God damn it, Reason.

The Republican party sparks more terrorism

This is Gabrielle Giffords. She recently won an extremely close race in Arizona against Tea Party candidate Jesse Kelly. She's married to a U.S. Navy captain and astronaut. She ran a tire business before getting into politics. She loves to read, and has been featured on NPR's Weekend Edition. Today, she was shot in the head at point blank. At least five people lost their lives, and at least eighteen others are wounded. A nine year old girl is dead. After some rumors that Giffords was killed, it's now confirmed that she's still alive, but in extremely critical condition. The surgeon is as optimistic "as he can be" in a situation like this. She's forty years old. The shooter is a twenty-two year old male. He's in custody.

This is a surprise to everyone except progressives. We've been warning against the consequences of right wing rhetoric for three years, but I guess it takes a god damn massacre for people to start paying attention.

Her opponent Jesse Kelly held target shooting events to "help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office."



A progressive reporter was assaulted by a mob

Sharron Angle thinks that if Republicans don't win, we should start shooting Democrats

Stephen Broden believes violent revolution is "on the table" if Republicans don't win

This Republican politician dresses up like a Nazi in his free time

Democrat Anthony Weiner was mailed some white powder with a letter telling him to "drop dead."

The right wing is calling for the deaths of gays and lesbians

Claiming in his own words to be inspired by Glenn Beck, a man got into a shootout with the cops on his way to California so he could murder members of Tides Foundation and the ACLU

Here's a letter from the Tea Party called "Why liberalism must be destroyed," which claims that "liberalism is the antithesis of freedom," and that "liberals do not want something like the will of the people interfering with their plans, so they have to make sure elections are in fact rigged."



Here's something that in retrospect can be considered nothing less than a hit list, which Sarah Palin put up on her website. The targets are pointing at Democratic politicians. One of the crosshairs on Arizona is pointing at Giffords.



Here's Palin's twitter



And here she is being a complete sociopath



Can you imagine what the reaction would be if this happened to a Republican politician during a Republican presidency? The entire Democratic party would probably be outlawed as a terrorist organization. The media is going to downplay the right wing's role in this. They'll be wrong. A nine year old girl was shot to death because of the actions and words of the Republican party.

"The Dum-Dum Doodie Head Democrats Who Have Smelly Faces Act of 2011"

I just learned something. It's a very small bit of information, not normally worthy of an entire blog post, but I find it so god damn hilarious that I think everyone needs to know about it immediately. The Republican bill to repeal the healthcare reform law is called the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." That's it, that's the joke.

Bill O'Reilly proves God. Stephen Colbert concurs.

With special guest star (and my personal hero) Neil deGrasse Tyson. Go buy his book, it's good.

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The End of New Deal Liberalism

The post-war reconstruction era was the most corrupt and disgusting era in America's entire political history. We were effectively an established plutocracy run by corporations, and it wasn't until the 20th century when a certain man named Theodore Roosevelt came along, that we finally started knocking heads. Corporations became regulated. It became illegal for products to kill their consumers. All seemed well. When the economy imploded after World War I, liberals saw it as further proof that more regulation was needed. And so the greatest president of the 20th century enacted a New Deal. The idea was that if money was pumped into just the right key sectors of the economy, then it will cause a chain reaction and get everything moving again. And it worked. It got the United States out of the Great Depression.

Keynesian economics lost steam over the next few decades, but with the recession at the end of Carter's administration, Americans became disillusioned, and were willing to grasp onto anything. Enter Reagan. Dubbed 'Reaganomics,' his embarrassingly juvenile economic theory claimed that if the richest Americans were taxed less, then all the wealth would "trickle down" to the poor and middleclass. Redistribute the wealth to the rich, and the magical capitalism gods will make sure everyone gets what they deserve! This is the economic theory that the United States has predominantly been using for the past thirty years. What do we have to show for it? For one thing, the world has lost 40% of its entire accumulation of wealth thanks to the economic depression that America sparked. And for another, the top 1% richest Americans own nearly half the currency of the wealthiest nation on the planet, and 47.8 million Americans are living in poverty. For some reason, we have to relearn that the economic policies that caused the Great Depression cause depressions and unacceptable economic disparity.

Except we're not relearning it. The policies of the New Deal that were put into place to prevent another Great Depression from happening have been almost entirely dismantled, and corporate propaganda has convinced the majority of Americans that this is somehow good.

The new Speaker of the House John Boehner is the embodiment of everything that has led us to this point. As Matt Taibbi explains in his great new piece:

Look back over almost every controversial episode in the recent history of the U.S. Congress and you will find Boehner's face appearing, Zelig-like, somewhere in the foreground. He was a key figure in the historic waste of time that was his and Newt Gingrich's witch-hunting effort to get Bill Clinton impeached for lying about a blow job. He crossed the aisle to co-author the No Child Left Behind Act, a grotesque and grotesquely expensive expansion of federal power that helped jack up the federal education budget by an astounding 80 percent in the first five years of Bush's presidency, then voted for the obscene Medicare Part D, a staggering $550 billion handout to the pharmaceutical industry — two portentous initiatives that helped turn the Republicans into the new party of big government.

Then, in the middle of the Bush years, the man who got into office thanks to Buz Lukens' child-groping was enmeshed in his own sex scandal involving minors. When the news broke in September 2006 that Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican from Florida, had been sending sexually suggestive e-mails to a 16-year-old male page, it turned out that Boehner had been sitting on the information for months. Nancy Pelosi called for an immediate investigation into the Foley scandal, but Boehner blocked the resolution. Boehner later claimed that he had told then-Speaker Dennis Hastert about the Foley incident as soon as he found out — and promptly retracted his own alibi. The ensuing scandal nearly toppled Hastert, but Boehner survived mostly unscathed.

[...]

But beyond all of that, Boehner just represents a certain type of hollowly driven, two-faced personality unique to the Beltway. It's not so much that he's likely at any moment to start pounding his fist in favor of something that only yesterday he was denouncing as a threat to the American way of life (when benchmarks in Iraq were a Democratic idea, Boehner said they would ensure failure; when George Bush came out for them, he said they were "very important"). Nor is it so much that he's prone to descending into hysterical hyperbole when the well-being of his campaign donors is threatened in even the vaguest way (he called the watered-down Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon," with the ant in question being a financial crisis that wiped out over 40 percent of the world's wealth). It's more that . . . well, you have to spend a lot of time in Washington to know the type, but he's the kind of guy who would step over his mother to score a political point.

Taibbi goes on to explain, in excruciating detail, just how much corporate interests control him. He's a lazy fuck who was dropped into his position almost entirely due to a hapless series of accidents. This man is third in line to be President of the United States. He's leading the charge back to the regressive Bush-Era clusterfuck that used "Reagan" as a brand name to promote the corporate interests they answer to. If any of these people are ever caught in an actual debate about policies, they never stand a chance. That's why they avoid policies altogether.

What does Senator Mitch McConnell say is the chief goal of the Republican party? Fixing the economy? Making sure the poor have food they can eat? Of course not. It's to make Obama a "one-term president." That's what's important. Asked to name a specific program that could be cut to save spending, John Boehner, the leader of the party that's "fiscally responsible," was unable to name a single fucking thing. I'm usually the first to dismiss 1984 comparisons as pure bullshit, but when corporate media is used to control opinions, digital information is regulated, unwarranted wiretapping is perfectly legal, and we fight never-ending wars for decades at a time, shouldn't we be a little more vigilant than we normally would? If you still think these manipulative bags of shit have us in their best interests, then you are responsible for transforming America into everything our revolution was fought against.

Ann Coulter calls Cenk Uygur a 'retarded person'

GOProud is an organization of gay republicans. Republicans don't think gay people should serve in the military, or enjoy the benefits of the Christian institution of marriage like atheists can (as long as they're straight), but for some reason, these people really think the Republicans are fighting for them. I feel like I'm obligated to make an Uncle Tom reference, but I'm white, and I haven't got around to reading that book yet, so I can't do that in good conscience. One of my favorite libruls Cenk Uygur interviewed one of them last week. You can watch it if you want, but the real story is below.



"The conservative movement offers policy fixes that are better for gay couples."

loooooooooooolllll

Known witch Ann Coulter saw this video, and used her twitter to call Cenk retarded. Think about this. Not only does she use twitter, but she tweeted the word "retarded." This is further evidence for my theory that GOP talking points are made up by high schoolers.



Well, when Cenk isn't filling in for MSNBC's real commentators, he has his own podcast called The Young Turks. He didn't like being called a retarded person.

"Ryan, I think your atheism is just youthful phase of rebellion."

From some guy's blog

Before launching this blog, I spent a lot of time pondering the criticisms and insults the project may produce, and whether I could handle them. I didn’t fear the comments critical of my ideas, but I did fear the comments critical of my character. When I was a Christian I cringed even hearing the word “atheist,” and I know others still feel uneasy hearing the A-word—“atheist” is a synonym for “evil, satanic bastard,” and it’s best unspoken. So I knew that some friends and acquaintances would, with the launch of this blog, direct their ill feelings about atheism toward me.

The majority of criticisms I’ve received so far, I am happy to say, have been more helpful than hurtful. Even readers who strongly disagree with me have been supportive, which is encouraging. Thank you.

But there is one thing in particular I’ve heard people say, repeatedly, that hurts…but it only hurts because I slam a desk drawer shut against my head, repeatedly, every time I hear the comment. It goes something like this:

“Ryan seems to be a pretty jolly guy,” they say to themselves. “He’s nice, and, well, he may be a little odd, but he seems to have a good head on his shoulders…Why, though, is he an atheist? It just doesn’t make sense…”

I’m O.K. with the question—they’re just confused—but there are two similar answers to the question that pass pet peeve and push me to the edge of civility, causing my tongue to bleed from the bite locking it in place.

Answer #1: She—the believer, in her confused struggle to explain away my godlessness—paints my atheism as a reactionary revolt against God’s will; she thinks God wronged me in some way, and, like a toddler throwing a tantrum in a toy store, I receive my revenge by renouncing belief in Him: “You aren’t my real Dad! What do you know!?”

We’ve all seen the movies: Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl dies (or leaves boy), boy falls to his knees and curses the sky, “Why me, God!? Why me?!” The boy, claiming that a loving God would never inflict him with such intense and underserved pain, stops believing (He has obviously never read Job).

Listen, Miss: I have never experienced something so emotionally devastating that it caused me to question the existence of God; curiosity alone led me to question my convictions, and courage helped me face the answers I found. I’m sure there are some atheists who were led to doubt by a painful experience—like, let’s say, the death of their child—but I am also pretty sure they still took time to weigh the evidence and prod their perceptions; you don’t instantly alter your apprehension of all that is because you had an awful day. A painful experience may hand someone a shovel and the drive to dig deeper, but holes don’t dig themselves.

Luckily, the moments I’ve felt weak in the knees have been moments of bliss, not moments of rage. I have far too much to be grateful for to be angry with anyone or anything. I miss thanking God, not cursing Him.

Answer #2: He—the believer, confident in his ways and with his handle on life—excuses my atheism as an act of youthful rebellion. Kids love to challenge authority, and this whole atheism thing is just a phase, it’s a mid-twenties-something fad that fades with adulthood. This gentleman assumes that, as I type these words, my incense is burning, my reggae is blaring, and my Che Guevara t-shirt from Ragstock is in the wash. Like I said, I have a lot to be thankful for, but when tragedies beset, this man says I will come running back to the reservation to beg for God’s comfort and saving grace. I’m the prodigal son, blinded by the ignorance of my privileged youth.

Listen, Sir: I’ve had days I have wished I could plead my case with an existential puppet master, to be perfectly honest, but I have yet to experience an authentic tragedy. When that day finally comes, will I reach for God’s hand and come to terms with His mysterious ways? Maybe. I really doubt it, but I can’t say for sure, can I? So there is no way for me to refute this one. All I can say is that everything I say now, at the age of twenty-six, makes perfect sense, and I don’t think I will be able to will myself out of my beliefs in the face of despair. In fact, I think questioning religious convictions before that day of despair dawns is the key to living an intellectually honest life. Desperation, like fear, clouds the intellect.

Sir and Madam, in all of your fearful frustration to take the focus off my arguments, have you ever stopped to ask yourself, sincerely, “Could he be right?”

If not, I think you should. Because this whole “atheism is a youthful revolt against authority” and “he must have beef with the Lord” way of thinking is ad hominem bullshit, and I think deep down you know it…but, like I said, it provides an explanation for my atheism and takes the focus off the arguments that make you feel so uneasy—you write me off as the disgruntled prodigal son and go about your day, relieved you don’t have to take me too seriously.

Please give me a little more credit than that; my head and my desk drawer need a break.

Respectfully,

Rev. Ryan

I know how he feels, in a way. I'm pretty sure my parents both think my brother and I are going to grow out of our "Obama phase." I'm not sure if they know we're atheists though, that's never come up.

Do people who say things like this really think it adds anything relevant to the conservation, other than confirmation of their own ignorance? It's frustrating and insulting. "You'll come to understand someday. I'm not going to bother explaining what you're going to understand because that would require me to debate you, but just know that there's a direct correlation between age and intelligence and so I beat you lol." I may be young, but at least I know that you can't use logic against people who don't use logic.

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