Quote for the day (Stuff that still applies EVEN MORE Division)

(Via Bette Midler)

If the world made sense, this would happen:

Via benediction

It is truly crazy to incite violence against abortion providers with lies about "baby parts", and then to become self-righteously offended when the connection between your words and someone's violent actions are pointed out. The right-wingnuts own the Planned Parenthood murders. They have cried fire in a crowded theater until some bastard started a blaze, and then they act surprised? Please . . . . .

Trump's the rump of the GOP field

 Ah, Donald Trump consistently shows what a hypocritical dumb-ass he is (via Alternet):

The Donald's going to have a hard time doubling down on this one.  

Politico is reporting that Trump, while speaking at a Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa Saturday, told the crowd, "[Sen John McCain] was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." The two men had been engaged in a media war over the past few days. 

Trump's slight was reportedly met with a scattering of boos from the crowd. 

McCain was held captive in a North Vietnamese prison camp for five-and-a-half years, while Trump received four military deferments between 1964 to 1968.

"Ya big baby!"

I have no trouble that Trump avoided Viet Nam---I won the draft lottery myself, and avoided that awful and illegal conflict, but for someone who utilized his wealth and connections to stay out of the fight to then critcise someone who did wind up in the fray (many of whom had no choice in the matter because they weren't as fortunate as The Donald) is inexcusable. Trump never seems to have any trouble finding a lower pit to bark his bilious statements from. He is a worthless waste of the air he breathes, and that he is taken seriously says more about the quality of our corporate-loving media and the depths the GOP has sunk to that it does about his sorry ass.

Bush-whacked?

Never Forget . . . . .

Nuts, meet knee . . . .

Is it just me, or do all the GOP front runners in the run up to 2016 look like guys you'd want to knee in the nuts in High School?

. . . and I NEVER kneed anyone in the nuts then!

It's going to be a long year . . . . .

Conservatives Are Weak Terrified P*ssies

Sometimes the polite response to bigotry, idiocy and fear is inadequate. Cenk Uygur gets real with this one:



Scary black kids! That's what these cases are all about. Not racism or unfettered police powers. Right?

A letter from our nicer neighbors to the North:

(Via Daily Kos)

No big mystery why the right wingnuts and Repuglicans want to cut funds for education. They want a dumb, scared electorate.

Quote for the Day (Old Style Republican Advice for New Style Republicans)

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. - Abraham Lincoln

Don't Be a Dick (Cheney, that is)

(Via The Borowitz Report)

BAGHDAD —In a development that offers a faint glimmer of hope for Iraq, both Sunnis and Shiites are finding common ground in the view that former Vice-President Dick Cheney seriously needs to shut up.

In the days following the publication, this week, of a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about Iraq that Cheney wrote with his daughter Liz, hatred of the former Vice-President has, to the surprise of many, become the first thing that Sunnis and Shiites have agreed upon in centuries. 

Iraqi observers in recent days have reported seeing both Sunnis and Shiites reading the Cheneys’ op-ed then tearing it to shreds in a rage. 

“Cheney is an ass!” a Sunni merchant reportedly exclaimed in a Baghdad market on Thursday, to the resounding cheers of several Shiites nearby. 

“Historically, it’s been challenging to find anything that Sunnis and Shiites agree on,” said Sabah al-Alousi, a history professor at the University of Baghdad. “That’s why their apparent consensus that Dick Cheney needs to shut the hell up is so significant.” 

Visiting Baghdad on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the joint Sunni-Shiite calls for Dick Cheney to shut his pie hole were a cause for optimism. 

“If Dick Cheney winds up being the one thing that brings Sunnis and Shiites together, the United States owes him a debt of thanks,” he said, adding that the two sects’ view of the former Vice-President was also shared by the Kurds.

Dinner, anyone?

(Via The Daily Funnies)

Same as it ever was . . . .

(Via Atrios)

Whatever the merits of ACA, it is now something the Dems own. For decades I've watched Dems try to run away from things which have been surgically implanted on any politician with a D next to their name. It's always bizarre and pointless. You're the party of gay marriage, abortion, and Obamacare whether you like it or not, and it's better to convince your constituents that you're going to do good things for them than to try to convince them that you're not a real Democrat.
They can already vote for someone who isn't a real Democrat. He or she is called a Republican.

Instead of walking back the already compromised ACA, why don't Democrats push to fix it and make it better? (Single Payer Healthcare anyone?) And pin the blame on the problems right where they belong: on Republicans who have done everything they could to undermine it. Ah, but that would require some spine . . . . .

Separated at Birth?

Joseph McCarthy 

Ted Cruz

"Even bat shit insane has its own rules . . . ."

Hostage negotiation with the Republicans, Daily Show style.

The Tea Party can just BAG IT!

I will weigh on the bat shit madness that seems to be infecting the Republican/Tea-bagger Party right now, though I have been avoiding it to protect my own sanity . . . .

When a child is learning about danger in the early years, there are time when they burn their fingers on the stove or whack their finger on the moving fan blade, and it serves as a learning experience. The pain serves to teach them not to touch that anymore, more so than the (usually ignored) warnings of a parent.

Via www.onecraftymother.com/

With the Pee Tardy---er, I mean TEA-Party folks, that's not going to doing it. Like with the sequester, or cuts to food stamps, they stick someone else's fingers on the hot burner, hold them there, and say "I don't feel a thing!" They are trying now to put the fingers of our elderly, poor, and veterans to the burner to prove that they still don't feel any pain. Or at least, they don't feel YOUR pain.

I feel like such an old fart when I start any sentence with "I remember is used to be . . . ", but right now it seems appropriate. It wasn't always like this, There was a time when people cared more about their neighbor, whether they knew them or not. If someone was suffering or their house was broken into, it was expected that publicly financed police or emergency responders would assist the victim. When soldiers came back from a war or people retired after a life of hard work, the got medical care and financial aid---because they are citizens and have earned those things. And we were all willing to pay our fair share to see that those things could be done.

Now, increasingly, Ted Cruz and his ilk are saying we can't afford these things. We can afford endless wars and a prison-industrial state, but we can't afford to help those in need. If you fall on hard times or get sick, you are on your own, buddy boy. Their philosophy has been rejected by the American people, but that is not enough for them. He has said: ". . . my prayer to God is that His will be done. As it will be.” Apparently, he knows better than anyone else what God's will is, as he forces us to the abyss through bullying and extortion.

Any God who would reward greed, intimidation, and power seeking and punish those who have done everything they were supposed to do can kiss my ass. And so can Ted Cruz.

Speak like a Pirate Day:

This day be "Speak Like a Scurvy Pirate Day",so here's a message fer ye: 

Our country be fucked so long as bat shit-barnacles kookoo bananas Republicans can hold it hostage to push their nutty agenda. 'Tis the hour to shout that be all I can take be that be all I can take. Cruz, Lee 'n Paul be in th' hip pocket 'o th' corporate elites, 'n they don't gift a rat's ass 'bout th' people 'o America. Th' be no better that th' excrement I scrape 'o me boots after a long voyage.

I eagerly await our alien overlords . . . .

I haven't written that much lately (actually for quite some time), contenting myself with posting photos of nature and short posts of graphics or quotes from other sources. Frankly, the current events as of late have been so discouraging that I just have had to step back from paying too much attention to the world outside my family and small town.

That being said, I have to say that our country seems bent on destroying itself in an orgy of self-gratification and self interest, with an appalling lack of compassion or empathy.  The so-called "Tea Party" (self proclaimed defenders of the "American Way" which is in reality an astroturf front for the interests of wealthy America, bent on distracting an ill informed portion of the populace from their own interests) is out to prove how cruel and mean spirited they are capable of being, and the Republicans are riding that horse for all they are worth. The Democrats seem by-in-large to want to show that they, too, are able to cut the social safety net and spy on American citizens, in the name of bipartisan bargaining and being tough.

We may be closer to a totalitarian dictatorship than we think. And the dictatorship is coming in the guise of "keeping America safe" and "protecting our freedoms". Freedom to die due to a lack of health insurance, or safe enough to murder unarmed children because they dare to be black? I shudder to think where we are headed if this continues to get worse.

Anyway, that's why it has been quiet at the birdhaus lately.  I can't afford to indulge the defeatism which seems to afflict me so easily, and yet I see no action I can take to escape from the morass. Not a very positive message, I realize, but I also know that things do change.

Soon, I hope, and for the better . . . .

So close to the truth . . . . .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senate Republicans today vowed to filibuster a controversial bill supporting the right not to get shot.

G.O.P. leaders lambasted the bill, arguing that the right to go to school, work, or one’s home without fear of being shot was not guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

“The Second Amendment makes it very clear,” said Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming). “The right to bear arms shall not be infringed by a tiny minority’s desire not to be shot.”

But according to the pollster Harland Dorrinson, of OpinionFact Polling, the right not to get shot, while controversial, is beginning to gain traction with the American electorate.

“Like gay marriage, not getting shot is an idea that has taken some getting used to, but people are starting to wrap their brains around it,” he said.

Poll numbers notwithstanding, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said today that he would join the effort to filibuster any not-getting-shot-related bill: “The only way we Republicans can protect our democracy is by preventing a vote.”

A question of branding . . . .

This is the biggest problem in America

If you are not pissed off, you're not paying attention, or you're rich . . . .
Another take on this fact by Nick Hanauer. Our policies are based on a lie . . .

I got yer dignity for ya right here . . . .

(Via HuffPo)

WASHINGTON -- While his colleagues got ready to go to the Capitol, Justice Antonin Scalia sat on a stage across town and held forth about why, for the 16th consecutive year, he would not be joining them for the State of the Union. 

He doesn't go when a Democrat is president. He stays away when the president is Republican. 

"It has turned into a childish spectacle. I don't want to be there to lend dignity to it," Scalia said, with a certain amount of mischief.

For Scalia to think his presence at anything lends "dignity" to it is the height of hubris. I just wish he'd stay away from anything to do with government, starting with the Supreme Court.

If you look up "childish spectacle" in the dictionary, there's a picture of Antonin . . . .