Paranoid States of America

The verdict from the George Zimmerman trial is in and unbelievably he was found not guilty. Right wingers and gun nuts have declared victory for justice in America. Really? Well, it is a golden age for gun makers since everybody and their brother will be buying up arms, especially in Florida, so they don’t feel threatened. So just remember folks: if you’re walking down the street all locked and loaded and itching to shoot and you see some young hooligan wearing a hoodie, go ahead and pop him one, because you know anyone wearing a hoodie is sure to be threatening you.

In the wake of the Zimmerman trial, neighbors are reaching out to each other all across America.

Holy Wiretapping!

With all the latest news about surveillance, we thought we’d dust off a little article from our June 19, 2003 issue, almost ten years ago. Remember those halcyon days when super christian John Ashcroft was Attorney General, the Patriot Act had just been enacted and Ari Fleischer, doing his impersonation of a Stasi agent, warned us we had to watch what we said. Yes, Big Brother had just started to trample on our civil liberties and it hasn’t gotten any better. Guantanamo Bay is still open, too. Feeling safer yet? We didn’t think so. Thanks Dubya!

Ashcroft To Wiretap Prayers

In his latest attempt to halt terrorism in its tracks, Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced a plan to wiretap prayers to determine possible plots against the United States.

“Our scientists have made a breakthrough in prayer technology that will enable us to intercept evil prayers from evil doers and bring them to justice,” said Ashcroft. “We’ve built a device that will allow us to monitor all prayers from all American people no matter what religion they may be. We can determine to which God they are praying and for what they are praying.”

Ashcroft then gave an example. “Let’s say Mohammed Muslim starts praying to Allah and asks him to destroy the United States. Our agents can intercept the evil prayer, trace it back to its sender and have him locked up in Guantanamo Bay before you can say Jesus Christ.”

Ashcroft then added, “But don’t say Jesus Christ. It’s a sin to take the Lord’s name in vain.”

When asked if this was an invasion of personal privacy and freedom of religion, Ashcroft retorted angrily, “Look! George Bush and I are tight with God. We are doing his work! He wants us to win and the only way to win is by monitoring the minds of every single American and make sure they have no evil thoughts against the Bush Administration.”

When asked what he thought about the wiretapping of prayers, Jesus Christ said from his palatial mansion in heaven, “Hey it’s what I’d do. I’m tight with these guys okay. They know my mind. Excuse me now but I’ve got to watch the Reds-Dodgers game. Fred McGriff didn’t pray yesterday so I think he’ll be striking out a lot today. Who says I don’t care about sports.”

Time To Update The DB Connection

Much has been said about the right wing’s ‘War on Science’ in recent years (Links here and here and here). There is definitely a love connection with Republicans and religious conservatives but that’s not surprising. Most religions are authoritarian by nature, where all believers are supposed to follow their ‘exalted’ leaders or suffer the consequences. Right wing politicos also obey the hierarchy of authoritarianism. A prime example of this is when then Vice-President Dick Cheney, shot an acquaintance, Harry Whittington, and Whittington apologized to Cheney. And of course any criticism, even if it valid, logical and reasonable, is evil because it goes against the vaunted authority figure: for example, the catholic church’s support of child molesting priests. Or the religious right saying that evolution couldn’t possibly be real because God created man in his image. Of course, they never consider that maybe man made God in his image.

A huge criticism of religion is that while religious texts from thousands of years ago may provide some insight into human nature, (human nature really hasn’t changed since then), it is woefully inadequate in explaining the mechanics of the universe. So much information has been obtained through scientific inquiry and study in the last 400 years alone, in all branches of science, that one really has to question the logic of believing in traditions established when the the knowledge base of the universe was so small. Perhaps it’s time for some people on planet Earth to update their database connections.

 

Some denizens of planet Earth need to update their database connections.

A Nation Armed To The Teeth

The debate about gun control continues in America with NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre leading the charge for arming this nation to the teeth. Yessiree, nothing spells ‘civilized society’ like having every man, woman and child carrying an AR-15 wherever they go.

NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre absolutely hates everything liberal except when it involves the availability of weaponry to a gun loving public.

Santa, All I Want For Christmas Is An AK-47

In the wake of yet another mass shooting, this time at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, more of the same predictable, reprehensible rhetoric has been spewing forth from ‘compassionate’ conservative right wingers who seem to love their guns more than life itself. From Republican congressman Louie Gohmert’s (from Texas of course) call for more guns to former Republican governor Mike Huckabee’s assertion that the massacre occurred because God had been systematically removed from school, the response is typical from the right wing. There have been 31 mass shootings since the Columbine incident in 1999 and 62 in the last 30 years. The response is always the same: the public expresses shock that something like this could happen in America; sane people say that something should be done to prevent this; the NRA and right wing neocon gun nuts scream about the right of every American to own a gun and that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’; politicians say they’ll explore solutions to the problem without implementing the horrors of ‘gun control’ on assault weapons; the NRA and right wing neocon gun nuts cry that they need assault weapons to hunt; time lapses; people forget; finally nothing ever gets done…until the next mass shooting. Rinse and repeat.

Seriously folks, nobody needs an assault weapon to go quail hunting or deer hunting for that matter. It’s utter BULLSHIT!!! They should be BANNED!!!

Here’s a photo-toon from our May 12, 2007 issue right after after the Virginia Tech shootings which echoes Gohmert’s statement that somehow, if everyone had a gun, there would be no more violence and we could all join hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’.

In the weeks following the shootings at Virginia Tech, neocon pundits and gun supporters, like Michelle Malkin, have suggested that the whole crisis could have been averted if all the students had been armed, which explains why gangs and mobs are such safe environments.

 

Save Christmas: Buy! Buy! Buy!

The last couple of posts, we’ve been railing on America’s favorite ‘culture warrior’, Bill O’Reilly, who’s only goal in life is to look out for you. He has been blathering on and on about the ‘War on Christmas’ for the past umpty-nine years about how atheists and secularists are attacking christianity causing America to fail and life as we know it to come to a cataclysmic end. Of course, he fails to mention the deadening effect of the rampant commercialism on christmas.

Companies start having all kinds of xmas sales earlier and earlier with every passing year; pre-Halloween christmas sales, pre-Labor Day christmas sales, pre-St.Swithins christmas sales… you get the picture. Corporate America has killed christmas far more than secularists. And it’s been that way for a long time. We are conditioned from an early age to want and consume. It’s a part of our culture. Who didn’t drool over the toys in Sears or Penney’s christmas catalogs when we were kids?. We are taught to want, want, want from the time we’re old enough to walk. Christmas has become all about shopping. Buy! Buy! Buy! But in Mr. O’Reilly’s view, it’s all the atheists’ fault.

So how should we save Christmas in a way in which Mr. O’Reilly would approve?  The answer is obvious: go out and spend like there is no tomorrow. The world’s going to end anyway on the 21st, right? (Wink, wink)

The only possible way to save Christmas and make Jesus happy is for every American to spend themselves into debilitating debt.

America’s Culture Warrior

It’s almost mid-December, which means that America’s self proclaimed ‘culture warrior’, Bill O’Reilly, is in the midst of his annual ranting about the so called ‘War on Christmas’. We’ve commented on O’Reilly before. He’s one of the neocons over at Fox News, a.k.a. The Republican Propaganda Network, so this ‘War on Christmas’ fits right in with the ‘journalism’ dished out on a daily basis there. Of course, O’Reilly conveniently ignores any facts which get in the way of his agenda, like fourth century christians declaring that christmas should be on December 25th because that’s when the pagans celebrated the winter solstice. Sorry folks; Jesus wasn’t born on christmas. But that doesn’t give us warm fuzzies, and if you’re religious it’s all about the warm fuzzies. O’Reilly has a cow because people say ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’, yet the word holiday comes from the merging of two old English words which mean ‘holy day’. And yet after O’Reilly delivered performed a recent rant, Fox News showed a message which wished the audience ‘Happy Holidays’.

Here’s a photo-toon from our October 6, 2006 issue, which shows America’s favorite ‘culture warrior’ O’Reilly ready to slay all the evil, secular dragons who have the audacity to say ‘Happy Holidays’.

Fox News talk show host, Bill O'Reilly, whose only goal in life is to look out for you, has written a book, Culture Warrior, where he fancies himself not only as a protector of Christmas but also a defender of American culture. In the book, he names and analyzes his enemies so his loyal thinking impaired followers will know whom to hate.

Romney: Disaster Capitalist

Hurricane Sandy socked the northeastern United States this week killing 30 people and causing between $20 to $60 billion dollars in damage. President Obama and FEMA were right there immediately to offer assistance to the stricken states, even earning praise from Republican governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bob McDonnell of Virginia. This is in sharp contrast to the anemic Bush administration response to the Gulf states in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a stunning display of stupidity, former FEMA head Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown said President Obama responded too quickly. What an ASS! And speaking of asses, GOP candidate, Spiff Romney, deflected 14 questions from the press about his earlier statements about abolishing FEMA if he were President. This of course would enable all those Republican disaster capitalists to swoop in and make a bundle every time a natural disaster hit. We think the Republicans should change their party logo from an elephant to a vulture.

GOP candidate, Spiff Romney, explains to a victim of Hurricane Sandy how the federal government should work in a christian nation.