World News Korner

You know it was not too long ago that this would have been considered a parody. But today it reads like a simple explanation of fact.

By the way, THIS is what happens when you empower the fringe. Or as Sarah Palin likes to call them, "We the People."

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Found on Reddit

All props go to Lawrence O'Donnell for this awesome and accurate quote.

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Courtesy of the YouTube page:

"Let me ask you, when it comes to Obamacare, do you hate Obamacare more than you love your country?"

As expected, that set off Blackburn: "I've got to tell you something. I think that comments like that, that you are making, are just incredibly inappropriate."

Roberts volleyed back with a fiery response:

"You don't think it's incredibly inappropriate to shut down our government and take all the hostages of Americans that you've taken? No, it's not inappropriate because you took the government hostage through the shutdown and all the American people, you're now walking them to a cliff, the economy, and you're going to push them over one by one based on the fact that you don't like the ACA. That's all it is. You don't like the Affordable Care Act."

"Listen to yourself!" Blackburn replied. "Just listen to the way you're sounding. My goodness! We didn't want a government shutdown. We don't want a government default."

Roberts read off a recent quote from Blackburn praising Sen. Ted Cruz for his efforts in defunding Obamacare, because accusing: "So you have been planning a shutdown since August."

"Not at all," Blackburn shot back. "What you are doing is so inappropriate. We didn't want a shutdown. What we want to do is solve problems."

No they could care less about solving problems, ALL they want to do is destroy the President's signature piece of legislation and are willing to shut down the governemtn and bankrupt the country to do it, and we have seen reams of evidence to support those conclusions.

You know I gotta tell you that Thomas Roberts guy is rapidly becoming one of my new favorites on MSNBC. He will soon join the ranks of Alex Wagner, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O'Donnell as my one of my "must watch" MSNBC hosts.

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What follows is part of a conversation between Maher and Chris Matthews on the Overtime portion of last Friday's Real Time. The transcript is courtesy of Real Clear Politics:

BILL MAHER: It seems like the people like that, Kennedy, they just seem to always, at the end of the day, somehow get cut out of the picture -- violently, or otherwise -- and maybe that is why Barack Obama is a little more of a centrist than we want him to be.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You think that?

MAHER: Well, I think he knows that if he goes a little too far to the left --

MATTHEWS: Really?

MAHER: Well, yeah.

MATTHEWS: I'm just really curious that you think that.

MAHER: Well, if I were Barack --

MATTHEWS: That's an extraordinary statement.

MAHER: What? You don't think --

MATTHEWS: I'm just saying that's an extraordinary statement. I'm amazed -- I'm impressed you think that.

MAHER: Think what?

MATTHEWS: That his policies are driven by fear of assassination.

MAHER: Well, not by fear of assassination.

JAMES GLASSMAN: Is that what you said?

MATTHEWS: Then by what?

MAHER: Well, I'm saying that yeah --

MATTHEWS: I thought you just said that.

MAHER: I didn't say it in those words.

MATTHEWS: Well, I would try and clarify.

MAHER: Well, I'm saying that, yeah, I think that's something that probably [Obama] thinks about at night, yeah. Wouldn't you?

MATTHEWS: That he has to change his policies for that reason?

MAHER: No! But I think that he is a centrist. I think people saw him as what they wanted to see him. They saw a liberal, and he was never really that much of a liberal. And to call him a socialist, is completely --

CAROL ROTH, CNBC: I don't think that anybody who is in the center or at the right would think that he is a centrist. You might think that, but everybody else doesn't think that.

MAHER: I don't think that is an insult to say to somebody that he may modulate his policies because he is afraid of all the hate that he sees.

MATTHEWS: He probably gets reports constantly about threats, though. That must unnerve him.

Now you might dismiss this as simply Maher being provocative, except there was also this recent post from Andrew Sullivan:

I’ve been doing some reading about John Kennedy, and what I find startling, and even surprising, is how absolutely Wanted_for_treasonconsistent and unchanged the ideology of the extreme American right has been over the past fifty years, from father to son and now, presumably, on to son from father again. The real analogue to today’s unhinged right wing in America is yesterday’s unhinged right wing in America. This really is your grandfather’s right, if not, to be sure, your grandfather’s Republican Party. …

Reading through the literature on the hysterias of 1963, the continuity of beliefs is plain: Now, as then, there is said to be a conspiracy in the highest places to end American Constitutional rule and replace it with a Marxist dictatorship, evidenced by a plan in which your family doctor will be replaced by a federal bureaucrat—mostly for unnamable purposes, but somehow involving the gleeful killing off of the aged. There is also the conviction, in both eras, that only a handful of Congressmen and polemicists (then mostly in newspapers; now on TV) stand between honest Americans and the apocalypse, and that the man presiding over that plan is not just a dupe but personally depraved, an active collaborator with our enemies, a secret something or other, and any necessary means to bring about the end of his reign are justified and appropriate. And fifty years ago, as today, groups with these beliefs, far from being banished to the fringe of political life, were closely entangled and intertwined with Senators and Congressmen and right-wing multi-millionaires.

A famous handbill circulated on November 21, 1963 In Dallas, Texas. One day before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Yes I would love to dismiss what Bill Maher says as mere hyperbole, but just this week we have seen protesters fighting with police right outside the White House while claiming that our President is illegitimate, a Muslim, and a danger to our country.

Yes I would like to dismiss the words of Bill Maher. I just can't.

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Courtesy of the Washington Post:

The video — which has already attracted more than 702,000 views since being posted to YouTube on Saturday — shows Van Hollen engaging in a parliamentary inquiry with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who was in the speaker’s chair at the time. The two men discussed why Democrats could not bring up a Senate amendment that would provide funding to return the government to normal operations.

Normally an individual lawmaker would be able to force a vote on a bill where there is a dispute between the House and Senate, but on Oct. 1, House Republicans passed a resolution, H. Res. 368, altering the rules to make that impossible.

“The Rules Committee under the rules of the House changed the standing rules of the House of the to take away the right of any member to move to vote to open the government and gave that right exclusively to the Rep leader, is that right?” asked Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

“The House adopted that resolution,” Chaffetz replied.

Pressing the point, Van Hollen asks, “Why were the rules rigged to keep the government shut down?”

While House leaders of both parties have sometimes changed the rules of the House by a majority vote during pitched political battles, this particular procedural move is much more rare.

At the end of the exchange, Chaffetz denies Van Hollen’s attempt to force a vote on the Senate measure, prompting Van Hollen to retort, “Well, Mr. Speaker, democracy’s been suspended.”

The next time one of your Right Wing relatives starts trashing the President over the government shutdown or if and when we default on our debt, you show them this video.

Because this entire debacle is the SOLE responsibility of the Republican party, and grandstanding with vets ate the World War 2 monument, and continuing to try and shift the blame to the President is underhanded political hypocrisy.

I am literally seething after watching this.

Fuck these Republican assholes! It is time for a Democratic revolution to rid our country of this vermin and get our country back!

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Click receding hairline to play video.

This short interview was on Greta's show last night, which I missed because I forgot they gave her slot to Megyn Kelly.

To be honest it really is more of the same inflammatory faux patriotism flavored word salad that we have all heard before.

However at one point Greta asks soggy britches where all of this ends, (I assume she meant the shutdown, and not Palin's party crashing of protest rallies.) and Palin gets very agitated and high pitched:

"Where does it end. It ends with the people at places like this, having their voices heard. Telling out leaders that they better get their priorities straight. Priorities like, no you don't shut down our World War 2 memorial, and keep the President's golf course open at the same time. (The course on Andrews Air Force base is paid for with user fees. Caution, link leads to Breitbart.) You don't make these stupid decisions that stick it to the people, because the people are being used as pawns. (Yes, by YOU!) Our government is to be working for us. You guys hired the politicians, they work for you, so it ends when the people's voice is loud enough to be heard all throughout Washington D. C., so that they'll listen to us."

Greta then points out that the more moderate Republicans (The ones who would end the government shutdown.) disagree with the tactics utilized by Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. And asks Palin how she reconciles that:

"I think the people would say, 'Thank you good guys for being there fighting the good fight for the rest of us.'"

At this point it almost seems as if Palin, within her childlike fantasy world, does not recognize that the very individuals she thinks the people should be thanking, are the ones who engineered the shutdown that is making those protestors so angry.

Palin continues to pander to the crowd, all while waving her tiny "Made in China" flag, and seems to have NO idea that she is knee deep in hypocrisy by claiming that the President is using the veterans as pawns when being caught on camera doing that very thing herself.

What was it that Forrest Gump said? "Stupid is as stupid does."

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A View of the new logistics center of online merchant Amazon in Lauwin-Planque, northern France, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013.



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Unloading giant pumpkins

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When life gives you lemons, at this point make margaritas. Caving on debt could drive one to drink. This photo... http://t.co/iofNyTVbUB
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) October 16, 2013

That tweet linked to this photo:

Well somebody's been spending sleepless nights combing through old picture albums.

And this ghostwritten Facebook post:

When life gives you lemons, at this point make margaritas. Caving on debt could drive one to drink.

This photo of my son and nephew ran in our local newspaper about 15 years ago. I’m betting dollars to doughnuts our president skipped this universal childhood lesson in Economics 101, and perhaps that explains his problem understanding the tragedy to befall us as America drowns in debt. Running a lemonade stand teaches you to progress by the sweat of your brow and live within your means. It taught these boys that it was unacceptable and self-defeating to keep coming back to mama for more money for ingredients needed to concoct a product to sell to the public. Obviously more debt means less progress and opportunity to expand. Anyone who has run a business knows more debt equals less profit, and less profit means less ability to grow operations, employ more people, and even hold your head high above shortsighted economic decisions that history proves lead to failure. (Is she seriously comparing the running of child's lemonade stand, to the running of a country the size of the United States? She was the Governor of Alaska, she HAS to know better than that, doesn't she?)


All these lessons about the kids’ lemonade stand and economic freedom apply to our families’ budgets, our businesses, and most certainly our government. We cannot borrow our way to prosperity. (Perhaps, but if the Republicans had not made taxes a four letter word we could raise enough revenue to pay the bills that we started to accrue the minute that George W. spent all of the Clinton surplus and then started two unnecessary wars.) We’re in a deep hole; quit digging. We cannot ignore the economic realities of bankruptcy. (And there is nothing to suggest that the President is doing any such thing.)


President Obama is giddily enthused now about growing more debt, but just a few years prior when he was still a senator, he scolded America, proclaiming: “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.…Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally.” And on July 3, 2008, he declared, “driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars to $9 trillion is irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” If it was irresponsible and unpatriotic at $9 trillion, what is it at $17 trillion?

Was he lying then or now?

(The President defends that vote here: There is no daylight between his vote against raising the debt ceiling as a senator in 2006 and his call for Congress to increase the limit in the next 10 days, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

“Nothing has changed,” Obama told WFLA in an interview. “I voted against a debt ceiling increase at the time because I had some concerns about what President (George W.) Bush was doing.”

The president said he has “no problem” if members of Congress choose to vote against raising the legal borrowing limit now, but took issue with House Speaker John Boehner’s choice not to bring a clean bill to the floor. And to be fair the President was signalling his dissatisfaction with the amount of spending done by the Bush administration and simply cast a protest vote, but he certainly would NOT have allowed the country to default no matter how indignant he was.)


Mr. President, boys and girls all across our great nation would no doubt share their lessons learned about the danger of debt. It’s our posterity you've made insecure when you doubled our national debt since taking office, which violates the preamble of our Constitution which speaks of securing “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” How can we secure our liberty when we’re hopelessly in debt to foreign nations? (Okay WHERE was this idiot when George Bush was borrowing money from China hand over fist?)You said today that the cool thing about being President is you can “pick up the phone and call anyone in the world and they’ll answer.” Call Track and Payton. I’m sure your NSA and IRS have their numbers.

-Sarah Palin

I love how she keeps bringing up the NSA spying program as if it was Obama's creation and not Dubya's.

Look running the Federal government, keeping the country safe, and paying its creditors is so far removed from running a sidewalk lemonade stand that to suggest otherwise should be an indication of mental illness.

Sarah Palin may be a discredited has been today but at one time she really WAS the chief executive of the largest state in the union. However perhaps because Alaska is awash in oil money, and currently has a 21 billion dollar surplus, she is simply not aware of what it takes to run a country not bought and paid for with money from giant energy companies.

However I think Palin actually knows this, I don't think she is this stupid, she just assumes the paint chip eaters who still listen to her ARE that stupid.

And considering what we have seen of them, she is very likely right.

Thankfully the majority of the American people are not.




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Courtesy of Occupy Democrats:

Sarah Palin thought she had struck gold when the opportunity presented itself to shamelessly hijack a Veterans protest at the World War II Memorial in Washington DC this week in order to further her own political aspirations.

Unfortunately for her, these veterans did not take kindly to having their protest co-opted by a failed presidential candidate and quitter who gave up her post as Governor of Alaska in order to take a multimillion dollar deal with FOXNews.

Just as she was in the middle of cynically rewriting history by claiming that it is the President Obama and Democratic Party, and not the intransigent Tea Party House Republicans, who are using our veterans and military as “pawns’ and are responsible for the reckless shutdown of The People’s Government which led to the closing up the World War II Veterans Memorial in D.C., one Veteran correctly shouted, “Republicans closed the government!”, followed by another Veteran appropriately scolding her, “You’re an idiot!”

Well gee, I wonder why THIS footage never made it onto Fox News?

Did you see Ted Cruz's face when they yelled out "You're an idiot?" It was probably right at that point that he realized he had just made a terrible mistake.

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Ted Cruz just tried to save face by claiming on camera that he had achieved a moral victory, but clearly since moments ago he announced he will do nothing to block the vote, he just got his ass handed to him.

Sen. Ted Cruz is surrounded by reporters as he heads to Senate GOP meeting on Capitol Hill... #shutdown #debtceiling pic.twitter.com/22inluVnHu
— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) October 16, 2013

I have to wonder if he is now the lame duck that Sarah Palin believed herself to be when she resigned, and if he will follow suit? Though of course I doubt it.

To be clear, after ALL of this bullshit, once this passes the Republicans will have received NOTHING for their obstructionism. The same CR that the Senate originally wanted the House to pass is the one that will soon pass the House. So EVERYTHING, including police working without pay, monuments being closed to the public, and our reputation being dragged through the mud in front of the entire world, will all be for NOTHING!


But don't think that the Teabaggers will ultimately learn their lesson. They won't.

This from Mediaite:

Heritage Action President Michael Needham told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer on Wednesday morning that any large scale repeal of Obamacare would have to wait until the GOP had recaptured the Senate and the White House three and a half years from now—despite the weeks House Republicans just spent adamantly opposing the law’s implementation.

“‘Even many on the left, including powerful unions, who were once the law’s stronger supporters, have conceded that it’s a train wreck,’” Hemmer quoted from Heritage Action’s letter to GOP lawmakers, which was considered instrumental in torpedoing the House’s tenuous agreement late Tuesday night. “I know you believe that, but with a Democrat in the White House and Harry Reid with the majority in the Senate, what can you do?”

“Everybody understands that we’re not going to be able to repeal this law until 2017,” Needham said. “We have to win the Senate and win the White House.”

So the plan is to retake the Senate, and win the White House, and THEN they will take away health care coverage for millions of Americans.

So after this debacle, how good are their chances of doing that?

Well I'll tell you what. I will do EVERYTHING in my power to make sure that their chances of accomplishing those two things is somewhere between nil and none. And somehow I don't think I am alone in that determination.

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Bryan Fischer

Courtesy of Fox News:

Several dozen U.S. Army active duty and reserve troops were told last week that the American Family Association, a well-respected Christian ministry, should be classified as a domestic hate group because the group advocates for traditional family values.

The briefing was held at Camp Shelby in Mississippi and listed the AFA alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam.

This what one soldier supposedly reported to Fox:

The soldier said a chaplain interrupted the briefing and challenged the instructor’s assertion that AFA is a hate group.

“The instructor said AFA could be considered a hate group because they don’t like gays,” the soldier told me. “The slide was talking about how AFA refers to gays as sinners and heathens and derogatory terms.”

The soldier, who is an evangelical Christian, said the chaplain defended the Christian ministry.

“He kept asking the instructor, ‘Are you sure about that, son? Are you sure about that?’” he said, recalling the back and forth.

Actually I think the instructor WAS sure that AFA is a hate group that targets homosexuals.

This from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

The AFA has declared that “homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler … the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews,” suggested that gay sex be punished like heroin use, and said that the “homosexual agenda” endangers “every fundamental right” in the Constitution, including religious freedom. Both groups have enthusiastically promoted “reparative therapy,” which claims against the bulk of the evidence that it can “cure” gay men and lesbians and make them heterosexual, but in fact has left a string of people behind who were badly hurt by the process.

Ans what's more their most infamous spokesperson is Bryan Fischer. Here is a video of his many diatribes against gays.

Here is what Media Matters has to say about Fischer:

Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association's unofficial spokesman and the group's director of issues analysis, has previously called on the government to prohibit mosques from being built anywhere in the United States, suggested "the most compassionate thing" America can do is deport all Muslims, and wrote that "gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism."

The American Family Association has also enthusiastically endorsed Russian President Vladimir Putin's draconian anti-gay laws, with Fischer stating that the country isn't being homophobic but "homorealistic."

So yes they ARE a hate group, but labeling them as such is no more an "attack on Christians and their beliefs" then arresting a man for rape is an "attack on men and their penises."

And good for the US Army for calling them out for their hate speech and attacks on American citizens and military personnel.

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Courtesy of Raw Story:

In a conversation with Nyad on the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Super Soul Sunday, Winfrey seemed baffled that the 64-year-old swimmer could be an atheist and “a person who is deeply in awe.”

“I can stand at the beach’s edge with the most devout Christian, Jew, Buddhist, go on down the line, and weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity — all the billions of people who have lived before us, who have loved and hurt,” Nyad, who recently completed a swim from Cuba to Florida explained. “So to me, my definition of God is humanity and is the love of humanity.”

“Well, I don’t call you an atheist then,” Winfrey replied. “I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery that that is what God is. That is what God is. It’s not a bearded guy in the sky.”

“It’s not bearded but I guess there is inference with God that there is presence, there is a — either a creator or an overseer,” Nyad pointed out. “I don’t criticize anybody. Because you know what? The definition of life is, we will never know.”

She added that she saw no contradiction in being an atheist and being a spiritual person.

“I think you can be an atheist who doesn’t believe in an overarching being who created all of this and sees over it,” Nyad said. “But there’s spirituality because we human beings, and we animals, and maybe even we plants, but certainly the ocean and the moon and the stars, we all live with something that is cherished and we feel the treasure of it.”

Winfrey agreed: “Well, I believe that and feel that so deeply. It’s why every time I enter my yard or leave, I say, ‘Hello trees!’”

This may seem a minor thing but it REALLY irritates me.

And the reason why is because it is an example of this constant subliminal prejudice that people of faith have for those of us who are unwilling to suspend out disbelief long enough to accept the existence of ANY deity.

Now I consider Oprah Winfrey to be a relatively reasonable and intelligent woman, however there is not doubt that she sees the world from a very narrow perspective, and is unable to recognize that somebody who does not believe in God can feel awe, or amazement, or joy.

The reason I named this blog "The Immoral Minority" is because THAT was the label given to me by the Religious Right, and then I set out to prove that not only was that assumption incorrect, but also that many of those Fundamentalists who lay claim to a superior morality are anything but moral.

I think I have had some great success in that endeavor.

However the other important thing I wish to convey is that those of us who are non-deists are just as moral, or immoral, as those who hide behind the veil of Christianity.

I want to establish that a religious label is no indicator of the type of person who wears it. And further I want to point out that those who constantly tout their religiosity should be the FIRST to fall under suspicion.

"For no man is less moral than he who wears it like a badge upon his chest and consistently draws it to the attention of all who cross his path."

Let me state for the record that I was overcome with awe the day my daughter first entered this world, that I have often been caught watching clouds lazy drift across a pale blue sky, and that there have been sunsets and sunrises that literally took my breath away.

I have lived, and loved, and sacrificed for others, just like all of those humans, both religious and nonreligious, who came before me. And I have done all of that as a proud, ethical, and deeply moral Atheist.

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Courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

A 22-year-old Nashville, Tenn. man accidentally shot his gun through the floor of his apartment about 11 p.m. on Sunday, hitting a downstairs neighbor who was sleeping in her bed, according to The Tennessean.

The woman was reportedly hit in the shoulder and was rushed to a hospital, where she was in stable condition on Monday morning.

The alleged shooter, David White, told police he was "playing around" with the firearm. He was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment, marijuana possession and possession of a controlled substance without a prescription.

Yep, nothing stops a bad woman sleeping in her own bed, like a good guy playing around with his gun.

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