Woman Assaults Obama Supporters at Glenn Beck Rally

lol restoring honor to america

The Seeds of Fascism in the Republican Party

Here's a list of characteristics of fascist nations.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections

I'm not going to go through each and every one of these points to make a case, because that would take too long, and I'd have to half-ass a few of them. Not every one of them is a problem in America, but not every one is a requirement for a fascist nation either.

Today I was listening to right wing radio spew its hate. It was some guy named Mark Levin. I wish I could find a transcript of this, but I can't. He played a bunch of audio clips from Democrats saying they oppose the Iraq war, specifically "the surge."

Now, the reason why the surge appeared to work is because it was launched at the exact moment an Iraqi civil war was ending. So violence was naturally going to be down. The right wing takes those numbers, and voila! Only Republicans know how to protect the country! So Levin played all these clips of Democrats saying they have doubts about the surge's success. After it was done, Levin emphasizes, in typical overdramatic right wing fashion, "They were wrong. Every. Damn. One of them. Every. Damn. One of them. They were all wrong." Then he made a logical leap that I think would probably be difficult for even his regular listeners to decipher. "I have the guts to say it. Democrats said these things because they wanted America to lose. They wanted Iraq to turn into another Vietnam."

I'm going to steal an excellent point made by Matt Taibbi in an amazing article he wrote last week.

In fact if you follow Fox News and the Limbaugh/Hannity afternoon radio crew, this summer’s blowout has almost seemed like an intentional echo of the notorious Radio Rwanda broadcasts “warning” Hutus that they were about to be attacked and killed by conspiring Tutsis, broadcasts that led to massacres of Tutsis by Hutus acting in “self-defense.”

He was speaking of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which at least 800,000 people were killed. It was all sparked by hate radio.

Now I'm not trying to say Mark Levin is advocating a liberal genocide. All I'm saying is that when you plant these kinds of thoughts into the minds of frightened, desperate, and vulnerable people, they are going to believe it. If you tell them that someone who holds an opposing viewpoint hates the United States, and that he wants the American troops to die, these people are going to begin thinking some strange thoughts. Timothy McVeigh may have been thinking similar thoughts when he blew up a building.

Why aren't we talking about this? A man walked into a Mosque in Queens the middle of evening prayers, called them "terrorists," and proceeded to urinate on their rugs. A New York cab driver was stabbed repeatedly in the face and neck because he was a Muslim. A Mosque in Tennessee was set on fire by arsonists. The windows of NAACP offices are being smashed. Here's a video of a black man nearly being lynched because the Mosque protesters think he's a Muslim. He was not a Muslim. Just a few weeks ago, Fox couldn't stop jerking off to a made up controversy about the Black Panthers wanting to kill white babies, ergo Barack Obama wants to kill white babies. All of these events are connected, and the hate and rage spewed out of the right wing is sparking it. All of it. If the media's so unabashedly liberal, then why can't it grow a fucking dick and talk about this? This is really scary shit and it needs to be called out now before it becomes normal. Oh wait.

Have you ever bothered to listen to the actual reasons why the tea partiers are protesting? From their own mouths? It's just a bunch of empty nationalist bullshit that makes no sense. Here, try to watch this music video without stabbing yourself.



It's embarrassing and hilarious, I know, but I really want to try to make a point with this. Why do you think right wingers so often attach themselves to terrible songs like this? It's the same reason why hippies did it in the 60s: their arguments are all completely retarded, so they can be easily simplified in a three minute jingle. The result: a likeminded group jerking each other off.

A phrase he sings at 1:13 really bothers me: "peaceful revolution." This guy apparently has no fucking idea what a revolution is. A revolution is the forcible overthrow of a government. Revolutions are not peaceful. Revolutions are violent, and bloody, and terrible, and they should never have to happen unless people are being shot in the streets. The right wing grasping onto this word is really fucking insulting to actual freedom fighters who are dying all around the world. This here is what a god damn revolution looks like.



At least Neda died knowing patriots just like her are fighting the same fight in the United States!

Right wingers need words like "revolution" in their vocabulary because they incite anger and fervor. They need vague hints at an honorable past like the Revolutionary War to get its base riled up, just like how Mussolini always hinted at the glory of ancient Rome to get Italians to support a fascist Italy.

Republicans are anarchists when they're out of power, and they're totalitarians once they get into power. You can fully expect this to get a lot worse once the Democrats are swept out of Congress in November. I'm going to end this post with another video. This is from 1947. I don't care if you didn't watch the other two videos, but this here is really going to drive the point home. I posted this on facebook a little bit ago, but I'm putting it here too because I want everyone to see it. Send it to everyone you fucking know. Please.

New Left Media has hit another one out of the park. They went to Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally on saturday.

Glenn Beck is an ignorant bag of shit

I've mentioned this before in this blog. An appeal to authority argument is a logical fallacy -- basically, it's the argument that whatever you say has got to be right, because someone more important than you said it. Conservatives have been beating the hell out of this fallacy ever since Obama came into office. They're appealing to "the founders." They've been claiming that they are on the side of founders of the United States. I'll get to how wrong they are on this in a little bit, but I wanted to mention this first. I guess raping the only decent generation in the entire history of the country wasn't enough for them, because now they've claimed Martin Luther King Jr. as their own as well.



Glenn Beck has said that Martin Luther King's dream has been "distorted." He's also said, "Damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights moment! We will take that movement because we were the people that did it in the first place!" Yesterday, Beck held a "Restoring Honor" rally on the exact spot King delivered his famous speech, 47 years to the day in which it was given. I shit bricks.

MLK is famous for other things besides "I have a dream." He demanded that "President Lyndon Johnson and Congress help the poor get jobs, health care and decent homes.” He said "...we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars — and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power." However, in Beck's "An Inconvenient Book," he says that the poor cannot be helped because they are "lazy." He also thinks President Obama "really is a Marxist. He believes in the redistribution of wealth."

Martin Luther King was famous for being a very religious man. He was a reverend. It was his faith that motivated him to do what he did. He called himself an "advocator of the social gospel." He said that his movement's ultimate goal was "an age of social justice." Glenn Beck, on the other hand, has attacked churches that preach social justice. In fact, if you hear the words "social justice" at your church, you should "run, and don’t listen to anyone who is telling you differently." Because that's "Marxist." He really said this. But that's not the worst of it. He literally said that the civil rights demonstrators were in fact not "crying for social justice."

The biggest thing that separated King from more militant civil rights leaders like Malcolm X was that MLK believed that someone who opposed his views should be engaged with in respectful dialogue. In a 1957 sermon titled "Loving Your Enemies," King said that a man must “discover the element of good in his enemy, and everytime you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points.” When civil rights demonstrators were attacked by police and their dogs, King asked them not to fight back. Glenn Beck unapologetically ridicules his enemies. He has literally made fun of Barack Obama's 11-year-old daughter. Beck's asked if Barack Obama is the antichrist. He's compared Obama to Adolf Hitler. When Glenn Beck interviewed America's first elected Muslim congressman, he told him to "prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."

Glenn Beck is an absolutely terrible human being. He is either unable or unwilling to connect with the feelings of others. Martin Luther King Jr. was the greatest American of the twentieth century. What Beck is doing is beyond insulting. It's sad. As Media Matters so eloquently put it, Martin Luther King would've been on Beck's chalkboard.

But wait a second. Why is Glenn Beck vying for peaceful resistance when the founders promoted violent revolution? Beck, you have the wrong civil rights leader. You're looking for Malcolm X. Hey I have an idea! Let's take a break from the blog real quick to match the quote with the founder who said it!*

*NOTE: One of these people was not actually a founding father of the United States.

1. "Give me liberty, or give me death!"
2. "If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary."

A. Malcolm X
B. Patrick Henry

Little known fact: In his Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions, Patrick Henry wrote "I will not rest until streets run red with the blood of the white man."


Civil rights heroes

Here's an angry old person. Glenn Beck's had this guy on his show. He's a Thomas Paine "impersonator," but instead of spouting off the opinions of Thomas Paine, he spouts off neoconservative bullshit about taxation and brown people that would've made the real Thomas Paine shit his kidney.



Bonus points if you made it past a minute.

Let's see, in The Rights of Man, Paine wrote, "Pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family, out of the surplus taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four pounds a year for every child under fourteen years of age."

In the same pamphlet, "It is painful to see old age working itself to death, in what are called civilised countries, for daily bread... pay to every such person of the age of fifty years ... the sum of six pounds per annum out of the surplus taxes, and ten pounds per annum during life after the age of sixty... This support, as already remarked, is not of the nature of a charity but of a right."

My goodness, did Glenn Beck know that he supports a Marxist?

In Agrarian Justice, Paine wrote that we should "Create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."

Okay wait a second, that really is starting to sound like Marxism now oh fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

But at least we're still a Christian nation, ri-

---

"Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies."

"Every phrase and cirsumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they could have. The head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church, that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began to read."

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church."

"The adulterous connection between church and state..."

"There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice."

"The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that the human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God. The Word of God exists in something else."

"What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith."

I don't care if you're an iguana.

Overcompensating much?

Aasif Manvi makes fun of anti-Islamic bigots

Skip to about 4:45

Tennessee No Evil

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Olbermann: There is no 'Ground Zero Mosque'

If this blog doesn't make it obvious enough, I'm extremely frightened by the way the political winds in this country are blowing. We have a fast paced 24 hour news cycle which sensationalizes the dumbest little things, while failing to report the events that are actually important (or at least in a way in which the general viewer can understand). What we get is a nation is idiots. And we get the worst kind of idiot: the idiot who thinks he's informed. The result is a bunch of mobs demanding mob rule. Debating facts with them is meaningless; they have numbers, and argumentum ad populum is of course never wrong.

Currently, the mob is angry over a Muslim community center being built two blocks away from the World Trade Center site. In the end, it really doesn't matter what anybody's opinion is over this. The First Amendment very clearly prohibits the government from stepping in and stopping this from happening. This is not up for a vote. If you truly believe that this should not happen, then you think it's okay to override the Bill of Rights, and you are quite literally an enemy of the United States. If we're allowed to do this, then which religion will be next? Where will it end? It's so mind-numbingly frustrating to me that the very people who claim to love the country so very much are the ones who are demanding that we begin dismantling it. They're traitors and they don't even know it.

Which is exactly why Olbermann's Special Comment monday night was so refreshing to me. In a sea of ignorance and hate, this is like a breath of fresh air. It's just too bad that the rest of the country is too fucking dumb to listen.

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Nope. No racism here. Keep moving.

Sunday Youtube Post

So apparently Republicans manufactured another fake controversy during my week without news. Not only are they trying to get the 14th Amendment repealed (as an ultimate sign of love towards their precious Constitution), now they're making up stories about "terror babies" to scare the shit out of their supporters into following along. Terror babies. I did not make up that phrase. Terrorists are sending pregnant women into America so that when the babies grow up, they'll have U.S. citizenship and attack America as UNITED STATES CITIZENS! Because as everyone knows, if a terrorist isn't a citizen of the country he's attacking, his superpowers disappear!

"I feel like I don't live in America."

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-Seven Weinberg

I'm reading a book right now called The End of Faith where Sam Harris makes an argument against religious moderates. He says that even though the moderates mean well, their constant repeating of "not all of [religion] is violent" prevents us from having a dialogue about the central cause of all religious terrorism: religion.

While moderation in religion may seem a reasonable position to stake out, in light of all that we have (and have not) learned about the universe, it offers no bulwark against religious extremism and religious violence. From the perspective of those seeking to live by the letter of texts, the religious moderate is nothing more than a failed fundamentalist. He is, in all likelihood, going to wind up in hell with the rest of the unbelievers. The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don't like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. This is not a new form of faith, or even a new species of scriptural exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God. Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance--and it has no bona fides, in religious terms, to put it on a par with fundamentalism. The texts themselves are unequivocal: they are perfect in all their parts. By their light, religious moderation appears to be nothing more than an unwillingness to fully submit to God's law. By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. Unless the core dogmas of faith are called into question--i.e., that we know there is a God, and that we know what he wants from us--religious moderation will do nothing to lead us out of the wilderness.

I think this is the biggest problem we have with the gay marriage issue. There are even religious moderates, all over the place, who are otherwise perfectly moral and sane, who do not believe gays should be allowed to marry. Many religious people who support same sex marriage, or at least the hollow equivalent of civil unions, at the very least sympathize with where the gay marriage opponents are coming from; and this really does prevent us from criticizing anti-gay bigots to the fullest extent. There is no excuse to opposing gay marriage. That worldview really shouldn't be tolerated. An opinion's worth should be weighed with how much logical validity it contains, and in logical terms, the ideas of these people make absolutely no sense. There is no valid argument against same sex marriage. If a bad idea makes no sense, then it should be thrown out and laughed at like the disgrace it is, not blasted on the airwaves as if it holds just as much weight as logical facts. If every opinion was equal, we would be teaching creationism and flat earth theory in public schools. America's public discourse is an embarrassment.

Here's what I mean: these are the opinions of people who oppose same sex marriage. This is their reaction to Prop 8 getting overturned. I can't even wrap my head around this. I can't possibly comprehend how any person could ever believe this shit.

From a Mormon forum:

• May the Lord have mercy on us. He spared Sodom & Gomorrah (edited to add: for awhile), so perhaps He will spare California. I almost wouldn't mind if He didn't.
• This is a camel's nose in the tent type situation. When the disintegration of the family is complete, except for those few peculiar die-hard religious nuts, at least many of us can look back and say that we fought to preserve the family. We know that in this dispensation there won't be another absolute apostasy. I would have hated to have been a prophet at the end of a previous dispensation when the entire world rejected your message and turned from God. The tares will separate from the wheat all on their own. Just make sure you stay wheat.

From the president of the American Family Association::

• It's also extremely problematic that Judge Walker is a practicing homosexual himself. He should have recused himself from this case, because his judgment is clearly compromised by his own sexual proclivity. The fundamental issue here is whether homosexual conduct, with all its physical and psychological risks [lol], should be promoted and endorsed by society. That's why the people and elected officials accountable to the people should be setting marriage policy, not a black-robed tyrant whose own lifestyle choices make it impossible to believe he could be impartial. His situation is no different than a judge who owns a porn studio being asked to rule on an anti-pornography statute. He'd have to recuse himself on conflict of interest grounds, and Judge Walker should have done that.

Yes, because only straight people should be allowed to decide the fates of gay people. Gay people can't be judges because they're not like us normies.

From Bishop Harry Jackson. Supporting gay rights makes you... racist?

• This is a travesty of justice. The majority of Californians -- and two-thirds of black voters in California -- have just had their core civil right to vote for marriage stripped from them by an openly gay federal judge who has misread history and the Constitution to impose his San Francisco views on the American people. The implicit comparison Judge Walker made between racism and marriage is particularly offensive to me and to all of us who remember the reality of Jim Crow.

And the best one of all, from MSNBC:

• Luke Otterstad, 24, of Sacramento, outside the courthouse with his fiance, Nadia Shayka, 22, wearing T-shirts that read "bride" and "groom": "I'm very upset. I feel like I don't live in America."

An America that recognizes equal rights for all of its citizens is not an America I want to live in.

Chris Hayes on the Republicans' desire to destroy Democrats, rather than to govern the country

I'm increasingly convinced that politics is nothing but a tribal "us vs. them" religion, and that conservatives prove more with every witch hunt that they're more in tune with their monkey roots.

I'm also growing more and more detached from politics due to my frustration that little to nothing is being accomplished. A clean air bill was just struck down, once again proving America's anti-intellectualism and utter distrust of science. Congress just passed a 59 billion dollar bill further funding the hopelessly unwinnable war in Afghanistan, showing that the documents leak from wikileaks didn't do a fucking thing. What's so frustrating to me is that this was the best we could do. I doubt the Democrats will ever have a majority as big as this again into the foreseeable future, and this was the best we could do with it. Republicans are going to stomp them in November, and we're going to be stuck in a Clinton-esque dead zone again.

I haven't lost faith in our political system, I've simply lost faith in the American people for being so fucking stupid. Ever since Obama came into office, Republicans have been doing nothing but spreading smears and lies, and by the time they're all debunked, they've moved onto other ones and nobody cares anymore. Progressives have all the arguments on their side, but emotions are more powerful than rationality, and conservatives have figured out how to tap into those brilliantly. When Democrats started saying we should better regulate the biggest corporations to prevent a recession like this from ever happening again, Republicans said it was a socialist government takeover, and the momentum died right there. To stop health care, Republicans started crying death panels and abortion, and then the bill turned into a miserable mess. Their lies are working, and Democrats are going to lose control of Congress because of it. And just as Chris Hayes emphasizes, once they have a good number in Congress again, their obstructionism is going to grind the U.S. government to a complete halt. And then they'll blame the very problems they are causing on Obama some more.

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Napoleon: "Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets."

It's very frightening to witness just how easily the American public can be manipulated. A few days ago, conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart released a heavily edited video of a speech being given by Shirley Sherrod, a director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The speech was given to the NAACP back in March. Breitbart edited the video to make her seem like a racist. By the time the video in its full context was released, the damage had already been done. Sherrod's comments were not racist in any way, but she was still forced to resign from her job. If you want to read what was said/wasn't said, wikipedia sums it up quite well.

The White House has apologized to Sherrod, and has offered her another job, but she still hasn't decided if she'll take it. Fox News was literally the only news outlet pushing this story. Now that everyone knows the truth, Fox has completely ignored its own role and shifted the blame entirely to the Obama administration (surprise!). And it's working. Even on liberal sites like the Huffington Post, the top story right now is how it was Obama who dropped the ball (proving once and for all that the far left media controls America!)

But it's not like the White House doesn't deserve criticism over this. They need to get a fucking backbone. The mindset of the Democrat Party in general is largely responsible for what happened (and by "mindset," I mean they're a bunch of pussies). Obama himself has to direct his attention towards shit that's actually important as president, so I highly doubt that he even knew what was going on by the time the shit hit the fan. But in the end that doesn't matter, because Fox is going to do everything it fucking can to make sure it all falls in his lap.

Fox News has long since moved past its "news" status. This is propaganda. You know how I can tell? I could send the following video with Maddow's take on the story to any one of my conservative friends/family members, and they will dismiss it outright without even watching it. I won't pretend that many liberals wouldn't do the same if sent a video to a Fox story, but Fox as at least earned its reputation (see: this story). Conservative media convinces its audience that every other news outlet lies, because they are liberals and that's what liberals do. Do they ever bother watching rival stations to confirm this? Of course not. They're liberals and they'll brainwash you. Maddow and other journalists like her can expose all they want, but Fox knows its audience, and its audience simply does not care. Maddow's smackdown of Fox is pretty epic. Just stop watching once Kent comes on.

To be fair, I'll give a shoutout to Fox's Shepard Smith. Smith, an actual journalist, said that he refused to run the edited video because "we did not and do not trust the source." Keep it classy, Shepard. It's a real shame that you'll be fired soon for being fair and balanced.

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NEWSFLASH: Republicans are hypocritical dumbfucks who are afraid of religions they don't understand

These people ran the country for eight years. Think about that for a second.

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"If you do build a Mosque, I hope somebody blows it up."

Huh, well what a wonderful followup to my post about Republican fascists.

BERRY: No, Tony, you can’t build a mosque at the site of 9/11.

TONY: Why not? Why not?

BERRY: No, you can’t. And I’ll tell you this: If you do build a mosque, I hope somebody blows it up. ... I hope the mosque isn’t built, and if it is, I hope it’s blown up. And I mean that.

Let me tell you something, Tony. It's the right-wing nutjobs that are gonna keep this for people like you from the people that come for ... It’s right-wing radicals like me that are going to keep this country safe for you and everyone else from the people who are flying the planes from the country you fled from. If you want to identify with those people, go live with them.

I like how he never answers Tony's question. As if that didn't send enough chills down your spine, there's also this.

But I'll tell you this -- whatever country you came from? If a Christian in the name of Christianity or a Jew in the name of Judaism had dared do what you did, you would issue a fatwa for everyone looked just like 'em! And for a thousand years you wouldn't allow a temple or a Christian church to be built there. And you damned well know it!

That underlined word there speaks volumes about the mindset of these god damn lunatics -- all Muslims flew the planes into the World Trade Center. All Muslims are responsible.

As usual with "apologies" from the right wing, he apologized without actually apologizing.

While I stand by my disagreement of the building of the mosque on the site, I SHOULD NOT have said “I hope someone blows it up.” That was dumb, and beneath me. I was trying to show “Tony” how much I opposed his opinion, but I went too far. For that, I apologize to my listeners.

Instead of apologizing to your dumbfuck listeners who agreed with every word, why don't you apologize to the Muslims you threatened to murder? Why don't you go and turn yourself in for incitement, you disgusting piece of shit? Have fun being waterboarded, it's necessary to protect the country. You are a fucking traitor and I hope you choke.

Oh wait, I'm sorry. While I stand by my disagreement of America being transformed into a Fascist Theocracy, I SHOULD NOT have said "I hope you choke." That was dumb, and beneath me. I was trying to show "this sack of waste" how much I opposed his opinion, but I went too far. For that, I apologize to my listeners.

I have a lot of criticisms about the Democratic party. I would not vote for them if America had a party that was actually liberal. But the reason why I vote Democrat is because Republicans would have a better chance at winning if I didn't. I do it to stop them. The thought of Republicans ever gaining control of the United States again, especially in their state of mind right now -- one that even tolerates these things being said -- scares the everloving fuck out of me. America was founded on the idea that you can believe in whatever the hell you want to. Republicans don't think you're an American if you don't believe in the same God as they do. Instead of seeing free public discourse as a beautiful celebration of the democracy we live in, this guy sees it as an enemy to be destroyed. He can't stand the fact that anything American about America exists. I vote for Democrats because xenophobic fascists vote for Republicans.

By now most should've heard about the attempt by Texas schoolboards to completely make up history. They're altering textbooks in their schools, omitting important facts, and in some cases printing outright lies. For example, the slave trade is no longer called the slave trade. It's called the "Atlantic triangular trade." Secularist Thomas Jefferson is largely taken out, and more emphasis is put on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery traitors. Regardless of the fact that America was not founded on God, their books will now say that America was founded on God.

"There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

This is a big deal because the state of Texas is the largest purchaser of textbooks in the country, and textbook companies often cater to them. So that means other states may be getting the same material.

Texans For Truthful Textbooks held a rally yesterday. Atheist, historian, writer, and professional badass Christopher Hitchens was not present at the rally, but he did send in a speech to be read.

We know of no spectacle more ridiculous — or more contemptible — than that of the religious reactionaries who dare to re-write the history of our republic. Or who try to do so. Is it possible that, in their vanity and stupidity, they suppose that they can erase the name of Thomas Jefferson and replace it with the name of some faith-based mediocrity whose name is already obscure? If so, we cheerfully resolve to mock them, and to give them the lie in their teeth.

Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights — the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

We make no saint of Thomas Jefferson — we leave the mindless business of canonization and the worship of humans to the fanatics — but aware as we are of his many crimes and contradictions we say with confidence that his memory and example will endure long after the moral pygmies who try to blot out his name have been forgotten.

As Abraham Lincoln died, after a cowardly shot in the back from a racist traitor, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sighed and said: “Now he belongs to the ages”. Or did he say “Now he belongs to the angels”? In a roomful of highly literate and educated officers and physicians, in an age of photography and stenography, and with newspaper presses around the corner on Pennsylvania Avenue, there was no agreement among eye-and-ear witnesses as to what Stanton had actually said.

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation. They try to tell us that to do otherwise is to collapse into “relativism”. But it is they who wish to promote the life and work of Jefferson Davis — an advocate of slavery, backwardness, treason and disunion — to an equality with Lincoln, who suffered agonies of doubt, who never joined a church, who was born on the same day as Charles Darwin and who introduced his colleagues to the work of Thomas Paine — and who was the last brave casualty of a war: a war begun by devout and fanatical Christians, that preserved our Union and in the end led to the striking of the shackles from every slave. It was inscribed in the documents of the Confederacy that the private ownership of human beings had a divine warrant. And so it did — to the everlasting shame of those who take the Bible as god’s word.

It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and not celebrated until “Juneteenth”. There may be those in Texas now who believe they can insulate their state — a state that had its own courageous revolution — from the news of evolution and from the writing in 1786 of a Constitution that refuses to mention religion except when demarcating and limiting its role in the public square. But we promise them today that they will join their fore-runners in the flat earth community, and in the mad clerical clique of those who believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Yes, they will be in schoolbooks — as a joke on the epic scale of William Jennings Bryan. We shall be fair, and take care to ensure that their tale is told.

As President, Thomas Jefferson received a letter from a concerned group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut. These people were the objects of persecution and the victims of discrimination, and they beseeched Jefferson to uphold their liberties. Of whom were they afraid? It should be remembered, and taught in our schools, that these poor Baptists were afraid of the Congregationalists of Connecticut, who subjected their fellow-Christians to insult and insecurity. Thus it was the secular and unbelieving Jefferson who insisted that, by means of a “wall of separation” between religion and government, all faiths and communities could take shelter under the great roof of the godless Constitution. From that day to this, the only guarantee of religious pluralism has been the secular law.

We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians and crackpot revisionists are negligible, and will be drowned by the mounting chorus that demands: “Mr Jefferson! BUILD UP THAT WALL”.

Glenn Beck literally claims to be a prophet reciting what God is telling him

This is why he's telling everyone to leave their churches. He's starting his own cult!

Some guy named Dan Carlin has a fantastic podcast called Common Sense. He's extremely intelligent, and the show continuously forces you to question your own beliefs, which is something every person should always be doing. He's fiscally conservative but socially liberal, and he's bound to piss you off no matter what side of the aisle you're on.

Sometimes he puts forward little thought experiments. A few weeks ago he brought up the question of whether it's even worth it to pay attention to politics anymore. Even if you do pay attention, and go so far as to vote, things never change at all. And those who don't follow anything are spared from the national pissing contest and don't suffer the constant stress brought on by worrying about everything.



All I want to say is that this idea sounds more and more appealing to me every time Glenn Beck opens his fucking trap. Why does he have any audience at all? It's just so depressing. I don't want to believe that people can really be this god damn stupid, and in such great numbers. Everything is explained in the video.

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Cartoonist Lars Vilks Attacked by Muslims at Uppsala University Seminar on Free Speech

I STRONGLY DISAGREE WITH YOUR CONCLUSION!!!!!!!!!!!

The Taliban offered a $100,000 reward for Vilks' death because he drew this.



It's supposed to be Muhammad as a dog. It's very offensive you guys.

Here's some more info on the attack. This sentence really pissed me off:

"Debate continues about whether the cartoons are simple freedom of speech or if they are offensive."

Of course they're offensive you dipshit. Can you not have freedom of speech if what you say offends someone? What would be the point of having a discussion if you can just say the other person's opinion offends you so they have to shut up? Does Europe have weird hate speech laws or something? Did I lose something in translation here? This is retarded. Muslims are retarded. Religion is retarded. I fucking love freedom of speech. What, this is America. Huh? Oh I'm sorry, I thought this was America.

You know, multiculturalism is only good when the cultures living together aren't violent towards one another. I'm sick of hearing about this shit. Usually when a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew who was raised in the west is offended by what someone says about religion, he just glares angrily. At worst, he mouths off and throws insults. But you rarely see violence. Not so, with Muslims and Jews born in the Middle East. This problem is a difference of cultures that can't be reconciled. Europe already grew past this phase during the Reformation and Enlightenment, and the Middle East needs to catch the fuck up and stop pretending their bullshit applies over here. When I hear about fathers murdering their own daughters out of honor killings, or barbers being brutally beaten and gang raped for shaving someone's beard, I just wish we could draw a line somewhere between the West and the Middle East so everyone will keep on their own damn side.

And the saddest thing of all is that there's a younger generation growing up in the Middle East right now that's typically more liberal and just as sick of this bullshit as the rest of us. They have to keep silent or else they'll be killed. Remember all those protestors during the Iranian election wearing the green? That group is made up almost entirely of a younger secular generation who wants to open up better relations with the west. They seem to be going through the same problem we're going through in America with the generational gap -- the older generation is fueling the flames between the West and the Middle East, they're fucking up the entire world, and there isn't shit we can do about it until they do us all a favor and die out.

The Republican Party's Slow Crawl to Fascism

Given that communism and fascism are opposites, it's not necessarily a surprise in retrospect that America teetered more and more towards fascism during the McCarthyist era in response to Soviet Russia. Joseph McCarthy's goal was to eradicate all voice of dissent by scaring the shit out of people. Joseph McCarthy was a fascist.



I genuinely wonder what historians will be saying about this period of American politics. My take is that the Cold War babies who bought into McCarthyism want to desperately return to the only era that gave them any sense of security. So they're trying to recreate it, and they are fucking terrified that they're losing. The simple fact that we're in the middle of a transition between two eras makes them angry and confused.

And now terrorism has given the right wing everything it wants: another communism. Just like how Republicans convinced everyone that they were the only ones capable of protecting America during the Cold War, they've been beating that same drum with terrorism for the last decade. Here's Dan Fanelli, a Republican running for Congress in Florida.



Look at those greedy Jews with their huge Jew noses scary brown people with their funny voices.

As much as I hate using the word 'fascist' to describe American politicians, I really can't think of another word. The most horrifying thing to me is how lightly he's treating this. He's acting like we're fighting Snidely Whiplash. He says he would have no problem being stopped at an airport if a bald white guy flew a plane into the twin towers, but why doesn't he mention the bald white guy who flew a plane into that IRS building in Texas? Because that guy wasn't a member of the minority group he's exploiting for political gain. Because this guy is a pseudo-fascist.

Republicans need an invisible enemy to point the finger at so they can scare people into voting for them. Arizona blamed everything on Mexicans, and so they got that immigration bill passed. Seeming almost disappointed that the terrorist in New York failed, Republicans went ahead and blamed Obama for terrorism anyway. John McCain wants us to start taking rights away from American citizens whenever we damn well feel like it. Where is the fucking outrage about this among the Tea Partiers, who claim to love that Constitution so very much? I thought Obama wanted to take away our rights! Joe Lieberman wants to give the U.S. government the power to take away anybody's citizenship. It is absolutely terrifying that people are even suggesting these things. Why wait for the terrorists to take away our rights when we have fascists right here in America more than willing to do it for them?

I'm very frightened of the direction America is heading. When 70% of the country supports torture, I don't know what country I'm from.

Holy Shit

This interview was just dandy. And by dandy, I mean mind-numbingly hilarious. Where does he think he's at? Constantly interrupting and screaming only makes you right on Fox. The good stuff starts at 5:42.

OUT OF CONTEXT!!!!!!

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Obama Will Ban Fishing

New Left Media visits the tax day protests in Washington D.C.



Propaganda and angry mobs have always come and gone throughout American history, but I'm not sure if there's ever been a time when such a steady stream of corporate money has fueled the misinformation so efficiently. These people are only going to be pushed further and further away as my generation grows older and the country keeps changing, and the thought of their reaction really scares me.