Conservatives
mikethemadbiologist | January 21, 2009This is the kind of story that makes me sick to my stomach--soldiers stateside were expected by their base commander to applaud for Pastor of Evil Rick Warren:
The following is an email from one decorated combat officer, a man with the courage to repeatedly put his life on the line on the battlefield, being wounded twice, but who could not muster the courage to resist the pressure of his "serious and committed born again Christian" commanding officer to applaud Rick Warren. The author of this email is typical of the majority of servicemen and servicewomen who contact MRFF for assistance. Like…
mikethemadbiologist | January 18, 2009If you haven't heard by now, some theopolitical conservatives are angry at the Krispy Kreme doughnut chain because they used "doughnut of choice" in an ad campaign. I think Amanda's take on why these wackaloons fear TEH DONUTZ is right on target:
What made reading this move from the "merely hilarious" column to the "fucking scary" column for me, though, is that I'm currently reading Matt Taibbi's latest book The Great Derangement, and he spends a good deal of his time in the book pretending to be a Christian attending James Hagee's church in San Antonio....what Taibbi explains is something…
mikethemadbiologist | January 15, 2009
WHEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!
One of the most popular posts from the old site was a post about two right wing nutjobs who anointed Justice Alito's chair before his Senate confirmation hearing (AND IT WORKED!!11!!). Well, we have more scent marking for Jesus, this time courtesy of a Republican congressman:
On January 7, second-term Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia and two friends prayed over a door. It was not just any door, but the entranceway beneath the Capitol that President-elect Barack Obama will pass through as he walks onto the inaugural stage to take the oath of office. "I hope and…
mikethemadbiologist | January 3, 2009Dengre reminds us that the Abramoff investigation is ongoing, and that the outcome of this investigation could bring down a lot of influential Republicans:
To date, sixteen people--including Abramoff--have plead guilty in the scandal and as terms of their pleas they have been cooperating with the DOJ. Another two have been indicted. One is awaiting trial while the other was recently found guilty again in a retrial. Others, including Abramoff, have been indicted for crimes committed on the US Territory of Guam. A trial there is schedule to begin in January 2009. And then there are some…
mikethemadbiologist | January 3, 2009Regular readers know I've been beating this drum since the inception of this blog, but the Krugman says it well:
The fault, however, lies not in Republicans' stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party's champion, to the Bush administration's pervasive incompetence, to the party's shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.
If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well…
mikethemadbiologist | December 29, 2008...why not letting bygones be bygones matters. Driftglass crushes Andrew Sullivan in one of the best posts of the year:
George W. Bush was not Conservatism's aberration, but its apotheosis. His reign of faith-based disasters, failure, treason and lies all grew from the soil Sullivan and other like him aerated, plowed and fertilized year after year after year. Came shambling straight from the slaughterhouse floor of political reality on which men like Atwater and Rove, Falwell and Robertson, Weyrich and DeLay, Reagan and Limbaugh, Gingrich and Nixon and a thousand others practiced the…
mikethemadbiologist | December 18, 2008I really wasn't going to say much about the decision to have Rick Warren, civil rights opponent and evolution denialist, until Pam Spaulding bravely put on her slime guard and went to see what the rightwing denizens of Free Republic had to say. Warning--not safe for workdecent human beings:
LOL the homo's are taking a right beating lately. This is just great, what is it ah yes change we can believe in have you got that homo's? change you never thought LOL
Since his election to the position of President Elect, Obama has shown increasingly that he may be (emphasis on "may be") a pure old…
mikethemadbiologist | December 17, 2008By way of Scienceblogling PZ, I stumbled across a very interesting article by Max Blumenthal about the origins of the 'War on Christmas.' This passage stood out (italics mine):
Following the invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush's re-election, and the Republican sweep of Congress, Brimelow said conservative movement elites could no longer ignore the right-wing populism sweeping the nation. Suddenly the War on Christmas was gaining traction. "This issue became very popular in the conservative grassroots, so conservative media had to pay concession to it," he said.
By 2005, Fox News personalities…
mikethemadbiologist | November 23, 2008
One of the things the Coalition of the Sane can't let happen is the 'forgetting' of the lunacy that is the theopolitical right. Any time someone who supported this lunacy makes public utterances, we must make sure that whatever they say is qualified by "Person X, who is a fucking wackaloon..." While this might smack of vengeance, it's not.
That's just a side benefit.
This is actually a public service. Consider the list John Cole put together--all that's missing is creationism:
1.) Justice ("Just Us") Sunday
2.) Schiavo legislation
3.) Jesus is my philosopher.
4.) Michael J. Fox must be…
mikethemadbiologist | November 14, 2008Not that this is a real concern of mine, but something Kos wrote a while ago about the possibility of Huckabee becoming the RNC party chairman interested me:
But if Huckabee has the ground troops, what is he missing? The money. He got far in his primary race without any, winning Iowa with something like $27. But he won't be able to rebuild his party on shoe leather alone.
Us Demcoratic rebels bypassed the Terry McAuliffe wing of our party by building our own alternate small-dollar fundraising mechanism. Without that cash, Dean would've never existed, and the establishment's favorite candidate…
mikethemadbiologist | November 13, 2008At the Washington Independent, Aaron Wiener has made a bunch of electoral college maps that show how the candidates would have done if only one particular demographic group had voted. First, registered independents:
Now, self-described moderates:
Not good for the GOP at all. But we're a center-right country! Erm....
Onto college graduates:
With the exceptions of Florida and Indiana, this looks exactly like the actual 2008 map. As I'll discuss tomorrow, you can't really win anymore without college graduates. Demonizing educated people who like science and stuff might not be the best…
mikethemadbiologist | November 10, 2008At least if you work for the National Review's The Corner. Because the Peace Corps is as horrific as the mass murder of European Jewry. By way of Spencer Ackermann:
Oh good, for a moment I thought the Second Holocaust was off. In response to this plan put forward from Obama --
The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation's challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy…
mikethemadbiologist | November 6, 2008You just can't make this stuff up. From Fox News reporter Carl Cameron (italics mine):
I wish I could have told you more at the time but all of it was put off the record until after the election. There was great concern in the McCain campaign that Sarah Palin lack the degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, and a heartbeat away from the presidency. We're told by folks that she didn't know what countries that were in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, that being the Canada, the US, and Mexico. We're told she didn't understand that Africa was a…
mikethemadbiologist | November 5, 2008Any time Democrats do well, there are claims that We Are Now All Centrists (although this never seems to happen when Republicans win...), and that partisanship is undesirable. With that in mind, it's worth remembering just how poisoned our national discourse has been by extremist Republicans (who lead the GOP):
What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America's political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove,…
mikethemadbiologist | November 3, 2008...or one more reason why decent people should vote Democratic. Republican Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania bluntly spells out the only way McCain wins his state:
There are a "couple of hidden factors" in this election, said Specter. "The first is that people answer pollsters one way, but in the secrecy of the ballot booth, vote the other way."
Yes. That is what he said, to a chorus of hopeful affirmation. Arlen Specter was openly -- in public, into a microphone -- crossing his fingers, and hoping for racism.
Keep in mind that this isn't some wackaloon attending a Sturmabteilungen…
mikethemadbiologist | November 3, 2008I finally figured out what the underlying philosophy for the banking bailout is (other than TEH STOOPID): it's supply-side/trickle down economics. First, the latest insult by way of Chris in Paris (italics mine):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/29/AR20081…
U.S. banks getting more than $163 billion from the Treasury Department for new lending are on pace to pay more than half of that sum to their shareholders, with government permission, over the next three years.
The government said it was giving banks more money so they could make more loans. Dollars paid to…
mikethemadbiologist | November 2, 2008If you're trying to convince black voters to vote Republican, this probably isn't the best way to do it:
Interesting anecdote and probably a testament to ground organization. I have no idea what this means. Friday night (which happens to be the start of our Sabbath) my wife answered the phone to hear a man stating he was from the McCain-Palin campaign. He asked who she was supporting. She replied that we will vote for Obama. He replied with "but he's a f-----g n---er!". Before I get to my wife's response I'll first have to say that I understand desperation and I also understand that this…
mikethemadbiologist | October 30, 2008While I often disagree with Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), he usually doesn't practice sleazeball politics. He's also disgusted by the Cult of Stupidity that has enveloped the Republican Party:
For Hagel, almost as disturbing as Palin's lack of experience is her willingness--in disparaging remarks about Joe Biden's long Senate career, for example--to belittle the notion that experience is important. "There's no question, she knows her market," Hagel said. "She knows her audience, and she's going right after them. And I'll tell you why that's dangerous. It's dangerous because you don't want to…
mikethemadbiologist | October 25, 2008From the Oxdown Gazette comes this interview transcript with Sarah Palin:
Brian Williams: Back to the notion of terrorists and terrorism, this word has come up in relation to Mr. Ayers -- hanging out with terrorist - domestic terrorists. It is said that it gives it a vaguely post uh 9-11 hint, using that word, that we don't normally associate with domestic crimes. Are we changing the definition? Are the people who set fire to American cities during the '60's terrorists, under this definition? Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under the definition?
Sarah Palin: There is no question that…
mikethemadbiologist | October 25, 2008...it's applied research. As far as I can tell, the McCain campaign is referring to a study of olive fruit flies which are an agricultural pest. From the congressman who wrote the earmark:
"The Olive Fruit Fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries," he said. "I secured $748,000 for olive fruit fly research and irradiation in the (fiscal year 2008) appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA will use some of that funding for their research facility in France. This USDA research…