wing radical from my state is bad enough, but not necessarily indicative of a everyone from Texas. If Perry gets into office too, this is going to start feeling like a bad trend.

Matt, it already happens in academia. Texas is well known (notorious?) for the influence that their selection of high school textbooks has on the rest of the nation. Let's hope that these trends are contained soon.

Yea, let's make fun of someone's religion and at the same time disparage the millions of others who practice this faith. Let's call it a cult and imply they condone sexual abuse of children. That's real tolerant, caring, etc. Great comments!

Now let's make one thing clear,

I am in no way trying to be tolerant of religion.

I'd get kicked out of the sarcastic atheist comic's club for that.

Hoosierprof, it's worse than selection, Texas actually dictates the contents! They have said flat out, you don't publish what we want to teach, we won't buy your books.

RobDon, if it quacks and waddles......I'm calling it! Catholics don't remove pedophile priests and punish them, or let the law punish them, they simply move the offenders to a different parish and let the molestation continue! One could even speculate, given the evidence, that the catholic church exists to promote a pedophile lifestyle.

All religions are cults. Some are just larger and more successful than others.

Oh and Catholics aren't alone, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and all sort of protestant sects have been caught "Spreading the love of God." and that's just the Christian cults, let's not get to all the evil committed by the other religions, (Scientology, Islam anyone?) or we'll be here all day.

RobDon [checks watch] yep, there's a train that's never late. And once again you are untroubled by the ambitions of these men to destroy the non-establishment clause seperating church and state. Also ways the same complaint..."mewmewmew, disparage millions who are practicing their faith mewmewmew."

Rob, you know what they called it when the church WAS the state in Europe? It was called the Dark Ages. And if these men accomplish their goals, it will be just like a Christian Iran with Christian Sharia and Christian Taliban bombing Planned Parenthood clinics. It will be the death of American freedom and liberty. The death of racial and sexual equality. The death of RELIGOUS freedom!

As for abusing children, plenty of Christians do that. Its not like cults have a patent on it or anything. As for the rest, yeah. Perry DOES come off like a cult leader. I've said so for a very long time. And you have the smell of burnt almond flavoraid on your breath.

Aw, Rick Perry held a religious, prayer-fast during Ramadan! Bless his heart.

Perry is living proof of the statement I've made before that there is no such thing as the "Tea Party." It's the Republican Party. Period. All one and the same.

Rick Perry makes me want to vomit. He's disgusting.

I am heaving a huge, sad sigh and employing my famous fan in the way it was intended - because it is hotter than billybedamned here today.

RobDon, I'm not going to defend yo' butt...that was once too often. Yes, we allow freedom of worship and religion here and that's why the rest of us are simply grinding our molars together and not physically attacking that almighty stupid man in Texas. If he can't make up his mind between politics and televangelism as a career at this late date, I do believe he had better consult with Mr. Huckabee and Ms. Palin.

DonQ, VoxP, Great Drew, MeddlingMonk: y'all scored all the points, but remember to keep them civil. I admire Robbie for his willingness to keep his mind open and to engage us on most issues.

And hoosierproof and peanuts: the issue of the textbooks is just a tragedy. I don't approve of home schooling, but I declare if I had children of school age, I just might do it because of the stupidity and bias of the texts from Texas!

Dear true Southern Belle from Carolina, DonQ, and others...I understand the attack on religion and attempts to move it more and more into government but I do not understand attacking a person's faith and in doing so attacking all the other good people who follow that same religion. Just saying.

Robbie, darlin', I think where you get into trouble with this crew is that few of us are convinced that the Rick Perrys of the world are people of faith. You seem to be convinced and say it loud and proud. We're not...we think he's a sham, a hypocrite and worse. We think he's pandering to win the support - money and votes - of the people who do believe.

So, when you see us go off on politicians who try to bring religion into politics against the Constitution, recognize that it pisses us off on general Constitutional terms. We are not attacking you personally or other religious people.

Robdon, when it comes to the Governor of Texas, holding a National Prayer Rally (Or however it was framed as, I don't know the specific description.) It's not a privately held belief, it's not someone's personal faith. It's public. Not solely because he was trying to move it into a political area, but because he made it a public issue. It then became open for debate, discussion and ridicule.

As for the Religion itself: People were raped, people have been killed, people have been tortured all in the name of the Religion. Now, that doesn't mean that everyone who has found comfort in the Religion have in anyway bought into the sins committed in its name, however, that doesn't erase the sins either. As their atrocities do not extend to cover you, your benevolence does not extend to cover them.

I just want to say as non-aggressively as I can, religion is not sacred. It's not off-limits, taboo, sacrosanct or beyond reproach. And you don't have to be a believer to have the right to talk about and criticize religion. The general consensus these days is that you are free to believe whatever you want to believe, but if you don't believe in faith you shouldn't talk down about it, just leave the believers to indulge. This consensus is wrong.

Religion, and God, are free and open to be mocked, deconstructed and debunked, and this should be done without attacking the believers who partake, but also with the acknowledgement that those who are offended on God's behalf, do so at their own choosing.

God's too damn big to take offense in any case. And personally, I think he's got a mean sense of humor.

Rob, you know what they called it when the church WAS the state in Europe? It was called the Dark Ages.

Actually, the Roman church was politically very weak in the Middle Ages. It's really from the Italian Renaissance onwards that Rome began to gain tremendous political power.

And from the standpoint of power of any sort, the current pope is the most powerful Roman pontiff of all. Boniface VIII may have claimed authority over everything and everyone on Earth, but Benedict XVI is the first pope to have a YouTube channel and a Twitter account. (That is not meant as sarcasm.)

I would disagree about the Church in the Medieval period Monk. It could excommunicate kings and put whole countries under censure. Remember Henry II and Beckett? It was centuries of abuse by the Catholic Church that brought about the Reformation. Not a few decades during the Renaissance.

Not to mention the Crusades and the Spanish Inquistion. And witch hunts.

Ah, the good old days when you could burn people at the stake for being witches, and torturing people until they converted to your religion, and killed thousands to take back your religion's holy land!

Not to mention slaughtering all of the Jews in your own country on the way out to the Promised Land. Tasy. Jesus would have loved it!

I'm sorry, but you can't simply make blanket statements about a 1,000-year-long period and make any sense, particularly when you are taking later developments and projecting them backwards onto earlier periods. The Spanish Inquisition happened in the 15th century. That's post-Renaissance, making it a modern thing, not Medieval. And, contrary to what Maria said, it was the abuses of the Renaissance popes specifically that sparked the Reformation, not things that happened centuries earlier. And the Papal States, which began only as the Roman hinterlands, didn't really become a European powerhouse until (here it comes) at about the same time as the Reformation and Inquisition.

And, so what about Henry II? For much of the Middle Ages, especially the early part, the pope's direct authority didn't really extend much beyond the city of Rome. Popes were at the mercy of whoever ruled Italy, whether that happened to be Lombards, Byzantines, Franks, or whatever. For quite a long time, no one could assume the papacy without the approval of a secular authority. As time went on, of course, a tug-of-war ensued between the papacy and secular rulers (Henry II being only one example of that), with the papacy becoming a political force in it's own right by the end of the Medieval period. But what had come to be at the end of that period cannot be taken as the defining characteristics of what had come before.

And, remember what I said about the early popes' authority being limited to the city of Rome (and environs)? Their only power lay in the prestige of Rome. Much, much later, popes had armies. But today, the current pope can communicate directly to everyone in the world who has access to a radio or who has Internet access. That's real power. Popes no longer depose kings or have armies, but military might is nothing compared with being able to deliver your ideas directly in the waiting ears of your followers.

Papal power has increased over time, not decreased, and the potential for abuse has also increased. From one city, to Western Europe, to the whole freaking planet. Just because the current pope's authority isn't wielded in a spectacularly gruesome manner, that doesn't mean he isn't powerful. Never underestimate soft power.

I'm afraid no one is really looking at this from an historical perspective. I've actually "done" history, to a limited extent, so that's how I look at these sorts of issues. Sorry to go all ad verecundiam on people, but there it is.

As a final bleat, I'll just observe that we can't very well be all smug about the so-called "Dark Ages" (a term no modern historian uses) when we've got Neanderthals like Bachmann and Perry running for President. Not when we've got black sites. Not when we're waging endless wars. Pot, meet kettle.

Monk

The 15th century is not post Renaissance. The Renaissancestarted in the early 1450s with the advent of the printing press and the fall of Constantinople. That is well within the 15thc. The Medieval Period extend fr4om the fall of Rome in 476 c.e. to about 1450 (invention of the printing press). I will argue that papal power was very strong in the Medieval period just look at English history. The Reformation was caused through a long history of papal abuse through such things as indulgences. When Luther pinned his 95 These on October 31, 1517 it was because on centuries of abuse not 50 years or so.

I really don't see that papal power has increased since then. I mean when was the last time a country was put under a papalindirect or a monarch or national leader excommunicated? Really.

Finally please notice I haven't used the term Dark Ages. I use a standard historical term Medieval Period. Also I am more inclined to use the term Early Modern Period (I haven't in this post) to describe a period that includes the Renaissance that is from approximately 1450 to 1800. After that it's the Modern Period. I've done history too Monk. I do living history and historical reenactment. I work at a historical research library and interact with historians everyday and learn from them. I really like you and appreciate you but please don't think I don't know history as well.

Dark Ages is more appropriate to the period between the fall of Rome and til...the Renaissance? with the advent of the printing press. During that time the church was the state. Everything old or pagan was destroyed...including much of anything smacking of cultural or scientific advancement. Literacy fell to nothing, all education was done through religious institutions, all records were preserved by clergymen through the prism of religion. To differ from the offical framing was heresey. Moral authority+military power= the Crusades. Basically what we are seeing in the Middle East now. And what we have the danger of America falling into if the New Apostles achieve their aims.

He already did that. It didn't work.

Doesn't this mean that any further problems that we continue to experience as a country are God's fault?

Talk about a failure of leadership.

We should praying that (choose the deity of your choice) that Perry and Bachmann are the nominees who will lead the Republican party back into a semi-permanent minority.

With the drought, God is obviously sending a message to Perry that he doesn't like the direction that government is taking in Texas. And He probably isn't too thrilled to have people like Perry giving short shrift to the poor while filling the pockets of the wealthy, despite biblical admonitions to the contrary.

You might want to pay attention there, Governor.

Pray this away Perry

*flips Rick the bird

OK, so I took lunches to school every day for eight years, and I survived without ice packs or refrigerators to put them in and be "safe".

I'll second that, I took my lunch to school throughout my entire childhood. Though this doesn't surprise me, it's just one more facet of the "germophobia" in our culture.

George Carlin in 1999, via you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYuQTxpvuQw (with the standard language warning, it IS george carlin, after all)

My Mom wasn't dumb enough to pack anything that wasn't going to keep.

I'd take the story with a big grain of salt considering it's Fox News.

George Carlin's decomposing corpse has more sense than Fox News.

My mom was famous for her cream cheese and jelly sandwiches. Utterly gross, and never refrigerated once I left the house with the revolting little creations. When there's nothing else to eat, you eat it. I lived...

It may be due to less exposure to bacteria and other stuff as children these days. From an article in Natural News.com:

"Results from a nationally conducted survey by the National Institute of Health (NIH) from 1988 to 1994 indicate that more than 50 percent of Americans aged six to fifty-nine are sensitive to at least one allergen. These rates range from two to five times higher than rates found in a similar survey completed in 1980.

The apparent reason for these increased rates is today's more sterile lifestyle. The body's immune system is formed in reaction to foreign, generally harmless substances such as animal dander, pollen, mold, and particular foods. The more our lifestyle protects us from encounters with such substances, the greater the chance for a reaction when they are finally encountered..."

I've read that a number of doctors actually advise against frequent use of anti-bacterial soaps and cleaning products. Their main fear is that it only helps breed more antibiotic-resistant bugs, but I think you could definitely make the argument that being TOO sterility-conscious can lead to being overly sensitive to what used to be pretty innocuous bugs.

Another part of the problem is the over-prescription of antibiotics for illnesses which are not bacterial in nature. The bacteria that are present develop an immunity to the drugs we have and morph into super-bugs we don't have the means to treat.

Have you noticed that drug advertisements recommend you 'contact your prescriber' not that you make an appointment with your doctor to discuss your symptoms and see what the doctor recommends. Patients think they go to the doctor to tell the doctor what drugs they want for their self-diagnosed problems, and the doctors seem to just write the scrip!

The drug companies have turned doctors into prescription dispensers, and insurance companies tell doctors what treatments they may pursue. The only people NOT in charge of American health are doctors!

I went to a doctor for a rash on my forearm. I was given a prescription for a topical cream, and a discount card to help me pay for the medicine. I took the prescription to the pharmacy to have it filled. When I was rung up, it turned out the tiny tube of cream cost $250.00! Horrified, I handed over the discount card. The pharmacist peeled the card off the information sheet and pointed to the fine print UNDERNEATH where the card had been glued. The card was only good for prescriptions that cost less than $100.00, and would not be applying to my 250.00 prescription! My insurance would cover less than half the cost. I left the medicine at the pharmacy and bought a tube of OTC hydrocortizone instead! When I went back to the doctor and complained, she said: "Oh! The drug rep has been pestering us about why we're not prescribing more of that medicine!"

You gotta eat a peck o' dirt before you die...

Eileen! My nana always used to say that! Given the number of horses and bikes I've fallen off of, I'm sure I've eaten mine!

Andrea Mitchell should limit her husband to clarinet playing and bathtub soaking, and let the experts talk about what our economy needs.

Yes, now Greenspan is saying he didn't anticipate the tremendous damage that would be done to markets because of the debt ceiling fight and credit downgrade. It makes you wonder why the heck anyone ever listened to this dolt in the first place, expecially after he said he never anticipated that corporations would engage in behavior like the subprime mortgage scam that damaged them and the entire market.

I was also really impressed by Rachel's performance on Meet the Press. She had that Republican Strategerist backed up into a corner of his own creation, sounding like a CD player in "Track Repeat" mode in a matter of seconds. It was great.

(Did anyone but me notice that there's still a Keith Olbermann bobblehead on the shelves of the Meet the Press set?)

To Alan Greenspan, My wife works with people with brain injuries. Through her observations of Mr. Greenspan, we've come to the hypothesis that Mr. Greenspan's mind, while brilliant, is completely disconnected from anything other than "math". As long as it's purely the numbers, he's a genious, but once the "human" factor comes into play, he simply is so removed from that, that he can't factor that in. I BIG clue to this is that he completely fails to pick up on satire whenever he's confronted with it. If it was only now that he'd started having that problem, I'd say it was senility, but he's always been like this. Remember what he told Henry Paulson back in the high of the realestate crash? Something along the lines of "We should buy up all the empty houses and burn them"

Oi, I tried to read the WI money laundering piece and about 3/4 of the way down my eyes started bleeding. Okay, they didn't but would have if I'd kept going. Vomituous.

I was all ready to vote tomorrow but last night I got a call out-of-the-blue for a 3-day job opportunity starting today. I called up places last night trying to find out if there was anything I could do but all absentee voting (ballot or in-person ahead of time) ended on Friday.

I really wanted to vote, but I have student loans I need to pay and have to take any job I can find or get.

Drew, you should be able to go to the registrar of voters and cast your vote in person? I think? In California, you can vote in advance if you physically show up in their office.

I'm searching my county's website for any relevant information. If I can, I'll have to drive back there - 3 hours - cast my vote, then get back to where I currently am at in time to get to work. lol

Nope. Even in-person absentee voting closed on Friday at 5pm. State law.

My usual caution: please think twice before going with the Hitler references. Make sure you mean it,...

What? Because there possibly could be valid parallels? It's okay to make comparison of the Governor of Texas to Adolf Hitler if you really mean it?

While I appreciate the attempts to keep people from endless comparisons of anyone they don't agree with to Adolf Hitler, I can see the point Mr. Duckett was trying to make. He did not say Rick Perry was like Hitler. He said the Perry rally reminded him of political rallies, he has probably seen on film, of 1930's Germany. And that is precisely what it reminded me of. He's correct. The only thing missing were the Sieg Heils. Thank you for not removing his post. We are indeed doomed to repeat that which we cannot recall, or willfully refuse to remember.

Anyone who doesn't know Godwin's law, needs to go back to Internet Kindergarten.

Besides, it's more effective, and more accurate to compare these political Christians to their Islamic counterparts.

Give it a minute, imagine if a bunch of Muslims got together to pray that Allah takes control of America, Imagine if it was a bunch of Wiccans trying to change the credit rating through a nature ritual, imagine a stadium full of people got together to petition Thor.

It's either laughable or creepy, I can't decide which yet. Is there a middle ground?

Unless those people have the freedom to do just those things, then the First Amendment is broken.

You also forgot Vodoun, obeah, and Santaria. A stadium packed with that kind of spiritual fervor. Who knows, it might actually get results!

The stocks are down...

Maybe they should have sacrificed a goat.

He's big on blood sacrifices if I remember.

How many oxen, doves and sheep does it take to get the housing market back up to where it was pre-recession?

lol, petition Cthulhu. "Why settle for a lesser evil?"

Definitely creepy, but the religious right has scared me for a long time. Waaaay too Stepford for my comfort!

At least there would be curried goat! Its not loaves and fishes, but its not bad.

No no no, what we need to do is get an entire stadium to pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

That he may touch America with his noodley appendage, and get the economy flowing like Marinara flows over a nice bowl of Linguini,

Ramen,

Rick Perry: Manna the people.

Get it?,... cause he's a sanctimonius cracker... no-one?.....

Chollah back y'all.....

Fine, but I'll have you know that plenty of people find religious food puns to be Halal-ious.

I don't dispute what Tricia says above, but there is a serious problem with Godwin's Law in general, when used as a rhetorical tactic.

First, invoking Hitler tends to shut down debate on the issue, and I think we can all agree that is bad. Also, it tends to automatically vilify the position of those who are being equated with Hitler, being such a general, all-purpose boogeyman.

HOWEVER, invoking Godwin's Law can ALSO shut down debate, by eliminating an entire aspect of an issue as part of the discussion. Pre-emptively excluding Hitler analogies can be as irrational as painting one's opponent with the Hitler brush.

The elephant in the room, the boogeyman that we cannot currently disassociate with Hitler, is fascism.

We should not be pre-empted from discussing demagoguery, mass rallies, fascist tactics, Brown Shirt or violent strong-arm tactics, "big lie" propaganda, a fascination with parades, the creation of segregated "ghettos" or "work camps," or even the use of highly emotional speeches and rhetoric, all of which were SO exemplified by the Third Reich that to be pre-emptively dis-allowed from discussing them would make many anti-fascist warriors like Hannah Arendt (not to mention Frankfurt School Critical Theorists like Adorno) turn over in their graves.

If we make our biggest of big boogeymen invisible, doesn't he then become our Jungian Shadow, the thing we can't see or talk about, because it represents the rejected parts of ourselves that we have not resolved into our personalities?

The very same tactics used by the Nazis and other fascist groups have been adopted and modernized by the "new" GOP. We've seen citizens and reporters physically attacked by the staffs of right wingers, from Joe Miller to Rand Paul. The building of the Wisconsin group working to defeat repubs in tomorrow's recall elections was burned down last week. And of course, that isn't even getting into the voter suppression and election fraud engaged in by the far right. Hitler and Stalin would be proud.

The treatment of the media in general by some members of the extreme wing of the GOP leaves a lot to be desired.

http://www.dirigoblue.com/diary/3454/papa-lepage-scolds-the-bad-boys-and-girls-of-the-news-media

That incident happened at the end of July. There was another incident that happened during the campaign with a reporter from MPBN, and there might be video of that one, too, but I'm not positive of that one.

Alright, If we are going to bring the unspoken out into the light. Shine a strobe light onto our Jungian Shadow, then lets talk about the nationalism.

Good God, the nationalism. They call it Patriotism, but it's not. If you don't like American Pop Culture, American Government, American Art, American Media and half of the American Population and constantly threat to secede if you don't get your way, then you're not patriots.

If you dress up like the founding fathers but don't read what they said, If you have the constitution on the side of your bus but you haven't read it, you're not a patriot.

If you don't believe in America, you're not a patriot. And Hey, you're still welcome. You don't have to believe anything you don't want to, that's part of American philosophy. But if you don't believe in the spirit of America, if all you like about America is the Flag and the songs we sing on the fourth of July, If you really think it's alright to twist the words of the founding fathers to make them sound like they'd agree with you. Then it's not patriotism you're espousing.

It's Jingoism. Do you know that in Germany now they're very skeptical of any large displays of nationalism, because they know how bad it can get when you take that stuff too far.

"My country wrong or right."

Patriotism is loyalty to the spirit of the country, the philosophy she was established on, and a loyalty to all Americans.

(See, and I did that with barely referencing Nazi Germany at all.)

I think that everyone should be taking these words to heart, on both sides of the aisle.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:

The right to criticize;

The right to hold unpopular beliefs;

The right to protest;

The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speechesmargaretchasesmithconscience.html

Vox Populous

Alright, If we are going to bring the unspoken out into the light. Shine a strobe light onto our Jungian Shadow, then lets talk about the nationalism.

Good God, the nationalism. They call it Patriotism, but it's not. If you don't like American Pop Culture, American Government, American Art, American Media and half of the American Population and constantly threat to secede if you don't get your way, then you're not patriots.

Yeah. Patriotism was a big thing with douche-bag extraordinaire Mountebank who broke land/speed records in getting banned. He threatened me with physical violence if I impugned his patriotism. Let me hunt for my reply...

"There are plenty of fascists and racists hiding behind American flags. My grandfather fought in world war 2 as well. For that I'm very proud of him. But he was also a racist son of a bitch and because of which I cut him out of my life from the time I married my first wife until he was on his death bed.

Impugn your patriotism? The Tea Party douche bags who are destroying our nation all claim to be patriots. They celebrated 2nd Amendment Day on the 15th anniversary of the Murrah Federal Build bombing. Speaking of which...

You a veteran? Put your life on the line for the nation the way your father did? So did Timothy McVeigh. When he was arrested he was wearing a shirt that said:

My block quotes is broken. Dammit.

Y'all are too fun! Yes, patriotism is one big ol bugaboo. Also something that can be "triangulated." I will say no more about that.

However, MY favorite patriot is also my favorite hobbyhorse these days, something I've been reading on the subway, tweeting with the author, and thinking big thoughts about, strange, unbidden thoughts.

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey Kaye

Why am I obsessing over Thomas Paine? Why am I feeling the sudden urge to discuss with Dr. Kaye the possibility of starting up January 29th annual Thomas Paine Birthday Celebrations, with speeches and toasts, rousing the Freethinkers and Progressives from their long slumbers.

Patriots! Who is a patriot? I'm learning all kinds of new things about Paine, things I'd never guessed or wondered. Not just the guy who wrote Common Sense and rallied the working classes behind the IDEA of an American Revolution.

No, a dude who was a pamphleteer, an early blogger, but a champion of the Enlightenment. A guy who would speak out more boldly for deism than Thomas Jefferson. Rights of Man. Age of Reason.

Agrarian Justice. He was an early advocate of something like Social Security. Medicare. Estate taxes. Taxes on property owners, for the PRIVILEGE of owning property.

Fun stuff!

Aye! Thomas Paine SPANKED!

Well, the Geneva Conventions were just "quaint", according to Gonzo, and the Constitution is just "that piece of paper", so Thomas Paine must have been some proto-pinko commie. Of course, he probably lived in a high-rise condo and read the Communist Manifesto according to Palin and Bachmann, so we shouldn't be surprised.

Jesus was another Pinko. My man!

Thomas is a Paine in the Republican patootie.

here's a big cup of COFFEE/ TEA/ stimulating beverage.

... I'd rather not sleep through this kind of conniving.

That was a good story, and encouraging to see you felt comfortable enough here to speak for your own view. (Though I think it will be easily skipped.)

May you continue to trust yourself, and disallow anyone from dictating your faith to you.

This is why, Uff, I don't watch morning TV news. It's always full of insipid, inane or specious questions, which are then treated with seriousness by supposedly serious people, mostly spouting opinion with no actual facts to back up their opinions. And all this in 30 second segments, sandwiched between the never ending 3-5 minute commercial breaks.

But it is a good barometer of the storyline the media will be trying to sell to shape the political discussion. They played a clip of Orrin Hatch saying much the same thing, and it also jibes with the comments of a number of other repubs, such as when they were refusing to extend unemployment benefits. They quoted a Heritage Foundation paper that talked about how "rich" the poor really were, implying that the poor have never had it so good....a sentiment that was echoed, nearly word for word, by a rightie on this very blog. The corporate media is doing what their masters demand, that they demonize unions, demonize the poor, demonize social programs. It's all part of the ongoing push to continue the upward redistribution of wealth, while destroying any possibility of political opposition. Politicians like Scott Walker then ride this manufactured hatred into office, where they promptly enact the policies demanded by their corporate campaign donors.

Yes, it is sickening to watch and listen to this garbage, but ignoring it is to ignore your enemy.

Stay alert and stay pissed.

Just remember, it wasn't Goldman Sachs and their compadres on Wall Street, creating CDOs, certified by S&P and Moodys as AAA, that crashed the global economy! It was all those inconsiderate poor folks and unemployed folks! How dare they collect unemployment benefits, food stamps and welfare. Don't they know that they should have the good grace to go somewhere and die? Our corporate masters have deemed them "surplus to need", and are therefore a drag on corporate profits. If you aren't helping our corporate masters to make a buck, you are a traitor to this nation-corporation of America, Inc. In the distant past, we had the city-states. We then progressed to nation-states. Today, the most advanced entities are nation-corporations, and you pledge your allegiance to them. How long before we see Exxon/Mobil and Boeing fielding teams in the Olympics? Isn't it a violation of their personhood to be denied a chance to compete?

"go somewhere and die?"

Why does that sound familiar? It seems to me someone pointed out that was Republican's strategy, a year or two ago. Someone in Congress...

Wait, what? Alan Grayson was right and was ousted for telling the truth!?

He said that during the healthcare debate. His only mistake was in thinking that the far right limited that to people who needed healthcare. In reality, it applies to anyone who isn't actively making money for the big corporations.

What irks me is I called the local office of my representative saying, "Clean raise or 14th Amendment". I got a letter in the mail after the vote - the letter was on official D.C. stationery - saying, "I just HAD to vote for it and it's actually something good!"

I have more respect for someone who holds onto their convictions and actually does what's right. As it stands, my representative is now a conservative and that's not who I want in office. He lost my reelection vote after sending me that yellow-bellied letter. At the very least he could have attacked the conservatives for putting the world in danger and be like Grayson/Weiner in public admonishments. I can't conscientiously put him back in office.

I caught some of the new repub talking points about the debt ceiling vote on another of the Sunday morning political shows - how many Democrats voted against it. You can be sure that will be used in some future twisted repub campaign ads to show how it was really Democrats who were willing to push the US over a cliff.

Then they should be prepared to deal with the same figures that show an almost unanimous "no" vote by Tea Partiers, including Bachmann. Apparently that means she was willing to push the US over a cliff too.

Agreed, Uffdaguy. But i suspect that won't be mentioned in the ads. It is up to us to remind our friends and neighbors in the voting public who really stood where in this debacle.

It's up to dem candidates to bring things up like this over and over and over, reminding voters that repubs very publicly, and very proudly, did exactly the same things they are accusing dems of doing to destroy the country.

How are those rose-tinted glasses, Uffda? I certainly need a pair.

Yes, it's up to Dems to bring things up like that, but when have they ever done that? They finally got some spine with the Ryancare bill, but Obama undercut them by putting Medicare on the chopping block through the debt-ceiling/deficit fiasco.

And it is precisely because my democratic representative sent me an official D.C. letter stating why he had to vote for the debt/deficit bill and why that was a good thing, that I will not be reelecting him in 2012. If the choice is between a republican, a teabagger, and a conservative/spineless democrat, I will exercise my write-in choice of "none of the above".

Believe me, Drew, I'm not saying any of it will happen. I've seen far too many examples of dems tossing away huge popular mandates, from healthcare reform to taxing the rich, to be under any illusion that they will suddenly wake up now.

I myself am profoundly disillusioned. I am pretty damn sure the nation will go the way of the USSR before it gets right.

Don, unfortunately I have to completely agree with you. I have, in the past few months, come to the conclusion that the far right has done so much damage, and that corporations have become so powerful politically, that this nation cannot help but collapse. Democracy is, for all intents and purposes, dead in this country. There is a small, ruling elite, the "captains of industry", as they used to be called, and they have succeeded in getting a corrupt Supreme Court to declare that corporations have the same rights as individuals, (but apparently none of the responsibilities). They can spend as much as they want on political "free speech", which in our electoral system, basically equates to buying elections. Politicians who refuse to toe the corporate line find themselves unable to raise campaign funds, and if currently in office, find themselves bombarded 24/7 by corporate propaganda disguised as "news". I'm becoming more and more convinced that the 2012 elections will be little more than a sham, as no candidate will win if they don't do as corporations want them to do. Meanwhile, as we race headlong into another recession, with millions out of work, and more to come, corporations sit on literally trillions of dollars. And the "solutions" to fix the economy? The only "solutions" that the far right Tea Party will accept are precisely those that have been proven as failures in the first place, tax cuts and budget cuts. A decade of Bush's tax cuts created practically no jobs at all, while redistributing wealth from the poor and middle class to the very upper wealth levels, and budget cuts have resulted in hundreds of thousands of job losses in state and local governments. Even more appalling, the media now even dare to ask the question of whether the poor are responsible for our economic difficulties, and claiming that the poor are really very well off and happy. We're told that things will get better if we relax or eliminate child labor laws, the minimum wage, and environmental laws. We suffer through one of the hottest, dryest summers on record, and are told it's nothing to worry about, global warming is a scam. This nation is sick and delusional, controlled by businesses that value greed above all, even their own survival or the survival of the global economy. I have absolutely no faith that this will be turned around with our broken, dysfunctional political system. Rather, it will require a massive populist upheaval, a Richter 9.0 social earthquake to tear down the barriers to a nation that is of the people, by the people and for the people. The revolutionaries in 1776 only had to fight England, the most powerful nation in the world, for their freedom. Today, the fight will be not against another nation, but against corporations and their purchased supporters. I can't say I'm going to predict a win for us either.

I'm sorry Uff. I really am.

In the end, we are all responsible, because we allowed it to happen, just as the citizens of Germany and Italy allowed fascism to take control, either through apathy, or because they were swayed by propaganda. Both nations had to go through a cataclysm to come out on the other side, and I have little doubt that the same will have to happen here. What makes this even scarier is an article I read yesterday, about the increasing availability of high-tech weapons to just about anyone with a big enough checkbook or sufficient tech skills. I'm not just talking about Blackwater-type mercenaries now, although I think they would be utilized at some point. I'm talking about the fact that building drones is apparently not too difficult for any number of groups or individuals.....they even mentioned a company advertising satellite launches for $8K, (not sure anyone can deliver on that one, but it's a sign of what is coming).

I'm linking the article below.

The Terminator and perpetual war cometh:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1769673/the-diy-terminator-drones-robots-and-the-crowdsourced-future-of-war

<< Matthew 6 >>
American King James Version

1Take heed that you do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise you have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

2Therefore when you do your alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Truly I say to you, They have their reward. 3But when you do alms, let not your left hand know what your right hand does: 4That your alms may be in secret: and your Father which sees in secret himself shall reward you openly.

5And when you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Truly I say to you, They have their reward. 6But you, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret; and your Father which sees in secret shall reward you openly.

I guess Jefferson Davis missed out on things after the Civil War!

It falls under the category of wanting to be in government to shrink it...

These people just don't understand what they're saying, and they're saying it at volume!

"Take that, S&P."

- Moody's

Separation of Church and State? You mean like the Bachmanns not getting federal funding for their christian reprogram-the-gays therapy center? (They do)

Like there's no In God We Trust on our money? Like there's no "under god" in our pledge of allegiance? Like there aren't crosses on every hillside that have been hastily turned into war memorials, and had the land they stand on suddenly sold to private concerns in order to keep them despite protest from non-christians who don't want the symbols of christianity constantly in their faces?

You mean that separation of church and state?

Christine O'Donnell has chosen to interpret our freedom of religion for us. She says it's not freedom FROM religion, so we'd better pick one, and we'd better pick the right one...

Christians have become a militant and frightening group in this country, and I'm with you about fearing them. I went mountain biking with a couple of very good riders. It was an easy ride, even for me, but one of them had forgotten his helmet. The other guy said: "Dude, put on your shield of invincibility."

I laughed, thinking it was meant to be funny.

They were not joking! They were really angry with me, in fact, so I asked about god helping them what help themselves...

They honestly think you can put on a "god shield" and be impervious to damage!

These are not people who can be reasoned with. They have their own special logic and rules, and they're happily following them, ignoring all evidence of reality. And now they're infiltrating our politics, which I consider dangerous.

These are not people who can be reasoned with. They have their own special logic and rules, and they're happily following them, ignoring all evidence of reality. And now they're infiltrating our politics, which I consider dangerous.

It is some pretty scary stuff.

I hate people. I swear to God I hate people. The parents of those murderous bastards need to never ever see daylight again. Their siblings need to locked away because they could follow in their brother's footsteps.

And our little friend says racism is no big deal in this country anymore...where is the puke bucket?

OMG..............where are we going and why are we in this handbasket??????

The workers elsewhere charge so much less. Republicans say-kill the unions and we will have cheaper labor-obviously a lunatic idea.

Great talking point. Corporate outsourcing of American jobs, because of the lure of cheaper labor in poorer countries, has effectively perpetuated the violation of global human rights, along with downgrading American workers' hopes of finding good jobs, in their own country, and earning decent wages. Corporate America treats Chinese laborers the same way slave owners treated African slaves in early America. Having slaves as workers makes for lucrative business. It also fosters a master/slave mentality, with all of its abuses. Even though America has long admonished the Chinese for human rights violations, America does not bat an eye at the measly wages paid to Chinese laborers (by American companies) for their long hours of tedious work. Corporate America is happy to get away with violating workers' rights in China, and now expects American workers to accept being treated just as poorly. Corporations even label American workers as greedy, lazy and ungrateful. Why do Republicans support this damaging corporate mentality, and why do they want to destroy the government programs which provide a lifeline to these underemployed American workers?

Derpends on how selectively you read the Bible. Christ was all for the under-classes. Had little that was kind to say about the wealthy. Plenty that wasn't kind.

Anyone else notice just how much Marcus Bachmann resembles Liberace?

Candygram...

It's all just amazing I guess...