The truth gives Republicans the vapors

Republicans are deliberately trying to sabotage the economy, states a Democratic Senator from Michigan after a Republican filibuster kills Federal aid to states plus kills unemployment benefits for 5.29 million of the 9.6 million Americans receiving employment benefits.

So, starting next week, millions of Americans will no longer have enough money to buy bread and water for their supper (because that's all the pitiful "unemployment benefits" offered here in the USA will buy), and states will have to fire 40% or more of their employees, adding yet *more* unemployed people to starve in the streets. And this is all according to plan, according to the leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, who publically has stated that the Republican plan is for Obama to fail.

And now the Republicans are having the vapors, the vapors I say, over Senator Debbie Stabenow's stating of what their very own leader said was the plan. So it goes... "hypocrisy" and "Republican" go together like "macaroni" and "cheese", yo!

- Badtux the Unsurprised Penguin

False equivalency

Whenever some right-winger does something violent such as shoot up the Holocaust museum, shoots up a church, blows up a day care center, kills a doctor, etc., the press is quick to say "there's extremists on both sides of the political spectrum!"

At which point I ask one simple question: How many incidents of left-wing violence has there been over the past 30 years? No no, you moron trying to point to something that happened in 1963, I'm talking about 1980 onward. How many left-wing nutcases have shot up day care centers? How many left-wing nutcases have tried to bomb the Olympics? How many left-wing nutcases have gone on shooting sprees where they kill random people of another race?

Hello? Hello? Anybody got an answer? (Crickets).

Uhm, yeah. That's what I thought.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Disgusting

The right-wing terrorists are chortling over the murder of Dr. George Tiller. These are the same terrorists who threaten the lives of judges who rule according to what the law says, rather than according to what their Invisible Sky Demon says. They chortle that their invisible sky demon is happy about the murder.

What a bunch of sick, disgusting terrorists. Who needs al Qaeda to threaten America, when we have our own home-grown terrorists willing to wage Christian jihad just like al Qaeda wants to wage Islamic jihad?

-- Badtux the Disgusted Penguin

And today on World Nut Daily...

We find out that the right-wing hate radio hosts are wetting their pants over the possibility of having to give equal time to the targets of their hate. Note that you do *not* find any left-wing talk show hosts (the few who exist) ranting over the possibility of giving equal time to the targets of their shows... indeed, most go ahead and do so as a matter of course. Rather, it's the right-wingers who are peeing their pants over the possibility that if they, say, bash gay people, they might be required to give equal time to someone from the Human Rights Campaign...

Of course, this just goes to show the whole intellectual bankruptcy of right-wing hate radio in the first place. They can only exist because their wealthy patrons have purchased the public airwaves and will not allow other voices on those airwaves, because if there were other voices on those airwaves, then their message of hate would not work. Remember, you can only hate that which you do not know. If you interact with a gay person on a daily basis, it is hard to hate gays. Hate radio's scream-mongers can operate only because they can keep their audience ignorant. If their audience actually got to hear a real-life Muslim or gay or Mexican immigrant or whatever talking about their life, why, their audience might decide not to hate those people. Gasp! No wonder the right-wing hate-mongers are wetting their pants so much about that possibility!

-- Badtux the "Right wing intellectually bankrupt?" Penguin

Right wingers are terrified of liberal ideas

That is the only thing I can figure. They purchased government monopolies on the public airwaves (I am *NOT* allowed to broadcast my views on the public airwaves, right-wingers have purchased a monopoly on all use of the public airwaves in my area), then scream and shout "free speech!" whenever anybody suggests that government-granted monopolies should be required to broadcast *all* viewpoints, not just right-wing viewpoints.

Note my point that THERE IS NO FREE MARKET ON THE PUBLIC AIRWAVES. All radio and television stations broadcasting on the public airwaves are GOVERNMENT-GRANTED MONOPOLIES. I cannot simply grab a microphone and start broadcasting my own ideas, I would get hauled away to jail. Talk radio today is dominated by right-wingers NOT because they out-competed me in the free market. Talk radio today is dominated by right-wingers BECAUSE RIGHT WING BILLIONAIRES PURCHASED GOVERNMENT MONOPOLIES AND PURSUE ME WITH GUNS AND PUT ME IN PRISON IF I DARE TRY TO COMPETE WITH THEM.

This is wrong. My views have as much of a right to be heard on the public airwaves as the views of Rush Limpdick and Michael Sewage-mouth. But I can't get my views heard because the billionaire supporters of these people have purchased GOVERNMENT-ENFORCED MONOPOLIES over all possible radio stations in my area and will have me arrested and put in jail if I try to broadcast my own views on the PUBLIC AIRWAVES.

There is only one thing that will allow my ideas to be heard on the public airwaves: regulation of these GOVERNMENT-GRANTED MONOPOLIES so that if Rush Limpdick is allowed to spew his drivel, then I (or similar like-minded liberals) should be given equal time to rebut him (i.e., the "Fairness Doctrine" that Ronnie Ray-gun repealed). Why are Rush Limpdick and the right-wingers so terrified of liberal ideas that they refuse to give equal time to them, indeed, have purchased government-granted monopolies over the PUBLIC airwaves in order to keep liberal ideas off of the public airwaves? Why are Rush Limpdick and the right wingers so absolutely TERRIFIED of my ideas that they would USE THE GOVERNMENT TO PUT ME IN JAIL if I *DARE* use our *PUBLIC* airwaves to broadcast my own ideas? There is only one reason, and one reason only, that they purchased these government monopolies and now use government guns to terrify and put into jail anybody who would dare broadcast liberal ideas: RIGHT WINGERS ARE TERRIFIED OF LIBERAL IDEAS. Why else are they fighting so hard, spending so many billions of dollars buying GOVERNMENT MONOPOLIES over the public airwaves, if they weren't so terrified of us?

-- Badtux the (sometimes) Liberal Penguin

The bottom of the pit

Having scraped the bottom of the pit for anything and everything to throw at Obama, John McCain finally arrives at the "S" word: He accuses Obama of being a socialist.

OMG! Socialism! Why, if those nasty Obamacrats have their way, we'll be just like that horrible cesspool of misery and depravity called "Sweden"! The horror! Oh the horror! Swedish meatballs! World-class health care for all! IKEA! ABBA! Kick-ass SAAB fighter jets! A diversified economy providing living wages for pretty much everybody, and a first-class educational system, and everybody being healthy and happy about their life and about their government? The horror, oh my eyes just shudder in their sockets from the sheer horror of it all! No, clearly I must now change my vote to vote for John McCain, because most certainly I would not want my nation to become such a cesspool of evil as Sweden!

Okay, back to reality, folks. The reality is that all this talk of "isms" simply is a distraction. If there's things about the Swedish model that work, we should implement them here. If there's things about the Swedish model that don't work, we shouldn't implement them here. Same deal applies to any other nation and any other model of governance. Automatically filtering ideas into categories like "socialist" or "capitalist" is just nonsense. The only filtering we should do is "works" and "doesn't work".

The fact of the matter is that over these past 28 years, we've run the nation into the ground with all this "ism" this and "ism" that and listening to politicians tell us we can have all the benefits of good government (safe food and water, clean air, good roads and schools, etc.) without paying for it. We've mortgaged our future for a house full of cheap Chinese crap that will just break within a few years, all because we'd rather believe in invisible hands and other such imaginary things rather than practical pragmatic reality as can be seen with our own two eyes if we only open them up and look around and see. It's time to put all this fucking bullshit to rest and look at the dire straits in which we've placed our nation and then roll up our sleeves and get to work -- doing what works, regardless of whatever ideological tag the bullshit artists want to place on it. We've had too much goddamned bullshit and not enough plain practical pragmatic good sense. We're living in the post-ideological world today, where in most of the 1st world governments and peoples are more concerned with adopting best practices than in attaching ideological tags to anything and everything. The United States is being out-competed now by the Euro-weenies and the Chinese, and in large part it is because we're still stuck on stupid -- still stuck on ideology. The Chinese have moved past ideology and are busy building an economic superpower. The Europeans have their ideologies, but have a sense of proportion about them and don't let ideology keep them from doing what's right for their people for the most part. But the United States? It's all about what tag we can attach to things, not about what's right for our people and for our nation. It's killing us as a nation, and until we throw that bullshit under the bridge and adopt a policy of clear-eyed realism and pragmatism we're just going to keep going down, down, down until this whole ball of wax collapses into disaster.

-- Badtux the Pragmatic Penguin

War on Liberals continues

Gunman invades office of Arkansas Democratic chairman, shoots him multiple times, and drives off in pickup truck. What do you bet that we're going to find out that this guy has copies of Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Rush Limbaugh's books sitting on his bookshelves?

-- Badtux the "Had enough hate speech yet?" Penguin

Idiot gun nuts

Some damned fools have stated that the right-wing whackaloon Jim Adkisson who shot up Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville would not have been able to fire off all three shells in his shotgun if someone in the congregation had been armed. My response to that is: Bullshit. No, let me restate that: Bull Fucking Shit.

It was a semi-automatic shotgun. You pull the trigger three times. It fires three times. There was no way -- *NO* way -- that anybody would have had the ability to pull out a weapon, acquire this whackaloon as a target, and take him out before he managed to get his three shots off -- and remember, THERE WERE CHILDREN IN THE BACKGROUND so if you missed, you had a chance of killing a child.

Furthermore, we're talking UNITARIANS, people. Unitarians are like Quakers. They don't believe in killing people or in violence. They *do* believe in putting their own lives on the line to protect others. That is why this whackaloon did not get a chance to reload and fire off three more shots -- rather than running away, the men in the congregation ran *toward* him to distract him from shooting at children, and gang-tackled him (in a loving way, I'm sure, them being Unitarians and all). A Unitarian simply is not the kind of person who a) carries, and b) uses a handgun for any purpose other than perhaps varmint hunting on his farm. The folks who go around heavily armed are called "Baptists". Duh.

In other words, someone in the congregation with a handgun would be both a) unlikely because it's against their religion, and b) wouldn't have made any difference because by the time anybody could have cleared their weapon and gotten a firing angle where they didn't risk killing children in the background if they missed, this guy was already tackled by the men of the congregation. What made a difference here and prevented more people from dying was the brave men of the congregation who, rather than flee like little girl-men (or Republicans), protected their wives and children by rushing this asshole and tackling him. Folks who want to use this tragedy to make any statement about guns -- pro or con -- can just go fuck themselves.

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

Free speech, hate speech, and the KKK

By now you know about the right-wing whackaloon Jim Adkisson who shot up Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville because he wanted to kill liberals because he blamed liberals for turning his wife away from him, for making it hard to find a job, shit, probably for his own stupidity for that matter. Now, some folks note that he had a lot of right wing hate literature in his home published by folks like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter and such that in general terms call for exterminating liberals. Some folks wonder, why are these people allowed to publish such things? Others say, however, that it would be censorship to punish them for advocating violence against liberals.

The problem with the view of "it would be censorship", however, is that if you espouse killing other people in a published work, it is not censorship to charge you with hate speech and take the publication off the shelf (as Canada would do), any more than it would be censorship to charge you with libel for telling false and injurious lies about another person. It is known quite well in civilized nations that your right to free speech stops when you injure another person with your speech, the so-called "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" notion. In short, your right to throw your fist stops at the tip of my nose, and your right to free speech ends at the point where it causes injury to me.

Unfortunately, during the KKK lynching era the U.S. Supreme Court was dominated by conservatives who wished to allow the KKK to continue publishing their hate speech because it was convenient to have a class of people to use as a scapegoat for all the problems of the majority (sort of the same deal as with Hitler), so the U.S. Supreme Court ruled during that time that it wasn't enough to advocate violence against a specific group of people (such as blacks or liberals), you had to advocate violence against a specific *individual* person to trigger the implied "harm to others" clause. In my opinion that is bad jurisprudence and in no way justified by the 1st Amendment -- other civilized nations usually have an equivalent to the 1st Amendment but no other civilized nation allows publishing works calling for violence against specific groups of people because that violates the right of people to be free of having harm committed against them. But the U.S. has always been a nation where violence against specified sub-groups has not only been tolerated but, at times (such as during the KKK lynching era) even condoned. And the right-wing whackaloons currently on the U.S. Supreme Court are quite contented with that situation, so I don't expect it to change anytime soon.

American civilization. It would be a good idea. Sigh.

- Badtux the Civilized Penguin