Pretty Much It

I'm no undying fan of the Democratic party, but compared to the alternative, it's far preferable. Basically I think money calls the tune in American politics, and it doesn't give a damn which party is in power. But money likes Republicans better. The Republicans like business, they like large concentrations of wealth, they hate regulation of just about any kind especially of business and industry. The Democrats--well, they're another story. They are more flexible, more in tune with the population that has to work for a living and all of their problems. I know all generalizations are unfair and not even true if there is but one exception, but I would contend that the Democrats tend to be more compassionate in their desire to have the greater society through the agency of the government tend to people's needs when they are in need. For all these reasons and a bunch more I have not enumerated, the Republican sweep in Tuesday's elections is disheartening. The common wisdom says the voters were expressing their disgust with Washington, with Obama, and the status quo, so they voted against the Democrats. But it seems to me that putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum is not quite the right move. There's more than a little truth in the cartoon below.

Fraudlant Votes?

No. Not really. That's what the Republicans would have you believe they're preventing when they pass restrictive voter ID laws. The "sanctity of the political process" or "of the ballot box" or some other bullshit. Don't believe it for a second. These people want to restrict voters who are likely to vote for Democrats from doing so.  And now we've got proof positive. Check this out:

The Results Are In: A review of general, primary, special and municipal elections since 2000 – which involved over a billion ballots – found 31 instances of voter impersonations that would have been prevented by any of the new voter ID laws. Thank goodness the Republicans are protecting the sanctity of the vote from blacks and old people.

That, by the way, is .000000031 percent of the ballots cast in the U.S. in all elections for the last 14 years.

The Three-Legged Stool, Or Should We Make It Four?

Different Strokes: A GOP candidate for MI state legislature say his “stool of conservatism” is held up by “faith, family and freedom,” and that voters should overlook his many convictions for masturbating in other people's cars. After all, he has “dreams.”

 It's true. Click on the link. If this guy's district is gerrymandered like the vast majority of the rest in this land of the free and home of the brave, he probably will have a good chance of winning. What a country!

This is the Way to Deal with . . .

 . . . people who think people on food stamps are shifless freeloaders, people like the lovely crowd at Fox News. The way is the way Jon Stewart does it with complete mockery and disdain. You will enjoy this clip. Please note that you have to click forward after the first video to get the entire sketch.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Gish Gallop Lies

You can look it up in the Urban Dictionary. The Gish Gallop is a technique that “involves spewing so much bullshit in such a short span on that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it.” And this was the wonderful intro to piece I just read about the five things the right lies most shamelessly and most repeatedly about. They practice the Gish Gallop technique on all the rest of us. Constantly. You can probably guess what the five lies are, or at least come close. But to spare you having to scratch your head on the last one, I'll list them for you here.

1. Creationism - Just check out this amazing list of the falsehoods creationists have foisted upon us, and you'll be astonished. These are the people the Gish Gallop was named for.
2. Denial of Climate Change - Check this compilation of over 160 arguments made by the climate change deniers and why they are wrong.
3. The Affordable Care Act - Large lies, small lies, but all of them numerous and unrelenting.
4. Contraception Mandate - Kind of a subsection to the above, but large enough for its own category. Here's a list of a dozen major myths concerning this provision of the ACA.
5. Gun Safety - "The gun lobby is dishonest to its core."

SOF

This article in "Tom Dispatch" will give you just the slightest taste of what's going on with our special operations forces. And I can tell you, although you might be shocked by its revelations, the truth of matter is far worse. It's SOF's business to be secretive, and if they are being queried about what they do, they will not tell the truth. Period. So you can take the numbers in this piece with a grain of salt. They are higher. I was in SOCOM after 9/11. I witnessed the vast infusion of money and troops that followed. And I felt the surge of excitement and blood-lust through the place when all of a sudden a numerous, cunning, omnipresent, always-dangerous and ruthless enemy--Muslim terrorists--was out there to stalk and kill for the foreseeable future. The so-called "war on terror" was the best thing since flush toilets as far as SOCOM was concerned. I thought it was ludicrous, but mine was a distinctly minority opinion.

I worked for these people, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with its thousands of special operations forces (SOF). For a long time, 13 years. Talk about a square peg in a round hole! That's what I was. For deep down, way deep--because to be open about what I really thought would have been insane, under the circumstances--I really despised what was going on around me there, and the tiny part I played in advancing the mission of the organization. Although I take great pains and am prompt to declare that the individuals I met and worked with were for the most part upstanding, outstanding, honorable, dedicated people. And they were smart people, too. SOF is the cream of the crop. But I thought they were in the grip of mass delusion. But for very few I met there, they were all flaming flag-waving "patriots," which is to say they didn't question the foreign policy of the country, they didn't question any of the missions they were given, or the cost of what they were doing, or the secrecy in which everything was cloaked, the blood-curdling mystique which they embraced. They were (naturally) knee-jerk Republicans of the most conservative kind. Me, with my shaggy hair, decidedly un-SOF-like physique, and Democratic politics . . . well, I was looked upon as some sort of curio. I thought of myself as a token liberal that was allowed to inhabit their headquarters dwelling, sort of like you allow stray dog or cat to hang around. I was not sorry to leave there. I don't miss it.

Guess What?

You guessed it: here on the day before the shit irretrievably hit the fan on the extension of the country's debt limit so the United States of America would default on its monetary obligations, the clownocracy in  Washington struck a deal. Basically, it's like the several "deals" before this one. It basically kicks a solution to the impasse a few months ahead. The government is going to reopen for business until some time in January. The debt limit decision has until early February before it rises to bedevil the country yet again.

The Tea Party idiots in the Republican party are responsible for this latest travesty, and I dearly hope that the Democrats just kick the hell out of these people in the fall elections next year. Not that I have much hope left in the Democratic party or the democratic process, for that matter, but the people of this country need to send a message to these imbeciles on the far right that they do not speak for the "people of this country," as they are continually proclaiming that they do. Why doesn't somebody call Boehner a liar and McConnell a liar and Ted Cruz a liar when they claim to be speaking for the "American people"? They aren't. They never were.

It's a sadly flawed system that allows things like this to happen . . . and happen again if these servants of the people decide to play this game again. I frankly see no reason they would not.

Carnivals of Folly

Here we are, four days before the United States of America defaults on its debts. Here we are entering into the third week of a partial governmental shut down because a tiny minority of idiots in the Republican party have brought us to this pass. We are facing self-imposed disasters of unknown magnitude and duration if sanity doesn't prevail soon.You have to wonder about a system and set of rules that could allow something like this to happen, but that's a question for another time. Right now we are all staring down the barrel of a shotgun, with a madman on the other end of it, finger on trigger.

As usual Chris Hedges has cogent observations. And as usual he looks at the system. Once you understand the system, you can understand this present mess. Here he is today in Truthdig:

The last days of empire are carnivals of folly. We are in the midst of our own, plunging forward as our leaders court willful economic and environmental self-destruction. Sumer[ia] and Rome went down like this. So did the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. Men and women of stunning mediocrity and depravity led the monarchies of Europe and Russia on the eve of World War I. And America has, in its own decline, offered up its share of weaklings, dolts and morons to steer it to destruction. A nation that was still rooted in reality would never glorify charlatans such as Sen. Ted Cruz, House Speaker John Boehner and former Speaker Newt Gingrich as they pollute the airwaves. If we had any idea what was really happening to us we would have turned in fury against Barack Obama, whose signature legacy will be utter capitulation to the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex and the security and surveillance state. We would have rallied behind those few, such as Ralph Nader, who denounced a monetary system based on gambling and the endless printing of money and condemned the willful wrecking of the ecosystem. We would have mutinied. We would have turned the ship back.

The populations of dying empires are passive because they are lotus-eaters. There is a narcotic-like reverie among those barreling toward oblivion. They retreat into the sexual, the tawdry and the inane, retreats that are momentarily pleasurable but ensure self-destruction. They naively trust it will all work out. As a species, Margaret Atwood observes in her dystopian novel “Oryx and Crake,” “we’re doomed by hope.” And absurd promises of hope and glory are endlessly served up by the entertainment industry, the political and economic elite, the class of courtiers who pose as journalists, self-help gurus like Oprah and religious belief systems that assure followers that God will always protect them. It is collective self-delusion, a retreat into magical thinking.

Well, magic didn't get us to this pass, and magic will not get us out of it. Alas, what it will take to get us back on even keel--a collective acceptance of the concept of the common good--is, it seems to me, dead as a dodo, beyond resuscitation. We seemed determined to commit suicide.

Does Any of This Surprise You?

Pretty interesting piece in the Times by Thomas Edsall about Tea Party Republicans. It's good the whole thing, but I want to highlight just a couple of graphics from it that say everything about the nut cases who have shut down the government, and apparently would not have any qualms about refusing to raise the country's debt limit, which almost everybody else in the universe says would be catastrophic. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg is working on a study of the Republican party. The graphics below are the results of polls of six focus groups.

One of the key factors pushing Republicans to extremes, according to Greenberg’s report, is the intensity of animosity toward Obama. This animosity among participants in all six focus groups is [below] which represents a “word cloud” of focus group references to the president, with the size of each word in the cloud proportional to the frequency with which it was used.

Republicans on Obama

Now, does any of this surprise you? Of course not . . . but look closely and you will not see anything about Obama's race. That doesn't surprise me either, but don't kid yourself, if people in these groups really said what was on their mind, "nigger" would be in big, big letters up there.

Here's another. This one depicts the words that came up most frequently in the six focus groups.

Words occurring most in the GOP focus groups

Hmmm. I'll bet the words wouldn't be all that different in a poll about what the Republicans are doing to the country right now.

Ayn Rand Akbar!

They Did It

They've gone and done it: shut the federal government down rather than abide a piece of legislation that passed the House and Senate, was declared OK by the Supreme Court, and is in the process of implementation all over the country.

Here's what Bill Boyarsky had to say in Truthdig about it:

Don’t write the Republicans off as totally crazy. They know that if Obamacare works, it will wreck chances for attaining their real goal—lowering taxes on the rich, wiping out regulations and widening even more the gap between the very rich and everyone else.

That is why they and their business allies are fighting so hard against the
Affordable Care Act and threatening to bring the federal government to a halt. If the Republicans lose on Obamacare, it will be nearly impossible for them to shrink government the way they’ve been dreaming.

People love conspiracy theories, and as a historian, I'm congenitally suspicious of people who embrace them. But let me say this: it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Republican party, the vast majority of the richest people and corporations in the country oppose anything that appears best for the common good, all of us. That would include laws driven by climate change, poverty of masses of people, and regulations by the government to restrain banks, multi-national corporations, and polluters. This country is falling apart, and our Congress is one of the main contributors.

Here's What We're Up Against, Folks

Normally I don't give stuff like what follows the time of day, but in this case I'll make an exception. My mailbox gets defiled every now and again by such stuff, but thankfully not too often. What follows is from what is described as "A USMC vet." Like that is immediately supposed to impress me with this dude's sagacity. In fact, it has the opposite effect because it tempts me to simply drop my USMC stereotype in place and expect just exactly what I get here: flag-waving blather with not an ounce of true information to sustain it. I know for a fact that all marine vets aren't like this, but I fear many are. And many more agree even though they never spent an hour in uniform. It just depresses the hell out of me to realize that this pinhead represents literally millions of others in this country who actually believe this nonsense.

It's not worth a single moment of my time to go about refuting the "arguments" presented in this screed. But I will make several observations. And forgive me if the observations seem too jejune and obvious to make at all. It's just therapy for me to do this. These thoughts are in no particular order.

• The "American Dream", if ever there was one, has been gone for a long time. It did not just end for the poor and middling folk of the US when Obama was reelected.
• "Norman Rockwell's America" is a figment of the imagination. It never existed.
• This piece is suffused with the terrifying racism that still exists in this country well into the 21st century. It's crude and it's scary. And truth be told, the hatred of Barack Obama that we see and hear every day and that's so evident in this piece is at its fundamental roots because the man is black.
• Want a litany of those who are responsible for all the problems? Read paragraph 2 carefully. You're probably on the list.
• Since when are marines not government workers?
• This guy knows nothing about rules of capitalization, except what maybe he learned as a Marine, and of course, they don't know the rules either. "Militarese" and "federalese" are among the most abominable crimes committed on the English language. I know. I spent my entire working life reading it.
• The best two words in the whole piece are the last two.

The American Dream ended (on November 6th) in Ohio. The second term of Barack Obama will be the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest Republic in the history of mankind.
 A coalition of Blacks, Latinos, Feminists, Gays, Government Workers, Union Members,  Environmental Extremists, The Media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the "forever needy, on disabiliy", the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other "fellow travelers" have ended Norman Rockwell's America.
The Cocker Spaniel is off the front porch...the Pit Bull is in the back yard.
The American Constitution has been replaced with Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and Chicago shyster David Axelrod, along with international Socialist George Soros will be pulling the strings on their beige puppet to bring us Act 2 of the New World Order.

Our side ran two candidates who couldn't even win their own home states, and the circus fattster Chris Christie helped Obama over the top with a glowing "post Sandy" tribute that elevated the "Commander-in-Chief" to Mother Teresa status.
People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I will never again comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our traditions without a shot being fired.
You will never again out vote these people. It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away. It will take Zealots, not moderates--not reach-across-the-aisle RINOs [Republicans in name only] to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status.
Those who come after us will have to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this generation has timidly frittered away due to "white guilt" and political correctness.....
I'm done.

Too Stupid for Democracy?

Your typical American . . .

Some selected quotations from this article in Slate entitled are "Are Americans too Stupid for Democracy?"

• In 2011, Newsweek asked 1,000 Americans to take the standard U.S. Citizenship test, and 38 percent of them failed. One in three couldn’t name the vice-president. 
• Widespread ignorance of objective reality poses a genuine threat to democracy. The people of the United States have ignorance in abundance.
• People don’t recognize their lack of competence[and] can't judge the competence of politicians
• Politicians think their constituents are much further to the right than polls suggest. (Oh yeah: two scholars polled 2000 state legislators and found this out. And the more conservative the politician, the more wrong they were about what the voters really think).
• The wealthy think the wealthy should pay more taxes, but they don't think they're wealthy. (Almost all Americans – even those in the top 5% of the wealthy – consider themselves "middle class." In fact, if you earn more than $250,000 a year, you are in the top 4% of the wealthy in this country.)
• Americans like Sweden's distribution of wealth, and think they already have it. (I talked about this a few days ago.)
• Government spending has decreased under Obama, but nobody knows it. (It's way, way down under Obama.)

• The deficit has been stabilized and is shrinking, but only six percent of Americans know it.

• "A 2011 poll conducted by CNN found that Americans, on average, think we spend 10 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid, and one in five said we spend 30 percent or more helping others abroad. The actual figure: about one percent. The average American also thinks we spend 5 percent of the budget on public broadcasting, when in fact it’s just one tenth of one percent." Here's where the tax dollars actually go.

I would definitely answer the title question in the affirmative. The writer of this piece is a little kinder, saying no, they're not too stupid, but they could be a lot smarter. I wish I were as kind or optimistic. But I look at our educational system, I look at our addiction to mindless entertainment, I look at the almost pride people taking their own ignorance, and I don't see any rosy future for us. I also observe both parties in this country, but especially the Republicans, just outright lying to people. The gross falsehood that Obama is responsible for most of the deficit is just one of the whoppers. I wish I could be more sanguine. But I do see things getting worse, and I don't see the American people getting one whit smarter.

Related articles

• Yes, America still rejects Republican ideas (dailykos.com)
• Corporate Media STILL Wont Cover Progressive Budget, Fall In Deficit (ourfuture.org)

The Republicans are the Problem

Hey, I didn't say it. Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, who write a column for the Washington Post said it right here. It's immaterial really that I completely agree with what they're saying. And this was back in April they said this . . . long before spectacle of these same guys apparently prepared to commit fiscal suicide rather than recognize what's been screamingly obvious for a long time. To wit: the country needs to have people with a modicum of brains running the government. It is going nowhere and will never go anywhere with the set of moron Republicans on the far right who are setting the agenda for this whole bloody country. What a mess these people have made of things.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

Union-Busting

This is from the wonderful blog "Some Assembly Required," which I check just about every day. I have to confess to a fellow blogger's appreciation of how an ace does it. His name is Charles Michaelson, and if you only have one blog to read, I recommend him before even me. Not that I'm all that scintillating. Charles is better at this than I.

Don't for a second think that what the Republicans are saying about the travesty they just pulled off in Michigan, i.e., passage in less than 48 hours of right-to-work legislation in a lame duck session with no public hearings has anything whatever to do with "freedom," as they claim and proclaim unceasingly. No, brothers and sisters, what we're talking about here is plain old-fashioned union busting. This a continuation of the war against organized labor that's been going on since the 1870s, when workers first began organizing in the face of industrial oppression. The hiatus in war that happened in the 1950s and 1960s was just a respite.

“'Right to work' sounds like a law guaranteeing you a job, or at least protecting your job once you’ve got it. ... In fact, it’s the opposite. The main effect of right-to-work laws is to outlaw regulations of employment and allow your boss to fire you without cause.”

The battle over right-to-work in Michigan isn't over right-to-work laws or even over unions. It is another front in the war of the rich against the rest of us and the rest of us are losing. [Emphasis mine.] Its about the shredding of the American Dream and the dissolution of the idea of equality. It is not the last battle we will lose as we retreat to penury and lifetime indebtedness, just one more in a growing tide of defeats for the middle class. Those of you who thought the struggle between capital and labor was a thing of the past have not been paying attention. (Source)

Organized labor is less than 10 percent of the U.S. workforce, hardly a threat to the hegemony of wealth, but they are hated anyway, as a force that can mount credible opposition to the nefarious plans the fat cats have for the rest of us, and anything the fat cats can devise to cripple them will be done. This stuff in Michigan is just raw-knuckled political warfare. 

Heads up, anybody who really cares about freedom and not the propaganda blatherings of the sworn enemies of regular folk and their welfare.

Related articles

• Union busting in Michigan (bell-book-candle.com)
• Right to Work: As Goes Michigan, So Goes The Nation (commondreams.org)
• Koch brothers, Tea Party cash drives Michigan right-to-work bill (salon.com)
• How the Bitter Losers of 2012 Rammed Through a Union-Destroying Bill in Michigan (alternet.org)

Damn Those Cripples Worldwide, I Say!

I just have one question, which I'm afraid I have been asking over and over again for some time: what is wrong with these people? These crackpot ideologues of the Republican party who cannot bring themselves to approve a treaty that in essence makes the U. S. American with disabilities act, which this country passed years ago, the gold standard, the standard for the rest of the world. But our crazy Republicans could not bring themselves to ratify this treaty. 

On July 26, 1990, President George Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. The bill had passed the House and the Senate with only 34 legislators combined opposing it.

This week, 38 Republican senators voted nay on a U.N. treaty that would extend the ADA to the rest of the world. They included six senators who had voted yay on the original bill in 1990.

The treaty was adopted by the United Nations six years ago and has since been ratified by 126 countries … just not the United States.

Even a last-minute appeal by former Sen. Bob Dole, himself a disabled veteran, as well as every major veterans group and even the Chamber of Commerce, could not sway Senate Republicans. (source)

The arguments they marshal against this humane treaty are basically two. First, it's a lame duck Congress and it shouldn't be voting on important matters. It should wait for the new Congress. That is just so bogus on its face. These people are dealing the fiscal crisis of the ages, are they not? It's just bullshit, like so much else the Republicans deal out.

Second argument is the fear that passing the treaty will enable the United Nations to assume all sorts of powers over the U.S., such as forcing it to do certain things and voiding its laws. This argument is specially designed for lunatics, Tea Party nuts, and court jesters. It doesn't even deserve a response, and I'm embarrassed to have repeated it.

So before the world, we once again advertise what fools we are. It's pathetic. 

Related articles

• Republicans Kick Cripples (boomantribune.com)
• Mary Sanchez | With treaty vote, senators betrayed Bob Dole (kansascity.com)
• Watch: Why the Far-Right Scuttled the United Nations Disability Treaty (alternet.org)

The Cliff

Are you as tired as I am of hearing about the "fiscal cliff"? What a wonderful phrase for the lamestream media! Crisis, baby! News is one crisis after another. Gotta keep the clowns glued to their screens to see who's going to be the hero and get us out of this crisis so we can get ready for the next one. (And don't worry, there will be another crisis for you to fret about when whatever one they're onto now plays out. I might observe that genuine crises such as frightful global warming, the absurd gouging the Defense Department is doing on our striated national budget, and the escalating illiteracy of our society . . . well, none of these are a crisis because they )

Have you noticed lately that the best I can seem to gin up for the blog is something that doesn't involve dealing with the news? It's because I'm just seem to get constantly pissed off at the news anymore. And not just accounts of the infuriating posturing and intransigence of the Republican party which has given itself over body and soul to the moron, lunatic right-wing of their aggregation. No, I've gotten fed up with the very way the news is being reported on places like PBS where I watch the news every night. More and more as time goes on, they have taken on trappings of their mindless colleagues.

Hear this: the cliff . . . we're probably going over it. At this point, I cannot discern any inclination on the part of the Republican leadership to cave on their primary mission which is to protect the fat cats and continue to carve up all the lesser beings into smaller more digestible bits. The Republicans have been so twisted by their twisted ideology they no longer understand how to function. Up to now, the president and his party have shown admirable spunk in resisting all the bluster emanating from the likes clowns such as Mitch McConnell and his counterpart jester in the House John Boehner. We shall see what we shall see, but my guess is we won't see it till after the new year begins. Unfortunately we are going to have to hear about it ad nauseum until it's time to move on to the next crisis.

[Don't] Stop Digging

I absolutely love it when some Republican luminary--hell, doesn't have to be a luminary, just an ordinary run-of-the-mill Republican--actually either on purpose or accidentally says something that's true. It's not their normal way. Such is the case and such my satisfaction with reports that the senior GOP senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham basically told defeated party standard-bearer Mitt Romney to shut the f--k up. Not only that, but the way he said it was kinda cool.

Last week Mittens broke his silence on the election drubbing he took by blaming his loss on all the free goodies the president showered on minorities, Hispanics, students, and other undesirables. Things like free health care, a break on student loans, a partial dream act for children of illegal immigrants, etc. (NY Times story on that here.)

Well, today on Meet the Press Senator Graham slapped Mitt's jowls but good:

“We’re in a big hole [and] we’re not getting out of it by comments like that . . . When you’re in a hole, stop digging. He keeps digging.”

“Self deportation being pushed by Mitt Romney hurt our chances . . . We’re in a death spiral with Hispanic voters because of rhetoric around immigration and candidate Romney in the primary dug the hole deeper.”

Well, maybe Mittens can stop digging, but I'm sure digging this.

Related articles

• Mitt Romney Really Believes the 47-Percent Crap (bobcesca.com)
• Romney rides off into the sunset, as big a dick as always (dailykos.com)
• Mitt Romney's Sneering Farewell to the '47 Percent' (alternet.org)
• Lindsey Graham says he'll go nuts if GOPers say Romney lost because he wasn't conservative enough (dailykos.com)

Just a Taste

. . . of a thoroughly enjoyable, but totally serious read at The Smirking Chimp. (Here) It's worth the whole read, of course.

So, shall we review:

The Catholic Church is anti-gay
The Mormon Church is anti-gay
The Boy Scouts are anti-gay.

The Catholic Church protected pedophiles
The Boy Scouts protected pedophiles
The Mormon used to protect polygamist-pedophiles

The Catholic Church represses women
The Mormon Church (LDS) represses women
The Evangelicals repress women
The Boy Scouts .. "Hey, who needs women? We have young boys."

I'm sick of the lot of them. Republicans who shout "voter fraud," and are then caught engaging in voter fraud.

Sick of "super-patriot" groups like the Boy Scouts of America, touting their "American values" getting caught, not just breaking the law, but protecting the perps and violating the trust of parents and society.

And I am sick of holier-than-thou religious folk who endlessly try to impose their beliefs on those who don't share them, don't want them or believe in them. But then also change those beliefs like dirty underwear whenever it suits their need for money, power and their tax-exempt money-making rackets.

[He's referring here to the evangelicals of America embracing the Mormon Mitt Romney. Until now Mormons have been considered an unholy "cult." But of course--there's that black guy in the White House. We can't have that. God is definitely against that.]

Harpooned--A Continuing Series

Bullets from the latest "Harper's Index" in the November 2012 number of Harper's. Given as usual with little or no comment.

• Portion of the total U. S. corn crop that goes to make ethanol: 2/5
• Average number of square miles by which the Arctic sea ice decreased each day this summer: 36,400 [how often have you heard "global warming" during the current political debates?]
• Estimated number of gallons of raw sewage spilled off the coast of Tijuana following an August pipeline break: 5 million
• Portion of U.S. workers age 50 or above who plan to delay retirement because the financial crisis: 1/2
• Projected worldwide surplus of low-skill workers by 2020: 93 million
• Projected worldwide deficit of high- and medium-skill workers by that time: 85 million
• Portion of people residing outside the United States who say they like American pop culture: 2/3
• Who say it is a "good" thing that American ideas and customs are spreading: 1/4
• Percentage of Americans in 1992 who believed gun laws should be stricter: 78
• Percentage who believe so today: 43 
• Rank of "I don't know" among the most common answers Republicans give when asked why black voters support Democrats: 1
• Rank of "government dependents" want "something for nothing": 2