Ha-ha, I always knew this would eventually happen. It was only a matter of time…
Christian voters must choose: Ayn Rand or Jesus.
GOP leaders and conservative pundits have brought upon themselves a crisis of values. Many who for years have been the loudest voices invoking the language of faith and moral values are now praising the atheist philosopher Ayn Rand whose teachings stand in direct contradiction to the Bible. Rand advocates a law of selfishness over love and commands her followers to think only of themselves, not others. She said her followers had to choose between Jesus and her teachings.
GOP leaders want to argue that they are defending Christian principles. But, at the same time, Rep. Paul Ryan (author of the GOP budget) is posting facebook videos praising Rand’s morality and saying hers is the “kind of thinking that is sorely needed right now.” Simply put, Paul Ryan can’t have it both ways, and neither can Christians. As conservative evangelical icon Chuck Colson recently stated, Christians can not support Rand’s philosophy and Christ’s teachings. The choice is simple: Ayn Rand or Jesus Christ. We must choose one and forsake the other.
The Republican Party IS in the grips of a long-dead, fanatically anti-Christian cult leader. Straight up, I’d have to say that this message is on point. (I might add that it was Ayn Rand more than ANY other figure who caused me to “lose my religion” when I was a pre-teen. This is about the ONLY good thing that came of my brief junior high school infatuation with Ayn Rand’s books.)
The far-right cultural warriors are turning on each other! Fantastic!
Ayn Rand on why the Christian Message is “Monstrous” and Christ’s Teachings are “Evil” (American Values Network)
In an interview with FirstThings.com, far-right Republican presidential hopeful Rick “frothy mixture” Santorm, that dogged dim-wit from Pennsylvania, reveals that he “feels sorry” for those who hate him… because hey, they’re goin’ to Hell:
RS: One of the things that I really work hard and try to do when it comes to the attacks that we get is understand that number one, these people don’t know me. They know the positions that I hold or they know at least the representation by some of the media as to the positions I hold and what I say. But they certainly don’t know who I am. And so the viciousness and the nastiness which unfortunately is so much a part of politics in America today, it has come over time not to bother me in the least. In fact, the more vitriol I see, and unfortunately I see probably more than my fair share, I tend to feel sorry for people who do that, who are so filled with hate and just seem to be preoccupied with this venomous need to lash out at those with whom they disagree. I make it a point every day to pray for all those people who say the things that they say and try to make sure that I understand it. There is a great line — actually, more than a line — from St. Thomas More who was asked by his daughter when he was in the Tower of London shortly before he was executed how he could have such equanimity towards his detractors and toward those who wanted to kill him.
GT: Yes.
RS: He drew a rather beautiful explanation, as you said, of having one foot in this world and another in the next, looking at ultimately what was going to happen to the people who were his prosecutors. He said, “Well, either they are right, and I am wrong. And if that’s the case, then why should I hate them because they were right and I was wrong. Or if I was right and they were wrong, then one of two things. That they will repent and they will be my brothers in heaven and so why should I think ill of them now just because right now they are doing things that are wrong. Or they will not repent and they will be damned to eternal damnation and what kind of man am I that would hate someone who is to be pitied as such?” And so, that’s sort of the way I look at it.
Rick, you’re just a fucking idiot. That hard-to-deny fact has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not anyone goes to Hell. People who hate you, Rick, hate you for the right reasons, such as you are a vile, outspoken homophobe, a science-denying ignoramus, a cretinous buffoon and a complete jackass. That’s why you lost your Senate seat by an 18 point margin. You have just about ZERO chance of being president of anything, Rick, because no one likes you, asshole.
If a picture paints a thousand words, A.L. and Louise Geddings were lonesome representatives of the laughably low turnout yesterday when SC governor Nikki Haley spoke at a Tea Party rally at the Statehouse in Columbia
Organizers for the event said they were expecting 2000 people to show up, but just 30 attended. They blamed the pathetic turnout on Donald Trump canceling his threatened presidential bid (Trump had been scheduled to appear at the event).
I don’t know, but If 1970 Teabaggers who would have otherwise shown up for a rally, but didn’t bother once Donald Trump bolted from political life, is anything to go by—and I think it is—then. rut roh, the Republicans are going to have a much, much bigger problem on their hands in 2012 than I think they anticipated.
There is no schadenfreude quite like Republican schadenfreude, as I am fond of saying. Watching Newt Gingrich—who Bill Maher delightfully called a “professor of idiocy” the other day—spontaneously combust in the full glare of the media spotlight, has been especially satisfying. His misfortune is my comedy!
That a man this universally disliked—even Republicans can’t stand the sight of his smug face—was ever taken seriously as a presidential candidate is a depressing testament to how low the mainstream media has sunk. Has anyone ever met a Newt Gingrich supporter? Have you? I sure haven’t. Not saying that none exist, but I should think a chupacabras—or even a Rick Santorum supporter—might be easier to locate. Just saying.
Nope, even Republicans aren’t fooled by Newt. He’s an especially loathsome, repellent dickhead in a party comprised nearly 100% of loathsome, repellent dickheads. There’s simply no way to sugarcoat an out-and-outasshole like Newt Gingrich. As is the case with Sarah Palin, the guy has simply overstayed his welcome. Like Mama Grizzly, he’s obviously got nowhere to go but… away.
Hopefully far, far away. Like Abbottabad.
Having said that, when Newt goes back to being an Amazon reviewer and giving phony “awards” to people dumb enough to pay him a “donation” for this “honor,” in some perverse sense, I’m going to miss that slimy amphibian. I just love watching him squirm. There’s blood in the water after only a week spent officially on the campaign trail and already there’s very little that Gingrich can do to turn that around. Watching the sharks feast on his pudgy ass is fantastic.
In his latest effort to deflect attention away from his statements about the GOP’s plan to dismantle Medicare under the so-called “Ryan Plan”—seen as incendiary, if not traitorous by Republican stalwarts—Gingrich puked up some absolutely stunning jabberwocky on Greta Van Sustern’s Fox News show:
This is, of course, appalling but entirely predictable: Conservative Christian hate group “Save California” is starting to make waves with an online advertisement titled “Protect Your Children from Harvey Milk Day in California.”
Somewhere in Des Moines or San Antonio there is a young gay person who all the sudden realizes that he or she is gay; knows that if their parents find out they will be tossed out of the house, their classmates will taunt the child, and the Anita Bryant’s and John Briggs’ are doing their part on TV. And that child has several options: staying in the closet, and suicide. And then one day that child might open the paper that says “Homosexual elected in San Francisco” and there are two new options: the option is to go to California, or stay in San Antonio and fight. Two days after I was elected I got a phone call and the voice was quite young. It was from Altoona, Pennsylvania. And the person said “Thanks”. And you’ve got to elect gay people, so that thousand upon thousands like that child know that there is hope for a better world; there is hope for a better tomorrow. Without hope, not only gays, but those who are blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s: without hope the us’s give up. I know that you can’t live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you, and you, and you, and you have got to give them hope.
All over the country, they’re reading about me, and the story doesn’t center on me being gay. It’s just about a gay person who is doing his job.
We must destroy the myths once and for all. We must continue to speak out and most importantly every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your family, you must tell your relatives, you must tell your friends, you must tell your neighbors, you must tell the people you work with, you must tell the people in the stores you shop in, and once they realize that we are indeed their children and that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all. And once you do you will feel so much better.
Why does it bug these people so much to see this man honored? Not only that, Harvey Milk Day, each May 22, falls on the weekend this year. So much for protecting the kids!
I’m always of two minds when it comes to embedding idiotic videos like this, although I do tend to side with the “point and laugh” approach every time! I doubt that many—if any—DM readers would be swayed by what they see in this clip. The thing is, “Save California” can see where their traffic is coming from, so they will see a link to this post in their YouTube user stats and they’ll read it and see themselves as the object of scorn and ridicule. I encourage everyone to let them have it in the comments, because rest assured they will read it. If you want to flag their YouTube clip as “hate speech” you can do it here, where it says “Flag” just above the title.
Harvey Milk is a man who will never be forgotten. No matter what these ultimately impotent hate groups like “Save California” think or what they may say or do, nothing is ever going to change that. It’s called American History and it’s not on their side.
I’d be remiss in my duties as a liberal scold if I didn’t ask the members of “Save California” how they will feel in the future when their own children and grandchildren—who they tried so, uh, valiantly to “protect” from the legacy of a heroic man like Harvey Milk—come to realize what monstrous, hateful, small-minded assholes their parents really are?
The trailer for Rob Epstein’s Academy Award-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. You can watch the entire film on YouTube here.
No-hoper GOP vanity presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista had glitter dumped on them by a protester Tuesday as the couple signed books at a “pro family” (ahem) event.
The activist, thought to be Nick Espinosa, AKA “Robert Erickson,” AKA my favorite person of the day, told the Gingriches to “Feel the rainbow, Newt! Stop the hate! Stop anti-gay politics!”
According to AP, the increasingly hapless-looking Republican smiled weakly as he brushed himself off and said, “Nice to live in a free country.”
I’m sure that’s exactly how Newt felt, aren’t you?
Espinosa said the glitter dump was a protest against a proposal to amend Minnesota’s Constitution to ban gay marriage. Next time he gets near that slimy amphibian, maybe he should consider throwing some salt on him?
Bonus: The Harlequin Romance of Newt & Callista Gingrich
Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.
Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some - but not all - of the rights afforded married couples.
Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.
This is shameful. That’s all it is.
I can’t fathom why Walker thinks this is good politics, either. Oh right, he’s a fucking idiot!
When one is obliged to come up with four or five items a day under the rubric “Dangerous Minds,” the Republican party are the proverbial fish in a barrel. Low(brow) hanging fruit. There are never slow news days with so many craven GOP idiots in Washington. Apparently there is some kind of “Bizarro World” reverse Republican IQ litmus test that you have to pass—or fail, depending on how you look at it—to be a member these days.
Of course it’s always been bad—and there are many, many deeply dumb Democrats to be sure, stupidity is unavoidable in U.S politics—but I’d have to say that the current crop of GOP politicians is the most imbecilic I can recall during my lifetime. Is there a dumber member of the Senate than Rand Paul of Kentucky? (James Inhofe came immediately to mind, I must admit…)
Witness the “universal healthcare is slavery” comments made at a Senate hearing yesterday by the dimwitted senator named after the author of Atlas Shrugged. They’re… special!.
“With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies,” the senator said. “It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.”
“It means you believe in slavery,” Paul added. “It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.”
“Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.”
“I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care,” Paul continued. “You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.”
In Rand Paul’s America, there will be no slaves, except for the people working to pay off their medical bills.
This guy actually believes this shit!! Breath-taking, ain’t it? Why would a poor state like Kentucky elect a man like this? Uh, don’t answer that….nevermind!
Self-described democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chairman of the Subcommittee on Retirement and Aging, responded to Paul’s rant by asking witness Dana Kraus, a family physician at a federally qualified health center, if she considered herself “a slave.”
“I love my job,” she answered. “I chose to work there. I do not consider myself a slave. Thank you.”
Sanders and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced federal single payer legislation Tuesday that would ensure that states implement Medicare-like systems for all residents.
Have a look at the trailer for the Denzel Washington film John Q. Rand Paul needs to strapped to a chair like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange with his eyelids pinned back and forced to watch this film until he melts into a puddle of his own pathetic stupidity.
You really have to hear it coming out of his mouth. The man is completely insane… and stupid:
Those zany, madcap Orwellian Republicans are at it again with legislation known by the acronym, “J.O.B.S.,” that is to say, the “Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Services Act of 2011. ” You have to hand it to these guys, they are shameless.
What this bill will do is give governors in states like, say, Florida… Michigan… Ohio and Wisconsin (shudders) more “flexibility” over how funds are spent for EUC (emergency unemployment compensation) and EB (extended benefits) safety net programs. This, er, “flexibility” would allow states to do other things with the federal monies previously allocated to go to directly to unemployed workers once their initial state jobless benefits period of 26 weeks has expired. Things like paying for state job search bureaus, paying off the debt many states already owe to federal unemployment trust funds and, you know, other things.
One guess what GOP stormtroopers governors like WI’s Scott Walker, Florida’s Rick Scott, Michigan’s Rick Snyder or Ohio’s John Kasich would do given that “flexibility”...? Sorry, all you lazy unemployed people, but it’s their fiscal responsibility to fuck you over.
Rep. John Larson (Conn.), the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that with unemployment still soaring at 9 percent, the bill represents “an assault” on the millions of Americans who rely on that safety net.
“It doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to throw them out in the cold and not have them be able to pay their taxes, buy their food, pay their rent,” Larson told reporters in the Capitol. “When we peel away the veneer of what the proposal is — aka ‘We’re going to reduce the deficit’ — really what we find here is an ending of the social compact between the people and their government.”
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) also took a shot at the proposal this week, questioning how the potential erosion of unemployment benefits will create jobs.
“They are referring to one of their bills on unemployment — to end benefits for long-term unemployment, taking away the assistance to 4 million people who are going to run out of unemployment benefits — they are calling that the JOBS Act,” Hoyer said Tuesday. “I am very interested to see how eliminating unemployment insurance is going to be a jobs bill.”
If the so-called “JOBS Act” is passed, states will be able to cut off benefit checks long before the full 99 weeks have expired. But this isn’t just about screwing over the poor, because the farcically named “JOBS Act” has the potential to eliminate up to $40 billion dollars in economic activity (jobless benefits, like food stamps have a multiplier effect as they are spent on groceries and so forth and taxed as well), As the Congressional Budget Office has pointed out, this could mean a loss of over 322,000 JOBS.
I mean, come on, honestly, is there any other way to interpret the news that over half of all Republicans are STILL unsure—if not hostile to the idea—that President Obama was born in the United States? That’s right, a new poll out today from Public Policy Polling (which is a Democratic polling firm) found that an incredible THIRTY FOUR percent of Republicans still believe that Obama was not born on domestic soil. Another 18 percent didn’t know where he was born or were unsure.
This is some stupid, stupid, low IQ shit going on here.
And this is the Republican BASE. Over half of ‘em! Who can argue with that?
My easy to reach, rather unavoidable conclusion: More than half of the Republican party are fucking idiots.
Those numbers are a far cry from the percent who questioned where Obama was born before the White House released his long-form birth certificate last month.
Still, when those who answered the question, “Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States?” with either a “No” or a “Not Sure” are taken together they represent more than half of those surveyed and, obviously, make up a formidable bloc of primary voters that can’t be discounted in a wide-open GOP primary contest.
Mitt Romney looks to be the candidate most likely to be hurt by the persistent “birther” faction. He placed second in the PPP poll with 18 percent, trailing Mike Huckabee by one point. But if you remove those who remain unconvinced that Obama was born in the U.S., Romney leads Huckabee and the rest of the field with 22 percent. (Huckabee remains at 19 percent.)
It’s…ah… telling which of the current crop of GOP midgets presidential hopefuls circling around the early primary states these flatearthers afterbirthers support:
Meanwhile, the candidates who appear to be benefitting most from the remaining birthers are Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachman and, ever so slightly, Donald Trump. All of those candidates fare better among those who answered “No” than they do overall with GOP voters.
Palin support moves up from 12 percent to 17 percent, Michele Bachman support increases three points to 10 percent, Gingrich climbs two points to 15 percent and Donald Trump inches up from 8 percent to 9 percent.
