Neo-Nonslappers

"Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal", says Nicholas Kristol: "Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission.

Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives."...

..."For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust."

Ralph Peters Calls For Killing Of War Journalists

Ralph Peters is deep into the shit: "Future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media."

The Boomers Stripped Bare of Their Savings, Even

New Age chanting better protection than SEC, say hedge fund managers: "Though older workers in previous recessions were less likely than their younger counterparts to be laid off, that advantage has eroded in recent years, said Munnell, who analyzed more than two decades of Labor Department data on layoffs.

Fewer workers are now protected by union contracts that require newer employees to be laid off first. And older workers now typically have less of a seniority advantage in a workforce that more frequently switches jobs."

The "hired last, fired first" doctrine was one of the foundation stones under the floor of the old factories; so steady and sure that corporate management and union haters could pretend that it was a fact of capitalism rather than the benefit it is - fought for and won by organized labor.

Dead Again Christians

Jerry Falwell Junior's monster factory shuts out Democrat's club because it slows down the production line: "Claire Ayendi, who was chairman of the Republican club last year and graduated this spring, said she didn’t regard the university’s disbanding of the Democratic group as a political act.

'I think it’s more like a moral issue,' Ayendi said. 'Letting a club like that exist goes against what the school is founded on,' she said."

Back in the age of the senior Falwell, and Pat Robertson - and the jive Jimmies like Swaggart, Jim Jones, and Jim Bakker, places like Liberty University concocted a fabricated reality, a spoiled intellectual fish, gutted of all truth. Now, as if a given fact - an accepted, ageless ceremony of life, they routinely drag out their ridiculous creation, their Paenisaurus Rex, scales and all, wearing the Christian smile and cavorting with Noah's kids, speaking without words the only facts of life.

3rd Degree Bernie Madoff and Total Dick Cheney

McClatchy Newspapers: Cheney's Speech Contained Omissions, Misstatements: "Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements."

The GOP is puttin' on a show, and we're all supposed to watch, but especially the "base" of the Republican party. But "Powerful White Guys That Screwed the Pooch" is a startling show for Americans used to seeing their culture as a wondrous and grand affair, and a boon to the planet. Instead we all watched in horror as Bernie Madoff stole our retirees money and ruined their lives, and as Dick Cheney covered our national honor with filth while he tortured in our name.

Cheney knows that millions upon millions of Americans can never accept torture in any form for any reason because of strongly held spiritual beliefs and because of proscriptions that must always be upheld. So, when you see Cheney now, under the lights, the beads of sweat forming as he talks, you are looking at a man who knows what he has done and knows what it means and knows that we are out here.

Oh. My. God !!!

Newt Gingrich Opens Up on Catholic Conversion and Embracing 'Overt Christianity: "As a college student at Emory when the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional [in 1963] after 170 years of American history, I didn't notice it. As a graduate student at Tulane I probably would have said it's a good decision.

I've now had an additional 40 years to think about it. And I think about the world of my grandchildren. I don't think American children are healthier, safer, and better off today than they were in 1963. So I have actually become more conservative in response to the failure of the liberal ethos to solve problems."

The Top of the Heap

Whoopi Goldberg Calls Glenn Beck A 'Lying Sack Of Dog Mess': "Beck talks about how he hates everyone in Congress and how everyone should resign. But then Beck gets stumped by a question from Barbara: 'What are your real convictions?'

His answer: 'I believe in God. I believe in the founding of this country. I believe George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson were geniuses.'

So there you have it. Glenn Beck really, really believes in God, the names of some Presidents, and that the United States was founded, somehow, at some point in the past."

Terrorism

Ireland church: Thousands beaten, raped in Irish reform schools: "The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities..."

..."Girls... suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless. 'In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body,' the report said. Personal and family denigration was widespread."...

..."Today's report also highlighted the rarity of human kindness in the institutions.

'A word of consideration or encouragement, or an act of sympathy or understanding, had a profound effect. Adults in their 60s and 70s recalled seemingly insignificant events that had remained with them all their lives,' the report said.

'Often the act of kindness, recalled in such a positive light, arose from the simple fact that the staff member had not given a beating when one was expected.'"

"Future Of Capitalism"

CNBC Devotes Hour To "Future Of Capitalism": The participants tackled their topic "...like a bunch of people struggling to graduate through the Kubler-Ross model of grieving without cycling back to denial every five minutes." - Jason Linkins

Kaboom! ...that's a lot of fun to read !

Joe Barton's Stem Cells Speak Out

Joe Barton, GOP Congressman, Explains Why CO2 Is Harmless: "It's In Your Coca-Cola": Joe thinks CO2 is a gas! He loves the stuff. "I'm creating it as I talk to you." Gee Joe, there's other stuff you're going to create over the next 48 hours. Do you love that too?

"The problem with Mr Barton is that he is wholly uninterested in the science and statistics of the global warming debate. He is about as curious as a dead cat, as is his colleague in the Senate, James Inhofe."

These clowns are business paraphernalia - like company cars, or printer-copiers, or escorts.

GOP Screws the Whole Dog Pack

Rachel Maddow Finds Flaw In GOP's Pelosi Gambit: "Here's GOP brilliance at work: their plan is to make a gigantic media fuss over the issue of - wait for it:

When did the Democrats learn that the Republicans were torturers and schmucks?

If this is the Republicans at their smartest then their party is surely over - except for the fact that they are all Republicans and as such can't stop anything - not a party, not a war, not a bad speech, and certainly not the mouth of Gingrich - the candyman of hypocrisy."

Here Newt, pull this finger...

Taking Stock

Ang Lee's 'Taking Woodstock' Premieres: "Woodstock 'has a symbolic meaning to me. It's the innocence of a young generation departing from the old establishment and trying to find a more refreshing way, more fair way, to live with everybody else,' Lee said Saturday before the Cannes premiere of 'Taking Woodstock...'" - Ang Lee

"'...there's a different look to today's young people, with their passion for fitness and disdain for pubic hair.... When you think about it, a generation of people who weren't fat, who weren't staring at themselves in the mirror all the time, and not shaving everything off down there, it captures the difference of 40 years right there.'" - Screenwriter James Schamus

"The Good Folks Come To Burn Thee"

Radio Armies: "There is something dangerous afoot -- an alienation that can easily morph into extremism. With the national Republican party in disarray, an argument is solidifying among grass-roots conservatives: Liberals, who are now in power in Washington, hate America and want to dismantle its foundational institutions and liberties, including capitalism and private property. Liberals are rootless internationalists who cravenly appease those who want to kill us. The primary principle of conservatives, on the other hand, is love of country, for which they are willing to sacrifice and die. America's identity was forged by Christian faith and our Founding Fathers, to whose prudent and unerring 18th-century worldview we must return." - Camille Paglia

I too think there is something afoot. It's all around us, like particles in the air; everyone feels it, and feels it gathering into something else - something to dread, some first act of a most frightfull drama that will engulf the world.

It Drips With Bile

Liz Cheney begins her presidential run: "'We are seeing a situation where this administration, for some reason, continues to release information that is helpful to the terrorists,' Cheney declared. 'Releasing details about what was involved in the enhanced interrogation program, releasing the techniques involved in that program, helps the terrorists. It helps them train to those techniques, it takes those techniques completely out of the realm of possibility for future presidents to use. So it was a very damaging thing to do. ... They seem to be only interested in releasing things that really paint America in a negative light.'

In addition to accusing Obama of siding with terrorists, Cheney also argued that Attorney General Eric Holder, by offering to work with foreign governments, was refusing to 'stand up and defend American sovereignty.'"

If you're feeling cheney, grab a malkin and wipe your coulter. That sometimes helps.

Kill 'em and grill 'em

Jesse Ventura: "[Water-boarding] is torture... It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you -- I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."

Obama the Commie

Republican throwback Pete Sessions says Obama wants more unemployment: "Obama 'intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it'"


Ah, I see. Obama is a communist wanting to have America fail so that capitalism will die. I knew it was something like that...

"If you ask for ketchup, you'd better be under the age of twelve."

What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup?: "It took all of Sean Hannity's brain power to come up with a joke about it, but he finally decided to make fun of the fact that Obama wanted a "spicy" or "Dijon" mustard on his cheeseburger, just like the undead Nikita Khruschev prefers."

..."What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup? Uhm, how about a FULL GROWN ONE? Ketchup, and it's cousin "catsup," doesn't come near my food, because I am no longer a small child.

And Media Monitor Phillip G. adds the following insight into ketchup: It's a Chicago thing. Ketchup (in particular on hot dogs) is a serious faux pas."

High-ranking official says "Jay Severin's Mother Was A Ho"

Boston Radio's Jay Severin attacks Mexicans to avoid explaining mother's career choice: "'So now, in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports of Mexico - women with mustaches and VD - now we have swine flu.'

Later, he described Mexicans as 'the world's lowest of primitives.'
'When we are the magnet for primitives around the world - and it's not the primitives' fault by the way, I'm not blaming them for being primitives - I'm merely observing they're primitive,' he said."...

..."millions of leeches from a primitive country come here to leech off you and, with it, they are ruining the schools, the hospitals, and a lot of life in America," he said.

He added: "We should be, if anything, surprised that Mexico has not visited upon us poxes of more various and serious types already, considering the number of criminaliens already here."...

..."On a 2004 broadcast, he compared US Muslims to a fifth column, and when a caller suggested that the United States should befriend Muslims, Severin responded: 'You think we should befriend them; I think we should kill them.'

He has called former Vice President Al Gore 'Al Whore,' Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton 'a lying [expletive],' and Senator Edward M. Kennedy 'a fat piece of lying garbage.'"...

..."Severin has also been criticized over the years for falsely saying that he had won a Pulitzer Prize and that he had earned a master's degree from Boston University."

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Another shining asshat in the Republican pantheon.