Random Questions: Race, Sports, and Everything In Between

* How many more examples does the Obama administration need before the Prez stops compromising for the sake of compromising and stands up to the conservative attack machine? There's a reason why you don't have that high 60's in the poll numbers, and why the progressive base thinks you're just another corporate sellout: you keep backing down when the GOP attacks you for trying to stay true to your campaign promises! Closing Guantanamo Bay? It should have been closed this year, but the blabbed that convicted terrorists would be locked up here in America, we - as we normally do here in America - react without thinking things through, and instead of using MSNBC's Lock-Up: San Quentin, or Manson as examples of high-class prison inmates that have not escaped, let alone see the light of day for an hour or two, you backed off. Now last week, the head of the Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, fired Shirley Sherrod because a video circa March of this year at a fund-raising dinner for the NAACP stating that she didn't help a white farmer as best she could because other black farmers were given the shaft so many times before, and given her ugly past brushes with racist whites. Right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart posed the video on his site, Fox News got a hold of it, screamed from the highest mountaintop that the White House in engaged in reverse discrimination, and she was fired on the spot...only to learn that the tape was deliberately tampered with to make the case that she is racist against whites. You can't keep running away from these fights, Mr. President, because they'll keep taking their shots if you do. You need to stand up for yourself and your party's agenda and start firing back. I'm not telling you to fight in the same manner as the conservatives do, I'm saying knock them around a few times, so that they, and the progressive base understand that you're not going to back down anymore. When that happens, the base and the Democratic Party will unite under your banner and so will the American people. If there's one thing I've learned under the Bush Jr. era, its that Americans respect a president who won't back down from what they believe is the correct and right path for the country. Bush Jr.'s ideas and policies royally screwed the working class and caused great strife to our allies abroad, but I do give him this much credit: the man didn't back down, in fact he got many of his policies passed with his party alone, and brought some Democrats into the fold because they would have looked foolish not to join W. But until you start standing up for your beliefs and stop backing down, you're going to look like a leader who's too afraid to start swinging when the other side picks a fight.

* Will Brett Farve quit the act and announce that he's coming back for the 2010 season!? We know you're going to come back, because you're notorious for holding a football team hostage when they've invested time and money into your primadona ass. We've been through one ego-driven player who created a one-hour event called "The Decision" as LeBron James announced that he's teaming up with Bosh and D-Wade in Miami, so spare us "The Decision Part II", get your gear on, go out and win the NFC North division like the analysis expect the Minnesota Vikings to do, then at the NFC Conference game, throw a game-changing INT that the Falcons or the Cowboys will take advantage of and go on to advance to Super Bowl XLV.

* Are we that surprised over Mel Gibson's released racist and misogynist rants to his ex-girlfriend? I mean, the guy did go on an anti-Semetic rant on the Jewish people back in 2007...doesn't that tell you that he's a hateful person, although excellent film director and actor he may have been? The man has been battling alcohol abuse in his private life...should that tell you something about the man who gave us Mad Max, Braveheart, and The Passion of the Christ? Let's not act so shocked that Gibson has been exposed as a man with racial issues and a drinking problem to boot...again.

* Can the assholes in life stop picking on the so-called "outcasts"? If Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Cera aren't examples enough that the losers, nerds, and the other kids that weren't cool in high school always get the money, the respect, the admiration, and the girls in the grand scheme of things, then add to the list, beating hate pastor Fred Phelps and his "God Hate Fags!" tour, at their own game when they came to town at the annual San Diego Comic-Con last week. Instead being prepared to chant "God Hates Dorks Wearing Star Wars gear!", attendees counter-protested the small group of hate-mongers. I'll let the following pictures tell the story:







Bottom line: start being nicer to the least among you in Math class, because the dork with the coke-bottle glasses and a vast knowledge of all things happening in anime, may be your boss in 15 years.

From Dionne's Mouth to the Gods' Ears...

E.J. Dionne's latest at truthdig.com gets it absolutely right. Go there and read the whole thing, but here are some nibbles to whet your appetite:

The smearing of Shirley Sherrod ought to be a turning point in American politics. This is not, as the now trivialized phrase has it, a “teachable moment.” It is a time for action.

The mainstream media and the Obama administration alike must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its own propaganda to be accepted as news by persuading traditional journalists that “fairness” requires treating extremist rants as “one side of the story.”

...

The traditional media are so petrified of being called “liberal” that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors. Mainstream journalists regularly criticize themselves for not jumping fast enough or high enough when the Fox crowd demands coverage of one of their attack lines.

...

If Obama hates the current media climate, he should stop overreacting to it. And the mainstream media should stop being afraid of insisting upon the difference between news and propaganda.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Home Sweet Home

This is the first poem i've written in quite sometime, and it touches on my fear of total isolation when I grow older: that feeling of regrets, wrong paths taken, and feeling stuck in a place that offers no escape. My influences come from The Seatbelt's brilliant ending theme to the show Cowboy Bebop called "The Real Folk Blues", The Shins' "A Comet Appears", Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees" and "No Suprises", The Beatles' "Within You Without You", and Dixie Chicks' "A Home". I hope you enjoy.

The man opens the door
dragging his weary feet across
the living room floor
to a house that doesn’t feel
like a home.

The nine-to-five shift
he labors is done
his check’s in the mail
but there’s no satisfaction
no sense of achievement
that his Inner can hail
it’s nothing but a drug
another pill for him to take
to make his Outer happy
it’s there for his dead body
feeling comfortably numb.

He looks into the mirror
vague traces of regret
misery and lost causes
staring back at him
talking without speaking to him
how his future is all but set.

The deafening silence
of his house that’s not his home
slowly kills him
like searing pains of acts of violence
no wife to kiss and hold
no baby to run around and rome
are just as effective
as a gun, or a knife
once these longing feelings take hold.

He lays on his couch
the lights have gone out
nonsensical noise filling the air
of his television set
about he said/she said
and a can’t miss sale
all trying to slay
the empty silence about.

A single tear falls from his face
as he lays down his head
wishing for a way
to escape this isolating place
in a house that’s not a home
a place where there’s love instead.

Oh, Those Scary Secular Acronyms!

I just found this gem at Fundies Say the Darndest Things:

I read in the Star-Telegram that henceforth the YMCA would be renamed and identified as the "Y."

I have for some period of time been concerned about the silent and pernicious effects of secular humanism. These effects go beyond removing from the record any trace of Christianity. Most threatening is the fact that secular humanism will take from us God-given rights and substitute the governmental state as our creator and source of authority. It seems to me that renaming the YMCA is like building a mosque next to the 9-11 site. The only difference is subtlety.

Christians need to recognize that they are systematically being redirected to secular humanism and a totalitarian state.

I hate to break it to "Jerome R. Pikulinski," but it looks like the only entity behind re-branding the YMCA to simply the "Y" is....well, the YMCA. I suppose he's upset about their snazzy new logo (above) with its prominent initial.

As opposed to their older logo in which a big initial "Y" was nowhere to be...seen....oh, wait....

Guess he overlooks that the YMCA has been foreshortened to just "the Y" for...well, at least since 1967, when the old logo at left was unveiled.

Just like Jeremiah and the other right-wing nuts so well known to readers of this blog, this letter-writer is scared of non-existent shadows. In fact, he's so terrified that monolithic government entities and groups of (gasp!!) "secular humanists" who don't share his beliefs are going to force him into a terrifying anti-Jesus mold, he's doing his level best to make it sound like those groups are mandating the change to the "Y."

Carry that to its logical extreme, and it's like a fervent monarchist going apoplectic that Dairy Queen has truncated its marketing identity to "DQ."

And I can't begin to address the over-the-top nature of this reference:

It seems to me that renaming the YMCA is like building a mosque next to the 9-11 site. The only difference is subtlety.

Well, maybe except to say to Jerome that, when it comes to "subtlety"...in the words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think it means what you think it means."

A Caribou Trifecta

So, not only does she make up words, and then stumble over various attempts to correct herself - she ends up justifying it all by comparing herself to Shakespeare!

I'll say it on his behalf since Keith Olbermann is away on vacation this week: That Woman Is An IDIOT!

One of Ralphie's Favorites

OK - we all know that our good friend Ralph has some whacked-out viewpoints. But I followed one of his photo sources, and I have to say I'm not surprised by what I found. Explore for yourselves, by all means, but I'll excerpt some of the choicest bits here.

The main goal of liberalism is to take away individual rights.

Ah, yes. Of course it is. That's why the GOP is so intent on enshrining specific religious and sociopolitical behaviors - consider the abortion issue, for one - in Federal law. Because you know that mandatory behavior is what the Founders would have wanted.

They want the people to become dependent upon a government, made up of a few privileged liberals. Once the population becomes dependent on the government for its basic needs, they will need to keep the socialist government in power, because they no longer have the means, nor the will to take care of themselves.

How much do you want to bet that the writer of this post will defend to his last breath his entitlement to Social Security and Medicare benefits? You know, those things for which he is Dependent On Government? It astonishes me how the GOP persists in making Government the enemy. As if having any kind of a structure at all is de facto wrong.

As strange as it may seem, socialists don't want the masses to have wealth, because that would equate to having power, and only the liberal elitists should have power. Their goal is to take from the rich and keep it for themselves until there are no rich, only the impoverished fighting amongst themselves.

OK, here we go. Classic GOP playbook. Prey off the have-nots who are desperate to preserve their dream of having-it-all, rather than embracing general equity, a leveling of the playing field, and the good health of the middle class. I have news for them. Your Corporate Overlords are the ones who don't want the masses to have wealth, or even for that matter fiscal stability. Read my lips. Corporations are NOT your friends. They are the ones hoarding power and influence and keeping you down, not the phantom "liberals" you like to demonize. You are already "the impoverished fighting amongst themselves," except you are targeting the wrong adversary. You've been classically duped.

The reason they will never win is due to a little thing called the United States Constitution. Yes, they have warped its meaning through corrupt and misguided judges. They have hid their true agenda behind its protections. However, the beauty of the Constitution is that it is written in very plain and direct language. Although, they have tried, they can not overcome the main defense mechanism of the Constitution, the Second Amendment.

Of course. How could we not have seen this coming? It's all down to the guns. Jeebus.

It is much easier to be lazy and dependent, than risk hard work, effort and money for a better life. However, there is no reward for laziness. Thus, liberals and their followers are never happy and never can understand why. By the way, liberals have called themselves by many different names over the ages: communists, socialists, progressives, greens, etc. They all have the common goal of tyranny over the masses by a privileged few.

Isn't it funny how this guy keeps going back to this meme of tyranny by the privileged over the hoi polloi? Has he really SEEN who make up the progressive factions and the green parties and the abhorred liberals in this nation? They are so NOT the plutocracy. That's the realm of the Wall Street fat cats, lobbyists, oil guys and such - Republicans to a man. But his point of view wants desperately to have it both ways. In his worldview, the progressives are the wealthy elites, but they're also the champions of laziness and dependence. They're the snobs at the same time as they're the rabble. Dude, make up your so-called mind! Your cognitive dissonance is all over the map right now.

The question for you is this: Are you going to be part of an unthinking mob driven by emotion or are you going to be an intelligent individual who values life and the pursuit of happiness?

TLG Guy has a good point in this statement. Unfortunately, his interpretation is bass ackwards.

Anyway. It says a world about Ralphie that this is one of his go-to sites for graphics. And we owe it to the Count to keep this place lively while he's snooping on Caribou Barbie up in Alaska....

God needs to get a restraining order

Thursday on the Glenn Beck Program, the paranoid crybaby takes a call from Brian from Ohio, saying that people with a liberal ideology are enemies of the Almighty. Beck, being Beck, agreed and said that we are the enemies of Him.

Racist scumbags

I found this over at Think Progress:

Iowa Tea Party leaders now say they disagree with the use of the pictures, but not the Obama-is-Hitler message. North Iowa Tea Party co-founder Bob Johnson stated that while the “the pictures might be overwhelming,” the sign “highlights” the right message. Iowa state Tea Party coordinator John White agrees that while the “sign goes” where “the Tea Party doesn’t want to be”, “everything Obama has done is ‘lock-step’ with what Hitler did in his day.”

Until President Obama transforms the military into millions of brown-shirts, chanting "Zeig Heil!" down Times Square, invades a sovereign nation so the "master race" can expand across the globe, starts another World War, and murders another couple million Jews, Slavs, Poles, homosexuals, handicapped, and prisoners of war, then you can throw around the Hitler reference as you damn-well please.
Finally, let's be honest with ourselves here: Just come right out and say what you really want to say -- you don't like that nigger in the White House and you want to throw his black ass out because he's not the right skin color.

Fashion Jesus

I loves me some Jesus' General, and the latest post there is a true gem. Do read the whole thing, but in the meantime I'll favor you with some excerpts from the source which the good General so aptly skewers:

There is no place in the Bible that even insinuates that Jesus had long hair. Sodomite homosexuals such as Michelangelo painted Jesus to look effeminate and to have long hair in order to make him fit their own queer image.

Quick! Someone alert the Vatican and get them to paint over that uber-gay Sistine Chapel ceiling with some Benjamin Moore high-coverage flat white!

These same type of paintings have also given people the idea that “Jesus did not wear pants.” Some have even made utterly ridiculous and bizarre statements such as, “pants had not been invented yet,” or “they didn’t have pants back then.” According to these “scholars,” the men of the past who built the pyramids and Stonehenge just hadn’t thought of pants yet!

This poor guy obviously hasn't heard the common wisdom that almost any statement - and especially any Star Wars movie quote - instantly becomes more funny when you substitute "pants" for any noun. My favorite would be Lando Calrissian in ROTJ: "We've gotta be able to get some kind of reading on those pants, up or down!...Break off the attack! The pants are still up!"

What I believe is based upon the Bible, not “historical evidence,” but the historical record also proves that men in the ancient Middle East wore pants. For example, at the famous battle of Thermopylae (480BC), every historian reports that the Persian (Iranian) soldiers were wearing pants down to their ankles, while the homosexual, perverted Spartans were wearing short skirts or even less!

Ignoring for now that he has just as much as said that the Biblical record and historical evidence have nothing to do with one another...how exactly does Genius Boy, here, know what the Spartans were wearing at Thermopylae? Because if he thinks Sparta was a gay haven of some kind, he sure slept through his unit on Mesopotamia.

When wearing a dress or a “tunic” the thigh is not delineated. Clothing that is worn on each “thigh” is referred to as a pair of pants. Therefore it is apparent that Jesus was wearing pants as he rode in on a white horse to defeat the Antichrist. Apparently “scholars” would have us believe that Jesus was riding to battle on a horse in a dress.

Funny. As a woman, I have often been told how much one's thigh is very definitely delineated - nay, even compelling - when wearing a dress...

Also, thanks to the Misplaced Modifier, I rather like the image of the horse in a dress. Very anthropomorphic. Mister Ed meets Project Runway.

Anyway, let Jesus' General expound further on all this madness. For my part, I think this Steven Anderson guy needs a Utilikilt like the ones I saw in evidence last week at the Oregon Country Fair (which was, by the way, a blast). And, let me tell you, he would have seen some people there wearing a helluva lot less than pants!

Is There Anything More Awesome Than Watching Two Assholes Fighting Each Other?

So I just read this story at Ridiculous Infomercial Review Which is one of my favorite blogs. It seems that some years back Uber-prick JD Hayworth participated in an infomercial telling people how they could get free money from the government. Now ultra-prick John McCain is using this against him because McCain is in a fight for his life. Pass the popcorn kids.

RIP George Steinbrenner