Daily Archives: August 21, 2012

“Moron Night” at the Iowa State Fair featured C&W buffoon Hank Williams Jr.

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Metromix Des Moines reports: “Country legend Hank Williams Jr. played to a crowd of nearly 8,500 at the Iowa State Fair Grandstand Friday night. [...] Following the song “We Don’t Apologize For America” a chant of “USA, USA” broke out amongst the crowd. Williams smiled, telling the crowd that he was their mouth piece and adding: “We’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the US and we hate him!” The cheers that followed were loud and enthusiastic.”

How these people survive each day without falling from the toilet and sustaining fatal injury is anyone’s guess. All of them decided to ignore actual events which occurred in their state — at their fair — last week:

1) The President stopped by the Iowa State Fair and then toured drought-stricken crops with Iowa farmers. Last week it was reported that the Obama Administration, via the USDA, will buy up to $170 million worth of pork, lamb, chicken and catfish to help drought-stricken farmers. But Obama hates farmers! and ‘merica! and baby Jesus!

2) Conversely Paul Ryan, the Republican VP candidate, also visited the Iowa State Fair to give a stump speech. Afterwards, reporters asked him about the drought and dead crops and whether he supported federal aid to farmers. Ryan’s reply was: “We’ll get into all those policy things later,” adding, rather unbelievably, “Right now I just want to enjoy the fair.” Please note that drought-stricken crops and the farmers who are suffering are not as important to Master Ryan as his fair-going. Also it’s highly likely that he and Mittens, in fact, would not support such federal aid (that would take away from those tax cuts for the wealthy!). But Paul Ryan is the real ‘merican though, ain’t he Hank?!

Be sure to show up in November and vote against anyone who these idiots support.

The power of Ayn Rand compels him

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Click image for larger version:

via: reagan-was-a-horrible-president | source: dailykos

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The Republicans have had a love affair with Rand for a long time:

image: thepoliticalfreakshow

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Christians Who Adore Ayn Rand Can Scarcely Be Known As Christians (via: azspot)

In the 1950s, serious Christians kept their distance from Rand. So did mainstream Republicans. The father of the modern conservative movement, William F. Buckley, was contemptuous of her, and the pages of his magazine, National Review, were anything but kind to her views.

But Rand has since been elevated to a central figure in conservatism. Business moguls have embraced her because of her frank worship of wealth. “Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue,” she said. And her contempt for government, with its regulations and taxation, was just what America’s reckless and self-centered class of business executives wanted to hear.

It’s harder to figure out how Rand came to be embraced by conservative Christians, however. Last year, the late Charles Colson made a video denouncing Rand and warning his fellow Republicans against elevating her philosophy. “It’s hard to imagine a world view more antithetical to Christianity,” he said.

Further proof: Fox *is not* News

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Source: thinkprogress.org

Fox News is following its well established pattern of underreporting stories that don’t appeal to its conservative base, instituting a virtual blackout of Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) controversial — and widely condemned — comments about “legitimate rape.” — Fox News Institutes Virtual Blackout Of Todd Akin’s ‘Legitimate Rape’ Comments

The First Family on Sunday

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firstfamily: President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters Malia and Sasha walk out from the White House to attend Sunday service at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC.

August 19, 2012

The traveling press corps will now be attending Sunday services with Mitt Romney

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The Romney campaign is going to begin allowing the traveling press corps to attend a Mormon service each week with the Romneys from now through the election. Buzzfeed’s intrepid McKay Coppins (who is also a Mormon) wrote about attending a service with the Romneys yesterday, as a member of the first group of traveling pool reporters allowed to do so:

“Shortly after entering the chapel, Mitt and Ann filed into an aisle with their son Tagg, his wife, and their six children, while a handful of reporters took seats in the back of the chapel. As my colleagues surveyed their unremarkable surroundings, they commented on how unremarkable it all looked: a generic high-ceilinged room full of nondescript parishioners. What I saw, though, was a slice of Mormon Americana — a buffet of congregational quirks that any Latter-day Saint would recognize.” 

Coppins goes onto detail a bit of the service: hymns, bread and water passed out to the congregation which instead of calling it communion, Coppins describes it as “the ordinance, which represents repentance for past sins and a renewed commitment to avoid them in the future. It’s a key tenet of Mormonism — this notion of constant spiritual course-correction.” The speakers at this service were from the Marriott family (THE Marriotts? Probably.). Ann sang with some other women… and it was all so very average and normal (or unremarkable, generic, and nondescript as Coppins describes it). NOTHING TO SEE HERE, FOLKS.

It’s interesting that McKay Coppins didn’t mention that a Mormon chapel (church, temple) won’t have any crosses or crucifixes — and maybe that’s what struck the other reporters (if they were used to Protestant or Catholic churches)? Or maybe they did remark on that fact. Or maybe not. And maybe Coppins wouldn’t even be aware that might seem odd to Protestants and Catholics.

In place of crosses, apparently there will be other symbols found, and usually (always?) the golden Angel Moroni with the trumpet. Many sites online make these other symbols sound like a huge conspiracy theory, by the way — masonic, pagan, occult — but that’s said about symbols in Catholic and Protestant churches as well. And, to me, that’s interesting.

If anyone reading this is a practicing Mormon, please verify the “no crosses / crucifixes” thing. I’m almost sure that’s true. I’ve tried to find out why there would be no crosses / crucifixes in Mormon churches (and why Mormons do not wear crosses or crucifixes) and all I can find are two explanations: 1) the cross symbolizes Jesus Christ’s death and Mormons prefer to focus on the resurrected Christ; and 2) Mormons believe Christ’s atonement happened in the Garden of Gethsemane and not on the cross. Maybe there’s another / better reason?

I realize Coppins works for Buzzfeed (one of Romney’s online PR firms) but it seems like he would do his readership, the Romneys, and other Mormons a service by explaining differences like this one to non-Mormons, instead of trying to completely white-out the service as something really super average and generic. Like he’s trying to say, See? Mormonism is almost like nothing happened at all… 

THIS is what voter fraud looks like

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Source: sandandglass

 
 
 
 

Source: sandandglass


via: sarahlee310

ProPublica: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Voter ID Laws: A must-read for conservatives who absurdly claim our country suffers from widespread voter fraud, and the consequences of voter ID laws for the poor and elderly.

GOTTAVOTE.COM

Don’t negotiate with terrorists.

ATTENTION ALL NEW YORKERS: ….You can now register to vote ONLINE. No leaving the house, no trips to the DMV, no forms to mail away. It only takes a couple of minutes. Please register and help spread the word!

thesoapboxschtick: In the face of nation-wide republican efforts to suppress voting rights, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed a bill allowing New York State residents to register to vote online.

The form is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Bengali.

Not from NY? Online voter registration is also available in these states:

  • Arizona
  • Colorado
  • Indiana
  • Kansas
  • Louisiana
  • Nevada
  • Oregon
  • Utah
  • Washington

“Today, we are knocking down longstanding barriers that have prevented many New Yorkers from participating in the democratic process, while creating a more streamlined and more efficient system that will save taxpayers’ money.” -Andrew Cuomo

Why won’t Mitt Romney release his tax returns: the “voter fraud” theory

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MS Bellows Jr. at the Guardian posits another ‘why Romney won’t release his tax returns’ theory: releasing them will prove he committed voter fraud:

“But the Romneys, arbitrarily, refuse to disclose a copy of the returns they filed in 2010 or 2009 (for tax years 2009 and 2008) – which, perhaps not coincidentally, bracket the time period when Romney allegedly committed fraud by voting in Massachusetts when he actually resided in California. So here’s the question: did Romney put his son’s basement’s address on the returns he filed in 2009 and 2010? Or did he truthfully use his real (non-Massachusetts) address, thus implicating himself in voter fraud?”

I’ll bet money that he doesn’t want to release his returns because of numerous, multiple reasons — and this could well be one of them.

Romney’s Mormonism and Ryan’s Catholicism matter

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Charles P. Pierce discusses how Romney-Ryan each have a problem with their respective religions:

“Much will be made of the fact that the Republican party, with its Bible-banging sectarian political base, has nominated a presidential ticket that includes both a Mormon and a Roman Catholic, which would have been unthinkable, oh, eight months ago, and still would be unthinkable, had the Mormon not possessed more money than anyone’s God, and had the Papist not been the poster child for magical-thinking conservative economics. This will be seen by the more gullible of the people out there as proof that the party is “moving beyond” the influence of the Dixiecrat snake-handlers… In reality, however, it is more a vivid demonstration that the Republican party’s One True Faith is in its desire to shove even more of the nation’s wealth upwards in the general direction of Willard Romney and, thence, in the general direction of Switzerland or the Cayman islands. To that end, the party eagerly would line up behind Asmodeus/Nero ’12 for the upcoming stretch drive…” 

— Why Romney’s Mormon Thing Matters (Ryan’s Catholic Thing, Too)

LOL Todd Akin

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via: rabbleprochoice

Petition: Remove Todd Akin from the SCIENCE and Technology Committee!

Petition: Remove Todd Akin from the SCIENCE and Technology Committee!

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Believing in magic and pseudo-science from another century shouldn’t be GOP prerequisites for the House Science and Technology Committee.

Sign your name to call on Speaker John Boehner to remove Rep. Todd Akin from the House Science and Technology Committee.

Republican Congressman Todd Akin told a Missouri news station:

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare… If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Someone who believes nonsense like this has no part overseeing science policy.

Tell Speaker Boehner to immediately remove Rep. Akin from the House Science and Technology Committee.

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