Four more years (of [largely] the same old shit)!

Reuters photos

I expect little actual progress from the pseudo-progressive President Hopey-Changey over the next four years, but at least during that time I’ll be spared of having to see the Ann-Cunter-like, bleach-blonde harpy Ann Romney trying to fuck us all repeatedly with her strap-on. (Yes, that’s an actual news photo, and so is that one, too.)

Oh, yeah, there was an election on Tuesday.

As I have noted, I voted by mail for Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president — yes, practically speaking, as a protest vote – but I knew that President Barack Obama would win my state of California by an overwhelming margin, and he did: thus far in California’s vote counting, Obama has 59.3 percent to Mittens Romney’s paltry 38.4 percent. (Stein, in case you were wondering, is at No. 4, with a whopping 0.6 percent of the state’s vote.)

What I didn’t expect, however, was that as a result of Tuesday’s election — elections, as they say, have consequences – the California Legislature would be on the verge of having a two-thirds “super-majority” in both houses, the state Senate and the state Assembly.

Wow.

This “super-majority” — if utilized – makes the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in the Legislature even more irrelevant than they already were before Tuesday.

Not that the Democrats will use their power, of course. Although “super-majority” power, if used to its full extent, would make even the centristy Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown fairly irrelevant, since the Legislature could override his vetoes, there are plenty of center-right “Democratic” California legislators who could threaten any two-thirds threshold.

And, of course, already Jerry Brown has assured spooked California Repugnicans — whose registrants don’t comprise even a full 30 percent of registered Californian voters (the Dems, on the other hand, have almost 44 percent of the state’s registered voters) and whose party doesn’t hold a single statewide office – that his party won’t do too much to upset them, even though, of course, were the state’s parties’ positions of political power reversed, the Repugnicans would ram their right-wing agenda through ruthlessly.

When George W. Bush was “re”-elected in 2004 with a measly 50.7 percent of the popular vote, he called the election results a “mandate.” A “mandate.”

That’s how the Repugnican Tea Party traitors roll: They don’t care even if they don’t even win the popular vote (recall the 2000 presidential election) — they just want to be in power no matter fucking what. They want to shove their Randian, theofascist, neo-Nazi agenda down our throats whether we, the people, give them our permission, via our votes, to do so or not. (So of course if you’re perfectly willing to steal power even when you lost the election, 50.7 percent would be, I suppose, relatively speaking, a “mandate.”)

Votes remain to be counted, but right now Obama is sitting at 50.6 percent of the national popular vote to Mittens’ 47.9 percent. Obama on Tuesday sewed up 332 electoral votes to Mittens’ 206. Including the all-important Ohio and Florida, Obama on Tuesday won all of the states that he won in 2008 (when he garnered 52.9 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes), except for two of them, Indiana and North Carolina, which aren’t exactly solid-blue states anyway.

(Indeed, in eight of the last 10 presidential elections, including Tuesday’s, North Carolina went for the Repugnican, and in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, including Tuesday’s, Indiana went for the Repugnican, so Obama’s win in those two states in 2008 was the exception, not the rule, and his loss in those two backasswards states on Tuesday was the rule, not the exception, even though the pathetically straw-grasping Repugnican Tea Party traitors have tried to make some hay out of the fact that Obama didn’t win those two states again on Tuesday. [Indeed, the bar, when it is set by whites, is always set higher for blacks than it is for whites.])

Cheer up, though, white-supremacist wingtards! Mittens did better than John McCainosaurus and Sarah Palin did in 2008. They garnered only 45.7 of the popular vote and 173 electoral votes against the guy with the Kenyan ancestry.

Of course, while George W. Bush in 2004 declared 50.7 percent of the popular vote to be a “mandate” and the fascist traitors who comprise his party talked of a “permanent [Repugnican] majority,” only two years later, in 2006, the Repugnicans lost the U.S. House of Representatives and Democratic California U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to become speaker of the House in U.S. history, and then two years after that, in 2008, Barack Obama, the nation’s first non-white president, won a higher percentage of the popular vote than either George W. Bush or even Bill Clinton ever had.

So some caution needs to be exercised before declaring a “permanent [insert party name here] majority,” or even a “mandate” based on not even a full 51 percent of the popular vote, but at the same time, to the victor goes the spoils, and the so-called “leaders” of the Democratic Party need to stop acting like losers even after they’ve fucking won.

(Yes, on the heels of his second electoral victory, Obama still is talking about cooperation with the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in Congress, even though the past four years have demonstrated amply that you cannot negotiate with such terrorists, because the assumption that they are rational creatures capable of compromise is patently incorrect.) 

The Repugnican Tea Party traitor-fascists act like winners even after they’ve lost, and if the damage that they’ve wreaked upon the nation is to be reversed (if that’s even possible at this point [it very most likely isn't, perhaps especially in regards to global warming]), the Democrats really need to stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

I’m not holding my breath, however.

I expect the next four years to look and feel much like the past four, although I expect things here in California to improve more quickly than they improve – if they ever improve — nationally, since here in California we have demonstrated how to edge the Repugnican Tea Party traitors more and more closely to the endangered species status that they oppose so much.

As California goes, so goes the nation, it has been said.

I hope that that is correct.

P.S. Of course I’m happy that on Tuesday the voters of three states — Maine, Maryland and Washington — voted for same-sex marriage, being the first states to adopt same-sex marriage upon a popular vote, and pushing the number of states that have same-sex marriage from six (before Tuesday) to now nine. (The other six states are Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont. The District of Columbia also has same-sex marriage, as do two U.S. Native American tribes, apparently.)

The 2008 election results were a bittersweet pill here in California, because although Barack Obama had become the nation’s first black president based upon his ubiquitous campaign promises of hope and change (and to a large degree they were just that – promises — we know now), Proposition Hate had shot down same-sex marriage, which the California Supreme Court had ruled earlier in the year was every Californian’s constitutional right.

If same-sex marriage were put up to a vote again in California today, of course it would pass this time — even though, let me be clear, no one’s constitutional guarantee of equality ever should have to be put up to a fucking vote — and it’s gratifying to see that the Mittens Romney-Pretty Boy Paul Ryan ticket, representing the Mormon cult and the Catholick church respectively, were rejected by the majority of the nation’s voters, since the Mormon cult and the Catholick church were the biggest sponsors of Proposition Hate, in their attempt to shove their brand of theocracy and theofascism down our throats, Taliban-style.

Karma is a bitch.

(Just like Ann Romney is. I am sooooo happy not to have to see her fucking face as first lady for the next four years, by the way. Ann Romney reminds me of an Ann Cunter who actually ate something. Why are so many Repugican Tea Party women bleach-blonde harpies who act like sorority chicks who are getting revenge upon all of us for the ponies that they never got as spoiled little girls?)

P.P.S. For all of their post-election sore-loserism crying and whining, the white-supremacist Repugnican Tea Party traitors are fucking lucky that we are seeing a for-the-very-most-part bloodless, demographic revolution in the United States, and not (thus far, anyway…) the actual bloody revolution that the Repugnican Tea Party traitors deserve to have launched against them, a la the French Revolution.

After all, the “47 percent” that Mittens “Let Them Eat Cake” Romney talked about in May when he didn’t know that he was being video-recorded actually is a bit more than 50 percent, we see from Tuesday’s presidential election results.

Reading between the conventions’ lines

Reuters photo

Repugnican Tea Party Speaker of the House John Boehner shakes the hoof of right-wing New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan after Dolan gave the closing prayer at the Repugnican Tea Party Convention in Tampa, Florida, on August 30. Not to be outdone in wingnuttery, the Democratic Party had the right-wing Dolan also give the Democratic National Convention’s closing prayer, in which Dolan expressed his and the Catholick church’s opposition to abortion and to same-sex marriage. Yet the shameless Democratic Party hacks cry foul when those of us who are sane and who reject evil pieces of shit like Dolan claim, correctly, that the two right-wing, pro-corporate parties (which I can think of only as the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party) are becoming more indistinguishable from each other day by day.

About the last thing that you want to pay attention to at the Coke Party’s and Pepsi Party’s quadrennial conventions are the politicians’ speeches.

The vast majority of political speeches are just shameless propaganda, false proclamations of actually giving a shit about the average American, and are not an actual reflection of reality (what it has been, what it is now or what it will be).

No, you look for other clues at the partisan duopoly’s conventions to inform you as to what’s really going on.

The two things that you have needed to know about the Repugnican Tea Party convention are that a black camerawoman for CNN had food thrown at her by white delegates and was referred to as an “animal,” and that an addled, doddering, grumpy old man who wants to take us back to the 1950s (or before) in a way-back machine still is the face of the Repugnican Tea Party. (It was John McCainosaurus in 2008, and Clint Eastwood this time.)

Of course, if you watched any of the Repugnican Tea Party convention coverage (even just brief clips, as I did), you saw, as the camera panned across the convention attendees, that it was a sea of lily-white faces. Seriously, why don’t they go ahead and don their pointy white hoods already? We all know that they want to.

I’ve seen only snippets of Mittens Romney’s acceptance speech. He wore way too much makeup, which only made him look even faker than he already comes across, and his whisper-like, condescending, faux-compassionate voice makes me want to hurl.

This man is a multi-millionaire Mormon. He cares only about his fellow millionaires and his fellow Mormons. If you believe otherwise, then there is something seriously the fuck the matter with you and your grasp of reality.

I don’t need to listen to Mittens’ words. I have only to listen to the strong voice within every time I see even a brief clip of Mittens: This uber-phony man is evil. He has to be phony because if he showed us his true self, enough of us would be repulsed that he’d never win the election. It wouldn’t even be close enough for him to steal it, as appears to be his party’s game plan, a la 2000.

Not that the establishmentarian, Clintonesque Democrats are much better.

I haven’t bothered to watch even a brief clip of Barack Obama’s convention speech. Why? What would be the point? We know what we’re going to get with four more years of Obama: more broken promises, more of the same, more concessions to the corporations and to the right wing, more excuses as to why Obama absofuckinglutely refuses to head an opposition party, which is what the Democratic Party used to be until the slimy baby boomer Bill Clinton destroyed it, as the greedy, corrupt, talentless baby boomers have destroyed or are about to destroy all of our nation’s best institutions (including, of course, Social Security and Medicare. [They destroyed even capitalism, too, but of course, capitalism needed to be destroyed]).

We know that while of course Mittens would be worse than would be Obama (except for Mittens’ fellow Mormons and his fellow millionaires, of course), the prospect of another four more years of Obama is nothing to be excited about.

There were two stand-out events at the Democrats’ convention that, for me, tell me what I really need to know about the party. And again, you won’t find this shit in politicos’ propagandistic speeches.

First, there was Barack Obama once again capitulating to right-wing and “Christo”fascist criticism, demanding that the Democratic Party’s platform, which the delegates had already democratically approved, be changed to add the word “God” and to add that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

As I wrote, the selfish, anti-democratic actions of the convention’s chair, the slimy Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, were repugant. Clearly Villaraigosa didn’t have the two-thirds voice vote by the delegates that he needed for the alteration of the platform to pass, but he shoved the changes to the platform down the delegates’ throats nonethefuckingless.

The Los Angeles Times today published Villaraigosa’s “defense” of his repulsive actions. He said:

• “It was a lot of ado about nothing.”
• When he was told that others didn’t hear a two-thirds voice vote, he replied smart-assedly, “That’s nice to know. I was the chairman and I did, and that was the prerogative of the chair.”
• “It’s more a media concern than a delegate concern. I can tell you this — the president of the United States said, ‘Wow.’ The president said, ‘You showed why you were speaker of the California Assembly.’ The president, the vice president, Mrs. Obama, all of them acknowledged the decisive way I handled that.”
• “The president of the United States and the leader of my party asked me to do this, and so I’m proud I have a president who believes God and Jerusalem should be in the platform, and so do I.”

What a fucking weasel Antonio Villaraigosa is. To call a blatantly anti-democratic move “decisive” is sick. No, Villaraigosa, you are not “decisive.” You are a fucking self-serving coward.

And it was not “a lot of ado about nothing” and not only a “media concern.” (Blaming shit on the media is quite Palinesque of Villaraigosa, however.) It was the hijacking of the platform that already had been democratically approved, and that is a serious matter. I’m not even a registered Democrat — because of slimeballs like Villaraigosa I’m a registered Green Party member — and I wasn’t even there, but when I watched the clip of Villaraigosa’s actions, I was incensed — as were many delegates who were there, for whom the lying Villaraigosa pretends he can speak. (It wasn’t a “delegate concern” — because he says so!)

“I was the chairman and I did [hear a two-thirds vote], and that was the prerogative of the chair,” Villaraigosa huffed. Bullshit. He did not hear it, which is why he had to hold the voice vote three fucking times (watch the clip yourself), and so when he claims that he did hear it, he fucking lies, but then immediately after his lie, he inadvertently tells us the truth: “that was the prerogative of the chair.”

I’ll translate that from the weaselspeak that Villaraigosa speaks into English: “I was able to abuse my position of power and trust, and so I did so. Fuck you for even questioning my authority.”

And then, Villaraigosa does even more quite inadvertent truth-telling: “The president, the vice president, Mrs. Obama, all of them acknowledged the decisive way I handled that,” and “The president of the United States and the leader of my party asked me to do this, and so I’m proud I have a president who believes God and Jerusalem should be in the platform, and so do I.”

Well, yes, indeed, Barack Obama (and, if Villaraigosa is telling the truth — it’s hard to know, because he’s such a fucking liar — Joe Biden and even Michelle Obama) wanted Villaraigosa to ram the last-minute, “Christo”fascist- and wingnut-placating changes to the party’s platform down the delegates’ throats, and so Villaraigosa the shameless fucking sellout dutifully did so.

But that is a “defense” — that he pleased his puppeteers? That makes what he did OK?

And what does it fucking matter what Barack Obama and Antonio Villaraigosa believe? The party platform already had been democratically approved by the convention delegates. Why bother to have the delegates at all if they can be overriden by power-drunk autocrats like this?

I’ll never give the slimeball Antonio Villaraigosa my vote even for dog catcher. He has demonstrated his character amply.

As has Barack Obama, of course.

Not content that he had alienated enough of his base by anti-democratically using his tool, the fool Villaraigosa, to change the party’s platform against the wishes of the delegates (who clearly are just window dressing, if that), Barack Obama decided that it would be a swell fucking idea to have the right-wing, anti-choice, anti-same-sex-marriage Catholick Cardinal Timothy Dolan give the closing benediction at the Democratic National Convention.

The “Christo”fascist Dolan said these two things in his “benediction” to the Dems:

• “Thus do we praise you [he's talking to "God" here, you see] for the gift of life. Grant us the courage to defend it, life, without which no other rights are secure. We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected.”
• “Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community.”

If you claim that these are not thinly veiled references to the Dark-Ages Catholick church’s “Christo”fascist stances on abortion and same-sex marriage, then you are a fucking liar or you are a fucking moron. (Or both.)

Dolan also talked about “freedom” and “liberty” in his “benediction” (“bene” is from the Latin word for “good,” but Dolan is evil, so to call it a “benediction” is a contradiction), but in Dolan’s and the Catholick church’s worldview, women may not have the freedom and liberty to make their own fucking reproductive choices, and same-sex couples shall not have the freedom and liberty of marriage equality, but are to be continued to be treated as less than equal human beings, as they have for centuries.

“Freedom” and “liberty” are reserved only for those who agree with Dolan and the right-wing, dying dinosaur that is the Catholick church under the command of Pope Palpatine, you see.

Know that this is how much brazen contempt Barack Obama and the ossified Democratic Party (the best of which it can do is wheel out the right-wing fossil that is Bill Fucking Clinton every once in a while) have for you: to invite a known — a well-fucking-known — right-wing, misogynist, homophobic, patriarchal piece of shit like Timothy Dolan to give the closing “benediction” of the Democratic National Convention.

Barack Obama isn’t concerned in the fucking least about delivering for his base.

He never fucking has been and he never fucking will be.

Barack Obama is way too busy catering to the right wing, you see, pushing the Democratic Party further and further to the right, making it more and more indistinguishable from the Repugnican Tea Party, and his stance toward you is the same arrogant, power-drunk stance that Antonio Villaraigosa has toward you:

Fuck you.

It’s his prerogative.

What are you going to do about it anyway?

Democratic pussies cave to Repugs even during their convention

Updated below

I hope that I live to see the nation’s first openly atheist president. I suspect that Barack Obama actually is an agnostic, maybe even an atheist, but he’d never publicly admit it because, like most politicians do, he panders to the fucktards who still believe in mythology.

Leave it to the spineless fucking Democrats to capitulate to the Repugnican Tea Party “Christo”fascists yet once again – even during the Dems’ quadrennial convention.

Earlier today I read with glee that the word “God” didn’t make it into this year’s Democratic Party platform, which is great news, since “God” doesn’t belong in the party’s platform any more than does Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy or the Great Pumpkin.

Of course, we’re talking about the Democrats, so it couldn’t last. Reports The Associated Press today:

Charlotte, N.C. — Embarrassed by Republicans, Democrats amended their convention platform [today] to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Many in the audience booed after the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ruled that the amendments had been approved despite the fact that a large group of delegates had objected. He called for a vote three times before ruling.

The party reinstated language from the 2008 platform that said “we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”

It also reinstated its 2008 language that Jerusalem “is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

Democrats had approved a platform [yesterday] that made no mention of God or Jerusalem. Instead, it expressed “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Republicans pounced quickly on both omissions.

GOP officials argued that not taking a position on Jerusalem’s status in the party platform showed the president was weak in his support of Israel. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said omitting God “suggests a party that is increasingly out of touch with the mainstream of the American people.”

“I think this party is veering further and further away into an extreme wing that Americans don’t recognize,” Romney said.

The Democratic Party’s decision to restore the mention of Jerusalem reflected what advisers said was the president’s personal view, if not the policy of his administration. The administration has long said determining Jerusalem’s status was an issue that should be decided by Israelis and Palestinians in peace talks, but has been careful not to state that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.

Romney’s campaign quickly sought to capitalize on the slight, but important difference.

“Mitt Romney has consistently stated his belief that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” said Andrea Saul, Romney’s spokeswoman. …

The White House wouldn’t say whether the change in the Democratic platform language reflected a change in administration policy.

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the reinstated party language reflected “the policy of both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.” … [Yes, because "That's the way we've always done it!" is such a convincing "argument"! And surely, anything that the Repugnican Tea Party has always done must be
right!]

But the decision to amend the platform did not rest well with some delegates.

Noor Ul-Hasan, a Muslim delegate from Salt Lake City, Utah, said she felt it went against the principle of the separation of church and state.

“There are people who don’t believe in God and you have to respect that as well,” Ul-Hasan said. She also questioned whether the convention had enough of a quorum to even amend the platform. “There was no discussion. We didn’t even see it coming. We were blindsided by it.”

Angela Urrea, a delegate from Roy, Utah, said she felt it was sprung on the convention without any discussion.

“The majority spoke last night,” Urrae said, noting [that] the platform was approved [yesterday]. “We shouldn’t be declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

Republicans declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel in the platform the party approved last week at its convention in Tampa, Fla. …

When was the last fucking time that the Repugnican Tea Party traitors changed their party platform in the middle of their fucking convention because of criticism from the Democrats?

Jesus fuck, you would think that the one God-damned time the Dems could show some fucking backbone would be during their fucking convention.

And what, exactly, does this last-minute capitulation to the “Christo”fascists get the Dems, politically speaking?

Committed “Christo”fascists already support the Repugnican Tea Party, which consists of millionaires and billionaires, but there aren’t enough plutocrats among us to win elections, so the millionaires and billionaires also pretend to love the white supremacists and the Jesus freaks and other assorted white trash, and that is the bulk of the Repugnican Tea Party: the plutocrats, the remnants of the KKK and the “Christo”fascists (with a lot of overlap among those categories).

Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel, but that’s one of at least a few things that the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party have in common: They both want Jewish dollars, so they can’t pander to the Israel-firsters enough. It’s treasonous to put the interests of a foreign nation above the interests of one’s own nation, but with the shameless money whores who comprise the “leadership” of both of the major parties, expect both parties to continue to lick Israel’s ass like no other nation’s ass.

And if God exists, then maybe God should be a suprise guest at the Democratic National Convention!

Yes, indeed: Barack Obama should scrap his acceptance speech and instead bring an empty chair on stage with him and have a conversation with God, a la Clint Eastwood. God could even endorse Barack Obama on live television!

What, that’s bullshit? It’s no more bullshit than is the utterly unprovable assertion that there even is a fucking God, who is like a reward- and punishment-doling Santa Claus on crack. (He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake!)

If the Repugnican Tea Party traitors want to continue to pander to the dipshits who still believe in a God, fine, but it would be fucking nice if the Democratic Party “leadership” would respect the long-standing concept of separation of church and state.

The job of a political party is to govern, and our government is to remain neutral in affairs of religion. That is the only fair way to govern. Otherwise, you have a theocracy, and I, for one, just say hell fucking no to an American Taliban.

I don’t give a rat’s ass what the religion is, whether it’s Judaism, whether it’s what we actually call here in the United States “Christianity,” whether it’s Islam, whatever — I don’t want retards who believe in non-existent deities to shove their delusions down my fucking throat through the vehicle of government that my tax dollars make possible.

Atheism, agnosticism and other belief systems (such as the Eastern belief systems) are growing in the United States of America.

The Repugnican Tea Party and the “Christo”fascism that the Repugnican Tea Party espouses are going the way of the dinosaurs.

It would be fucking fantastic if the cowardly fucktards who “lead” the Democratic Party wouldn’t follow the Repugnican Tea Party traitors into the fucking tar pits.

P.S. Now comes the news that the Big Man Himself — no, not God, but Barack Obama — had the party’s platform changed. Reports The Associated Press:

Charlotte, N.C. — President Barack Obama personally intervened to order Democrats to change language in their party platform to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, campaign officials said [today].

Scrambling to end the furor, Democrats abruptly changed the platform early [this] evening to reinstate language from the 2008 platform that said “we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.” …

Democrats also restored 2008 language on Jerusalem, declaring the city “is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

Campaign officials said Obama’s reaction on the omission of God from the platform was to wonder why it was removed in the first place.

The officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about private discussions.

The platform changes did not sit well with some Democratic delegates gathered in Charlotte, N.C., for the party’s three-day convention. Many in the audience booed after the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ruled that the amendments had been approved despite the fact that a large group of delegates had objected. He called for a vote three times before ruling.

The revisions came as Obama struggles to win support from white working-class voters, many of whom have strong religious beliefs, and as Republicans try to woo Jewish voters and contributors away from the Democratic Party. Republicans claimed the platform omissions suggested Obama was weak in his defense of Israel and out of touch with mainstream Americans.

Democrats had approved a platform [yesterday] that made no mention of God or Jerusalem. Instead, it expressed “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.” Republicans quickly pounced. …

Who fucking cares what the Repugnican Tea Party traitors think?

The Democratic Party’s platform had been approved democratically. It should have stood, regardless of what Barack Obama believes. Why should the members of the party vote on anyfuckingthing at all if they then can be overriden by one individual?

And no one caves in better to the thugs on the right than does Barack Obama, who makes them look like they are right by caving in to them almost every single fucking time.

Barack Obama has turned caving in to the radical right wing into a fucking Olympic sport.

Update: I just watched the video of the actual vote on the changes to the Dem Party platform. What a fucking weasel Antonio Villaraigosa, chair of the convention, is.

The change to the party’s platform required a two-thirds vote by the delegates, which Villaraigosa did on a voice vote. Villaraigosa had the delegates voice-vote three fucking times, apparently believing that the third time would be a charm, that the delegates would fall in line like good little lemmings.

Yet by even the third voice vote, it doesn’t sound at all like Villaraigosa reached the two-thirds threshold.

Nonetheless, the weasel-bastard, undaunted by the fact that sometimes democracy doesn’t go your way, declared that the changes to the platform had passed by two-thirds of the delegates.

This blatantly dishonest, anti-democratic, hierarchy-ass-licking bullshit is what you would expect from the Repugnican Tea Party Nazis, not from the Democratic Party — and this is yet another reason why I call the two parties of the partisan duopoly the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party: because there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two.

I place most of the blame on the Democratic Party’s worthless “leaders,” like Barack Obama and Antonio Villaraigosa, who apparently has gotten ahead in the Dem Party only by going along with the fucktards who outrank him, by putting blind personal political ambition — and thus blind obedience — far above decency and integrity.

Kudos to the delegates who at least tried to stop the anti-democratic coup that their party’s selfish, shameless “leaders” perpetrated upon them today.

YES, Mittens’ Mormonism MATTERS (and other heretical thoughts on this Easter Sunday)

Ah, Easter Sunday.

No better day (except Christmas, perhaps) to discuss religion.

The Los Angeles Times’ website had two interesting headlines this past week. The first, posted Thursday, was “Sen. Hatch Predicts Obama Campaign to ‘Throw Mormon Church’ at Romney.” It begins:

In a prediction of underhanded campaign tactics to come, [Mormon U.S.] Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told GOP delegates Tuesday that he foresees that President [Barack] Obama’s campaign will try to use Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith against him.

“You watch, they’re going to throw the Mormon church at him like you can’t believe it,” Hatch said.

He later reiterated his point on Wednesday in Draper, Utah.

“For them to say they aren’t going to smear Mitt Romney is bologna. It’s way out of bounds, but that’s what is going to happen.”

Hatch, also a Mormon, and seeking re-election in a state with more than 60 percent of the population following the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [the Mormon cult], specifically pointed his finger toward Obama’s campaign adviser David Axelrod and White House aide David Plouffe.

“Let me tell you something. The Obama people have some of the best political consultants in the country and they don’t get there because they’re always wonderful people. They’re very tough,” Hatch said. “I’ve met with Axelrod, he’s the best there is in the business. Plouffe, you’ve got to say he’s one of the best. And there is nothing they won’t do.” …

Yesterday, the L.A. Times ran another story, authored by someone else, with the headline “Obama Praised – and Pummeled – on Matters of Faith.”

Indeed, as the story points out:

… Few presidents have spoken about their religious faith as often, as deeply or as eloquently as Obama. “We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” he declared at the 2004 Democratic convention, and he has sought since then to rebuild ties between the Democratic Party and the world of faith.

Yet no president has faced such sustained hostility over issues of faith, including Republican charges that he is waging a “war on religion,” widespread suspicion about the sincerity of his Christian faith, and the persistent legend that he is a practicing Muslim. … [Emphasis mine.]

Indeed, Barack Obama’s having tossed some bones to the believers in God as A Super-Duper Wish-Granting and Punishment-Doling Big Santa Claus in the Sky on Crack – He’s making a list and checking it twice; he’s going to find out who’s naughty and nice! He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake! – always has unsettled me, someone whose views on religion decidedly do not follow those of the pack of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

However, I’ve lived with Obama’s occasional God crap because (1) I’ve pretty much had no choice, and (2) I’ve never had the sense that he would govern the nation theocratically — and certainly not as a Muslim!

The problem that the “Christo”fascists have with Obama is not that he has waged an actual “war on religion.” He has not. He has not ordered that any churches or any church publications be burned or banned, that any religious leaders be burned at the stake or crucified or even just exiled.

Shit, the Obama administration allows “Christo”fascist organizations to, as I understand it, blatantly violate their tax-exempt status by openly participating in politics and in political campaigns, such as in the “Christo”fascists’ jihad against women, non-heterosexuals, non-whites, non-“Christo”fascists, et. al.

(Disclosure: I never will forgive the Mormon and Catholic cults for their hateful, mean-spirited, anti-Christian support of the incredibly hateful, mean-spirited, anti-Christian Proposition 8, which wrote the hatred of and the discrimination against an historically oppressed minority group into the state’s constitution here in California.)

It has been business as usual for the “Christo”fascist churches under President Obama*, and any drop-off in church membership can be attributed to the fact that the backasswards, anti-science and anti-reality “Christo”fascism, which picks certain groups out for continued persecution and subjugation, in direct violation of the actual teachings of Jesus Christ — I need only point to the “Christo”fascists’ ongoing war on women, in which both Catholic Prick Santorum and Mormon Mittens Romney are active, bomb-lobbing enemy combatants – doesn’t fucking work in 2012, if it ever worked at all (it did not).

But the right-wing fascists love to blame everything, even their own miserable failings — perhaps especially their own miserable failings — on the nation’s first black president.

The problem that the “Christo”fascists have with Obama is not that he is waging some “war on religion,” but that he is not giving favored status to the stupid white men – like the cabals of stupid, old, evil white men who lead the Mormon cult and the Catholic cult, who would love to get their hands on the White House via Mormon Mittens Romney or Catholic Prick Santorum — stupid, evil white men who use the names of God and Jesus to try to advance their own personal lust for power and money.

Historically there have been two broad visions of Christianity.** The historically dominant one is the one supported by the likes of Prick Santorum and Mittens Romney, the one in which certain power-grubbing men have all of the power and the only way to God and Jesus and “salvation” is through these men — which is awfully convenient for these men, but not so great for the rest of us. They have the monopoly on God and Jesus and “salvation,” you see, and they will defend this monopoly because no one with a ridiculous amount of power and money will part with it without a fight.

The other vision of Christianity is a minority vision. It views spirituality as a personal matter that the individual must cultivate within herself or himself. Indeed, under this vision some gargantuan “Christian” institution cannot somehow magically “save” the individual merely by the individual’s identification with or membership of the institution. The individual has to do the work of “salvation.” No one else can do it for her or him.

Indeed, Jesus himself is recorded to have said, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:5 and 6:6)

I see no other way to interpret that than that Jesus was saying that prayer is an intensely personal, not a public, matter, yet the “Christo”fascists are all about prayer in public, even in our public schools, although Jesus himself clearly called such practitioners and advocates “hypocrites.”

Jesus also had choice words about rich people, such as “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)

Hmmm. Is multi-millionaire Mittens Romney going to heaven?

If his millions have bought him a method of shrinking himself so that he can squeeze through the eye of a needle, then sure.

But seriously, here is “Christo”fascist Mormon tool Orrin Hatch insinuating that all discussion of Mittens Romney’s Mormonism should be off limits, yet it’s been wide open fucking season on Barack Obama’s religious beliefs since before he took office. How conveniently convenient it is for the Mormon cult that we should be able to discuss Barack Obama’s religious beliefs (or supposed lack thereof) ad nauseam, but that to discuss Mittens’ religious beliefs is, according to Mormon cult spokesnake Sen. Orrin Hatch, “way out of bounds.”

This is the rank hypocrisy that Hatch and his “Christo”fascist ilk have been so steeped in for so long now that they apparently can’t even see it; they take it for granted like a fish takes water for granted.

Whatever Barack Obama does or does not actually believe about God and/or Jesus, I don’t much care, as long as he doesn’t try to govern the nation theocratically. In a nation of diverse believers and non-believers, to govern theocratically is to govern only for some and not for all. The only way to govern for all is to govern secularly.

I, for one American, don’t want theocracy. I want secular democracy. I have good reason to believe that Mittens Romney would take marching orders from the cabal of stupid, old, evil white men in Salt Lake City. Every Mormon is expected to obey and to answer to the cabal in Salt Lake City, which is to have the supreme authority in Mormons’ lives. Mormons ultimately don’t answer to their country. They answer to the cabal in Salt Lake City. I lived among Mormons in Arizona. I know.

Nor do I want Pope Palapatine’s puppet, Prick Santorum, in the Oval Office. I don’t have to worry about him being elected president, since he has a snowball’s chance in hell of that ever happening, but I’m not OK with him being vice president any more than I was OK with Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the highest political office in the land.

On this Easter Sunday, I want to tell the “Christo”fascists of the world: Fuck you. For centuries you have been calling the shots and persecuting your detractors in the names of God and Jesus Christ, using rank hypocrisy as your main weapon of choice. Your anti-Christian reign is ending. You know it, which is why you are in your death throes — and better, the rest of us who for centuries have been your victims know it.

–

*Indeed, as the L.A. Times notes:

Obama gets generally high marks from faith organizations for maintaining, and in some ways strengthening, the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships begun by [former "President"] George W. Bush. Obama faced pressure from secular liberals to scuttle the office, which was seen as blurring the line between church and state. Instead, he used it to reach out to faith groups across a broad spectrum of theology and politics.

“The president was very bold in deciding not just to drop something that a lot of people who supported him thought was not a great idea,” said Stanley Carlson-Thies, who served under Bush in what was then called the Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives.

Under Joshua Dubois, a Pentecostal minister Obama appointed to head the office, it has expanded its focus from primarily funneling government contracts to faith-based groups to also engaging religious organizations as volunteers. It has, for instance, trained churches and other religious organizations in disaster preparedness and response. It also enlisted more than 1,000 churches in a Job Clubs program to help the unemployed.

A rather different message has emerged from the Republican presidential contest. “This president is attacking religion, and is putting in place a secular agenda that our forefounders would not recognize,” his likely Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, has said. …

**For more on this, see the writings of Elaine Pagels, perhaps especially her seminal The Gnostic Gospels.

She begins her conclusion of that work with this paragraph:

It is the winners who write history — their way. No wonder, then, that the viewpoint of the successful majority has dominated all traditional accounts of the origin of Christianity. Ecclesiastical Christians first defined the terms (naming themselves “orthodox” and their opponents “heretics”); then they proceed to demonstrate — at least to their own satisfaction — that their triumph was historically inevitable, or, in religious terms, “guided by the Holy Spirit.”

In her work, Pagels chronicles how Christianity, quite early on, was hijacked by power-hungry, ruthless men who wished to mangle the message of Jesus Christ into something that no longer freed people, all people, as it was intended to do, but into something that instead enslaved people and that served these power-mad men and their own selfish, ultimately petty interests.

This bastardization of the teachings of Jesus Christ began as early as with Bishop Irenaeus, who within the two centuries after the death of the historical Jesus determined which early Christian gospels (there were many of them, not just four of them) would become official and “true” and which would be deemed apocryphal and “heretical.” Irenaeus advocated for a rigid, all-male hierarchy that decided all matters, against the early gnostic Christians’ belief that spirituality is an individual practice, not an institutional or hierarchal practice, and that this is what Jesus Christ taught.

Once the early patriarchal/hierarchal “Christian” church gained the military strength of the Roman empire under Roman Emperor Constantine about a century after Irenaeus, this bastardized vision of Christianity as a rigid patriarchy that could persecute — even slaughter – others in the names of God and Jesus became the dominant form of “Christianity” that we know today.

The early gnostic Christians — the true Christians, in my book — who by definition opposed hierarchy and militarism, were no match against the unholy alliance between the early patriarchal/hierarchal “Christians” and the militaristic Roman empire. They were, in essence, crucified, and their teachings, including the gnostic gospels, deemed “heretical” by the early patriarchal/hierarchal “Christian” church, were lost. (Many of the gnostic gospels later were discovered, however, especially the find in Egypt in 1945, as Pagels chronicles in her books on the topic.)

Bringing this true Christianity back would be, symbolically, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that, in my book, is the real message of Easter today.

‘Christo’fascist Prick Santorum is being crucified in the nationwide polls

Reuters photo

Butt Juice Boy apparently could be reacting to his latest national poll numbers, but this photo was taken on February 14, when he still had a significant lead over perma-presidential candidate Mittens. That lead since has evaporated, thank (the non-existent, Zeus-like, Judeo-Christian) God.

Stick a fork in him; Repugnican Tea Party presidential wannabe Prick Santorum is just about ready to be added to the heap of not-Mittens who peaked and then fizzled.

At the height of his ascent earlier this month, Gallup’s daily tracking poll showed Santorum a full 10 percentage points (36 percent to 26 percent) ahead of Mittens Romney, who has been running for president for the past century or so.

The most recent Gallup daily tracking polls (those taken within the past week), however, show Santorum and Romney in a dead heat, with each of them garnering 29, 30 or 31 percent. If the trend continues — and I expect it to — then Santorum will go the way of Herman Cain, Prick Perry, Michele “Eyes Like Deer’s in Headlights” Bachmann and Newt Gingrich.

While the Repugnican Tea Party traitors clearly still aren’t enthused about Mittens, they also seem to be concerned that there’s no way in hell that Prick Santorum can win the White House.

Their concern is justified, as Santorum’s hard-right “Christo”fascist proclamations continue.

Santorum of course insists that President Barack Obama should not have apologized to the people of Afghanistan after it was made public that multiple copies of the Koran were burned there by the U.S. military, reportedly by mistake.

Reports The Associated Press today:

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum criticized President Barack Obama’s apology for the burning of Korans in Afghanistan, adding that Afghanistan should apologize to the U.S. for the deaths of four U.S. soldiers during six days of violence sparked by the incident.

“There was nothing deliberately done wrong here,” Santorum said [today] on ABC television’s “This Week.” “This was something that happened as a mistake. Killing Americans in uniform is not a mistake. It was something that [was] deliberate.”

More than 30 people have been killed in clashes since it emerged Tuesday that copies of the Muslim holy book and other religious materials had been thrown into a fire pit used to burn garbage at Bagram Air Field, a large U.S. base north of Kabul. Protesters angry over Koran burnings by American troops lobbed grenades [today] at a U.S. base in northern Afghanistan and clashed with police and troops in a day of violence that left seven international troops wounded and two Afghans dead.

“The response needs to be apologized for by (President Hamid) Karzai and the Afghan people for attacking and killing our men and women in uniform and overreacting to this inadvertent mistake,” Santorum said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That is the real crime here, not what our soldiers did.”

The president’s apology suggests that there is blame and that the U.S. did something wrong “in the sense of doing a deliberate act,” Santorum said.

Santorum says that rather than saying he was sorry, Obama should have only acknowledged that burning copies of Islam’s holiest book in a trash pit was wrong and taken responsibility for the incident, “but to apologize, I think, lends credibility that somehow or another that it was more than that.” …

Big tough guy, Butt Juice Boy is! Being an American means never having to say that you are sorry! Fuck yeah!

The fact is that the United States’ war machine has occupied the sovereign nation of Afghanistan for more than a decade now. The people of Afghanistan just want the United States’ stormtroopers out of their fucking country already — as would we Americans if our nation had been occupied by a foreign power for more than a decade.

We don’t need to remain in Afghanistan; it’s that the treasonous, thieving weasels who comprise the military industrial-complex must fabricate national security threats in order to justify its existence, which sucks trillions of dollars — our tax dollars – from the U.S. Treasury. No supposed national security threats = no continued kaaa-ching kaaaaa-chiiing for them.

After more than a decade of having occupied Afghanistan, the members of the U.S. military should know by now to be very careful about how they handle copies of the Koran. That Korans were burned even reportedly inadvertently at this point in the occupation shows, at the minimum, the gross insensitivity of the occupiers toward the occupied.

The burning of the copies of the Koran isn’t, of course, solely or even primarily what the people of Afghanistan are protesting right now. It’s their decade-plus occupation that they are protesting, and in their nation’s occupation far more Afghanis have died than have Americans, who shouldn’t still be in Afghanistan in the first fucking place.

And while Santorum hypocritically proclaims that “Killing Americans in uniform is not a mistake. It was something that [was] deliberate,” the killing of Afghanis by members of the U.S. military for the past several years now in most instances certainly hasn’t been a mistake, but has been deliberate, and while Santorum calls on Afghanistan to apologize to the United States for the recent American deaths there, the United States almost never apologizes for those whom it slaughters, justifying even the slaughter of innocents as just an unfortunate part of the “war on terror” and the “spread of democracy.”

Perhaps Prick Santorum is right, though. The United States shouldn’t apologize to the people of Afghanistan – it should just withdraw from their nation. Now. Just as President Hopey-Changey had promised during his 2008 presidential campaign that we would. (The recent slaughter in Afghanistan, to me, only underscores the fact that our continued occupation of the nation is just another of Obama’s broken campaign promises.)

Prick Santorum is full of shit, of course, that Obama’s apology for the Koran burnings “lends credibility” to the idea that the Korans were burned intentionally. When one nation offends another, an apology often if not usually is in order. (It is, after all, what Jesus would do.)

The only problem with Obama’s apology is that it means nothing, that it rings pretty fucking hollow, in light of the fact that the United States still occupies the sovereign nation of Afghanistan.

Apologizing almost always is the right thing to do, but don’t expect bad-ass Prick Santorum to apologize to the Netherlands for his recently having pulled it completely out of his santorum-filled rectum that the Netherlands, as a cost-cutting measure, routinely involuntarily euthanizes old people who don’t wear bracelets that read, “Do not euthanize me.” Indeed, he falsely claimed to his audience of fearful wingnuts that half of the Netherlands’ instances of euthanasia are involuntary — that is, murder — and that therefore the elderly in the Netherlands avoid hospitals, lest they be snuffed out at the bean-counters’ command.

Yes, let’s put the boy genius Prick Santorum in charge of U.S. foreign policy. Let’s!

Not content with alienating every other nation on the planet, Prick Santorum also very apparently wants to subject all Americans to his brand of hard-right-wing Catholicism, despite the fact that no more than a quarter of Americans identify themselves as Catholic.

Reports The Associated Press today:

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said [today] that he doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state, adding that he was sickened by John F. Kennedy’s assurances to Baptist ministers 52 years ago that he would not impose his Catholic faith on them.

“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” Santorum, a devout Catholic, said in an interview from Michigan on ABC’s “This Week.”

“The First Amendment means the free exercise of religion and that means bringing people and their faith into the public square.”

Santorum’s latest foray into the hot-button, faith-based issues that so fire up the party’s evangelical base comes as his chief rival for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney, begins to pull ahead slightly in the state of Michigan, where [Romney] was born and raised.

Both Michigan and Arizona hold their primaries Tuesday. …

Beyond Michigan, however, Santorum’s startling stances on social issues like birth control and religion are getting the most attention countrywide.

He’s been unapologetic about some of his more controversial remarks, even reiterating [today] his past remarks that Kennedy’s 1960 speech in Houston made “me want to throw up.”

“To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? What makes me throw up is someone who is now trying to tell people that you will do what the government says,” Santorum said. “That now we’re going to turn around and impose our values from the government on people of faith.”

America is all about embracing diversity, he added. [Unless, of course, you are a non-Catholick, a self-respecting woman or a non-heterosexual, among others.]

“What we saw in Kennedy’s speech was just the opposite, and that’s what’s so upsetting about it,” he said.

No, the problem that Prick Santorum – who, just like Dan Quayle, is no John F. Kennedy — has with JFK is that JFK did not promise to move the Oval Office to the Vatican – like a “good” Catholick “should,” and like Prick Santorum would do should he get his “Christo”fascist claws on the presidency.

But it’s true that separation of church and state in the United States never has been absolute. I actually agree with Prick on that point, but again, for very different reasons. I mean, despite the concept of the separation of church and state, we still have “In God We Trust” on our currency and our pledge of allegiance still contains the phrase “one nation under God.”

We Americans who aren’t fans of Prick Santorum and his ilk have yet to have a U.S. president who didn’t at least on occasion evoke the name of the Judeo-Christian, non-existent, Zeus-like deity, and we have to endure the “Christo”fascists’ insane theocratic rhetoric at the national level at least every four years.

The “Christo”fascists like Santorum claim that they’re not allowed to practice their backasswards religions when, in fact, the reality is that their theocratic bullshit is shoved down the throats of us who don’t want it far more often than it ever is the other way around.

While it is clear what kind of president Santorum would be — Pope Palpatine’s puppet (he virtually admits this himself) – it is not entirely clear to me what kind of president Mittens would be in terms of attempting to shove his own religious beliefs down the nation’s throat.

Knowing what I know of Mormons (I lived among them in Arizona), I can’t see Mittens not being beholden to the cabal of stupid evil old white men in Salt Lake City. A tenth of Mitt’s millions, after all, goes to Salt Lake City, as the cult requires. Mormons’ No. 1 allegiance is to be to the cult – not to the country. However, having been the governor of a blue state, it very well could be the case that Mittens just has the sense to keep his mouth shut about his plans to essentially move the nation’s capital to Salt Lake.

I won’t take the risk of assuming that Mittens would be less “Christo”fascist and theocratic than would be Prick. Both of them are unacceptable as president, and I’m not alone in believing that: Barack Obama beats both of the “Christo”fascists by a comfortable margin in most recent nationwide polls.

Thank God.

Desperate Mittens finally jumps on ‘war on religion’ bandwagon

Associated Press photo

Mitt Romney obviously is running scared, with Prick Santorum running ahead of him as much as 10 percentage points in recent nationwide Repugnican Tea Party presidential preference polls.

Mittens hasn’t spoken much about religion thus far, I surmise, because he doesn’t want to draw attention to his Mormonism* and because he knows that many if not most of the so-called “swing voters,” who decide presidential elections these days, are turned off by hard-right “Christo”fascist rantings and ravings.

Romney for the most part has avoided going there, but with Santorum having gone there and surging as a consequence, what’s a poor multi-millionaire Mitt to do?

This:

Today Mittens proclaimed on the campaign trail in Michigan: “Unfortunately, possibly because of the people the president hangs around with, and their agenda, their secular agenda — they have fought against religion.”

Um, so President Obama is palling around with the wrong crowd? He can’t think for himself?

Here is the breakdown of religious belief in the United States of America (according to Wikipedia):

Protestant: 51 percent of Americans

Catholic: 25 percent of Americans

No religious affiliation: 15 percent

Non-Christian religions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.): around 4 percent to 6 percent

My Internet research shows that there are about 6 million Mormons in the United States of America, which has a total population of about 313 million, which calculates to only about 1.9 percent of Americans being Mormon.

(The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says that 51 percent of Americans are Protestant, 24 percent are Catholic, 16 percent are unaffiliated with any major religious group [4 percent identifying as atheist or agnostic], and 5 percent are Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu. And the Pew Forum puts the number of Americans who are Mormon at only 1.7 percent.)

So we have Catholick Prick Santorum, whose religious beliefs are shared by no more than a quarter of the nation’s population, and Mitt Romney, whose religious beliefs are shared by no more than 2 percent of the nation’s population, wanting to shove their particular brands of religious belief down all of our throats.

Is that fair? Is that right? Is that moral? Is that democratic? Is that American? Is that even Christian? (Whom would Jesus religiously oppress?)

Fact is, in such a religiously pluralistic* nation as ours, the only fair and just and sane way to handle such religious diversity — which includes, of course, atheists and agnostics – indeed is to govern secularly.

To do otherwise is not to be a government for everyone, but to be a government for only some.

Frankly, whenever I hear Barack Obama bring up God, I cringe. I would prefer that if my president actually believed in a non-existent, Zeus-like deity, he or she wouldn’t talk about it publicly. Because when I hear my president bring up God or Jesus, I don’t feel like my president is my president.

(For the record, I gravitate toward Buddhism and other Eastern belief systems, and while I agree with the majority of Jesus Christ’s actual teachings [but I don't buy that he was more than a human being, so no, he was not conceived asexually, and no, he did not rise from the dead, and nor did he perform the other assorted "miracles"], I am not into the deity/Super-Sized Santa Claus in the Sky thing, and my opinion of the Western patriarchal religious belief system [Christianity, Judaism and Islam] is that it is so toxic as to bring about World War III any day now.)

However, the times that Barack Obama does mention God, I more or less bite my tongue. I know that I’m in the minority, and that for political reasons, Obama is going to make an occasional mention of God whether he would do so naturally or not. He is nothing if not shrewdly but shamelessly politically calculating.

The “Christo”fascists have a pretty good stronghold on the nation, it seems to me. But Mitt Romney, who is losing to Prick Santorum — which absolutely never was supposed to happen — at long last has jumped upon the “Christians are being persecuted!” bandwagon.

Bullshit. When we are tossing Christians to the lions again I’ll believe that they’re being persecuted.

As I noted recently:

The “Christo”fascists in the United States of America have the freedom to live their lives as they wish. If they believe that contraception and/or abortion are evil, then they do not ever have to use contraception or ever get an abortion. Neither contraception nor abortion is forced upon them by the government. If they believe that same-sex marriage is evil, then they don’t have to marry a member of their own sex. The government doesn’t force them to marry members of their own sex, either.

The “Christo”fascists are free to believe whatever insanity they wish to believe, a right that they exercise to the fullest. The government does not force them to believe in evolution or global warming, and if they want to shield their offspring from facts and science and sanity, then they may school their little spawn at home. (That’s child abuse, in my book, but they have that right.)

What really rankles the “Christo”fascists is not that they cannot live their own lives as they see fit, despite their ludicrous claims of victimhood, their ridiculous propaganda about a supposed “war on religion” when, in fact, Americans are free to pray at home and in their places of worship of their non-existent, Zeus-like deity, and are free to express and to disseminate their ideas about this non-existent deity, and U.S. churches remain untaxed, may with impunity blatantly discriminate against individuals based upon their sex and race and sexual orientation and gender conformity (and, of course, based upon their religious beliefs), and, despite their untaxed status, still the churches blatantly insert themselves in the political process (like the Mormon cult’s and the Catholick church’s involvement in Proposition H8).

U.S. churches long have had special rights and privileges and immunties that we non-“Christo”fascists do not possess (try not paying your taxes, or blatantly discriminating against women or non-whites or those whose religious views differ from your own in your workplace, for example), yet they cry “victimhood.”

No, what really rankles the “Christo”fascist minority is that there are tens and tens of millions of us Americans who reject their Bible-based bullshit, and, because the “Christo”fascists’ backasswards worldview doesn’t survive the scrutiny of reality and logic and reason, they need as many converts as they can get in order to be comfortable in their bullshit, backasswards beliefs.

If I were president of the United States of America, I never would make public mention of God. Not only because there is no God — certainly not as Christianity, Judaism and Islam describe God (again, as a Zeus-like figure, male, all-powerful and perpetually angry and ready to smite you at any moment) – but because as president I would want to be all-inclusive, not exclusive.

The 15 percent to 16 percent of Americans who consider themselves atheist or agnostic or otherwise unaffiliated with the major religions is a huge (and growing) chunk of the population.

As president I wouldn’t want to alienate even the 4 percent of Americans who call themselves atheists or agnostics.

I mean, there are more than twice as many of them as there are Mormons, yet Mitt Romney wants to shove his teeny-tiny minority religion down the entire nation’s throat.

With a President Romney, we might as well move the nation’s capital to Salt Lake City. (Romney isn’t beholden to the cabal of stupid old white men in Salt Lake City? Well, they get 10 percent of his income of millions and millions of dollars! Sounds like they pull some strings to me!)

And with a President Santorum, we’d have to move the Oval Office to the Vatican, because it would be Pope Palpatine controlling Prick Santorum like he controlled Darth Vader.

Under the “leadership” of a President Romney or a President Santorum, we would see in the United States of America the actual religious persecution that they falsely claim that they suffer.

One of the few good things that I can say about Barack Obama is that for the very most part, he has governed secularly, and that’s the only way to govern the very diverse United States of America.

– 

*An October 2011 nationwide CNN/ORC poll found that 17 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who is Mormon, and 36 percent of the respondents said that Mormonism is not a Christian religion.

**Lest you wish to argue that the 51 percent of Protestants make a majority, and thus we don’t have a plurality where religious groups in the United States are concerned, well, the many, many Protestant denominations hardly are monolithic. As the Pew Forum notes:

The Landscape Survey confirms that the United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country; the number of Americans who report that they are members of Protestant denominations now stands at barely 51 percent.

Moreover, the Protestant population is characterized by significant internal diversity and fragmentation, encompassing hundreds of different denominations loosely grouped around three fairly distinct religious traditions: evangelical Protestant churches (26.3 percent of the overall adult population), mainline Protestant churches (18.1 percent) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9 percent).

‘Christo’fascist agenda? Over THEIR dead bodies!

The Associated Press reports that “Christo”fascist presidential hopeful Prick Santorum “has said that he wouldn’t try to take away the birth control pill or condoms but that states should be free to ban them. He told a Christian blog last year that as president he would warn the nation about ‘the dangers of contraception’ and the permissive culture it encourages. He’s also questioned whether women should be in combat and said that ‘radical feminists’ have undermined the traditional family by ‘convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.’” Oh, and he believes that Roe vs. Wade should be overturned (which 72 percent of Newser’s users have deemed “scary”) and he recently declared that as president he would try to “overturn” any U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage — even though the U.S. president of course may not “overturn” the nation’s highest court, something that a high-school freshman should know.

Wow. What does it say about the Repugnican Tea Party — and its presidential chances in November — that Prick Santorum has been leading Mitt Romney in national polls of Repugnican Tea Party presidential preference this month?

True, in these recent polls Santorum has been leading Romney by only two to four percentage points, but still: Santorum’s last gig in U.S. politics was losing his re-election bid to the U.S. Senate in 2006 by 17.3 percentage points. Wikipedia notes that Santorum’s 2006 Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., enjoyed a “margin of victory [that] was the largest ever for a Democratic [U.S.] Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, and the largest margin of victory for a [U.S.] Senate challenger in the 2006 elections.” And Pennsylvania often if not usually is a presidential swing state, which indicates that its voters are pretty much in line with the nation’s voters as a whole.

Yes, wingtards, please make Prick Santorum your 2012 presidential nominee. Please!

The Associated Press reports today that Santorum proclaimed to “tea party activists and evangelical voters in [swing state] Ohio … that [President Barack] Obama’s agenda is ‘not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.’”

Wow. So, according to Prick Santorum, a U.S. president should govern based upon “a theology based on the Bible.”

I don’t want a U.S. president governing based upon “a theology based upon the Bible” any more than I want a U.S. president governing based upon the Koran or the Torah or the Book of Mormon or any other backasswards, patriarchal, misogynist, xenophobic, homophobic, militaristic book written by ignorant men who lived and died (with the exception of the newbie Mormons, of course) centuries and centuries ago.

Prick Santorum told his crowd of KKK’ers in Ohio today that Barack Obama’s agenda isn’t about them, but Prick Santorum’s agenda isn’t about the majority of the rest of us Americans, who reject his “Christo”fascist, far-right-wing agenda, who believe in the individual’s right to use contraception, which Prick Santorum, a puppet of Pope Palpatine, is on the record as opposing; who believe in a woman’s right to govern her own uterus; and who believe in the right of any two adults who wish to marry each other to do so. (Yes, nationwide polls show that a solid majority of Americans favor giving same-sex couples some legal status, if not full marriage equality, and even then, many (if not most) nationwide polls show that those who favor full marriage equality rights for same-sex couples have broken the 50.0 percent mark.)

History has demonstrated that theocracy results in violence and bloodshed between different religious factions, and that secular government is the best kind of government to prevent this.

Is this what the “Christo”fascist Prick Santorum and his “Christo”fascist supporters want, I wonder — a bloody jihad against those of us who refuse to submit to their Bible-based bullshit? Just like we see with the Taliban?

You say Rick Santorum, I say American Taliban.

The “Christo”fascists in the United States of America have the freedom to live their lives as they wish. If they believe that contraception and/or abortion are evil, then they do not ever have to use contraception or ever get an abortion. Neither contraception nor abortion is forced upon them by the government. If they believe that same-sex marriage is evil, then they don’t have to marry a member of their own sex. The government doesn’t force them to marry members of their own sex, either.

The “Christo”fascists are free to believe whatever insanity they wish to believe, a right that they exercise to the fullest. The government does not force them to believe in evolution or global warming, and if they want to shield their offspring from facts and science and sanity, then they may school their little spawn at home. (That’s child abuse, in my book, but they have that right.)

What really rankles the “Christo”fascists is not that they cannot live their own lives as they see fit, despite their ludicrous claims of victimhood, their ridiculous propaganda about a supposed “war on religion” when, in fact, Americans are free to pray at home and in their places of worship of their non-existent, Zeus-like deity, and are free to express and to disseminate their ideas about this non-existent deity, and U.S. churches remain untaxed, may with impunity blatantly discriminate against individuals based upon their sex and race and sexual orientation and gender conformity (and, of course, based upon their religious beliefs), and, despite their untaxed status, still the churches blatantly insert themselves in the political process (like the Mormon cult’s and the Catholick church’s involvement in Proposition H8).

U.S. churches long have had special rights and privileges and immunties that we non-“Christo”fascists do not possess (try not paying your taxes, or blatantly discriminating against women or non-whites or those whose religious views differ from your own in your workplace, for example), yet they cry “victimhood.”

No, what really rankles the “Christo”fascist minority is that there are tens and tens of millions of us Americans who reject their Bible-based bullshit, and, because the “Christo”fascists’ backasswards worldview doesn’t survive the scrutiny of reality and logic and reason, they need as many converts as they can get in order to be comfortable in their bullshit, backasswards beliefs.

And I have little doubt that if they couldn’t convert us, they would kill us, if they could. Just like the Taliban.

So — preventing a “Christo”fascist like Prick Santorum from ever getting into the Oval Office is, literally, a matter of life or death, and the majority of us Americans who reject the “Christo”fascist agenda need to stand up to the “Christo”fascist minority and proclaim: Over your dead bodies will we go back to the Dark Ages to which you believe you can drag us.

It’s NOT the economy? STUPID!

I had thought that we would hear about nothing except for the economy and jobs and the supposed miracle of capitalism from now until Election Day in November.

Nope.

The issue du jour is contraception.

Contraception because Prick Santorum, a Catholick, is Pope Palpatine’s puppet, obviously. Concerns that John F. Kennedy would take marching orders from the Vatican were way overblown, but in the case of Santorum, they very apparently are not. And Pope Palpatine is the pope who believes that the slightly more liberal reforms of the Vatican II should be rolled back. Since the Vatican II took place between 1962 and 1965, that means that Pope Palpatine wants to drag us at least back to the 1950s, if not to the good old days of the Dark Ages themselves.

The wingnuts can get a chunk of Americans on board with their anti-abortion stance, but even then, polls show that no more than a quarter of Americans believe that all abortions should be prohibited and that a solid majority of Americans believe that abortion always should be allowed or should be allowed in most cases.

On their anti-contraception stance the wingnuts also have only minority support.

Even a Faux “News” poll taken this month that asked, “The new Obama health care law requires that employer health plans provide birth control coverage as part of preventive services for women. Overall, do you approve or disapprove of requiring employer health plans to cover birth control for women?” found that 61 percent said they approved, 34 percent disapproved, and 5 percent said they weren’t sure.

But what was supposed to have been a war on unemployment and economic stagnation this presidential election season instead has become, under the “leadership” of the Repugnican Tea Party “Christo”fascists, a war on women and on gays.

Prick Santorum believes that women should not serve in combat roles in the U.S. military. Not that that is sexist or anything.

Initially Prick proclaimed that women shouldn’t be in combat because of “the types of emotions involved.” When there was a backlash because he apparently had asserted that women are too emotional to be able to serve in combat roles, he backtracked, and said no, he didn’t mean that — he meant that the effectiveness of the men in combat would be diminished because they’d be too worried about the safety of their weak female comrades.

(“So my concern is [that] being in combat in that situation [the situation of women serving alongside men in combat roles], instead of being focused on the mission, they [male soldiers] may be more concerned with protecting someone who may be in a vulnerable position, a woman in a vulnerable position,” Santorum said.)

Great “save,” there, Prick: It’s not that women are too emotional — it’s that men are too emotional about women’s inherit weakness.

Not content with putting just one foot in his mouth, Santorum’s mouth sucked in his entire body as though his mouth were a powerful black hole. He also declared:

“Women have served and do serve and do wonderful things within the military and … they do have opportunities to serve in very dangerous positions…. And I certainly understand that and respect that and admire women for doing so, but I think on the front line of combat is not the best place and it’s not maximizing what they can bring to the table.”

Because you see, what Prick Santorum believes is that contraception should be illegal and that women should not be allowed to serve in combat roles in the U.S. military. They should be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen, and what he means by “what they can bring to the table,” apparently, is dinner.

Not to be outdone by Prick Santorum, Mitt Romney — whose Mormon cult, along with Santorum’s Catholick church, funded Proposition H8, which federal judges last week ruled was an unconstitutional assault of the hateful and bigoted majority on a minority group — declared at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday that by prohibiting same-sex couples from other states from getting married in Massachusetts, “On my watch, we fought hard and prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage,” adding, “When I am president, I will defend the Defense of Marriage Act and I will fight for an amendment to our Constitution that defines marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman.”

Yes, Mitt Romney is proud that as governor of Massachusetts he made damn sure that no one could come there for their equal human and civil rights, that he limited the evil of equal human and civil rights to Massachusetts only, and as president he would write the hatred of and the unconstitutional, unjust and immoral discrimination against a minority group into the U.S. Constitution if he ever got his mitts on the Oval Office, and indeed, during his CPAC speech on Friday he declared, “I can’t wait to get my hands on Washington.”

Gee, I can’t wait, either.

It is clear what the Repugnican Tea Party “vision” for the United States of America is. Just look at their remaining four presidential candidates: all four of them are right-wing, patriarchal, misogynist, homophobic, racist white men (yes, even the anti-choice Ron Paul, who is no liberal or progressive).

There is no place in the Repugnican Tea Party worldview for those of us who do not wish to continue to kowtow to stupid white men, despite the ugly U.S. history of stupid white men oppressing the rest of us.

There is no place in the Repugnican Tea Party worldview for intelligent and self-respecting women, for those of us who are not white (although we are a little more acceptable if we want to be white), for those of us who are not right-wing “Christians” (“Christo”fascists), for those of us who are not heterosexual, for those of us who are not gender- and gender-role-conforming,  for those of us who do not worship the golden calf that is unbridled capitalism.

And together, we, the historically oppressed by stupid white men, are the majority of Americans.

Given that only about a quarter — certainly no more than about a third – of Americans agree with Prick Santorum’s and Mitt Romney’s hard-right-wing worldview, what this means is that under a President Romney or a President Santorum, we would have a tyranny of the minority.

And we already had that under George W. Bush, since he never was elected by a majority of the American people in the first place.

Obviously, Romney and Santorum right now are trying to out-wingnut each other for the primary season (it’s safe to write off Ron Paul, and very most likely Newt Gingrich, too), and we would expect either eventual victor to moderate his message for the general election.

But how do you forget such patriarchal, misogynist and homophobic proclamations as they are making now?

I see precious little difference between putting the Mormon cult or the Catholick church in the White House than putting the Taliban in the White House.

What all three groups agree upon is that men should rule, that women should be wholly subservient to and obedient to men, that there should be perpetual warfare, and that gay men and lesbians and other non-heterosexuals and non-gender-conforming individuals, as well as non-believers, should be oppressed, certainly, but ideally, exterminated.

What I predict, however, is that the Repugnican Tea Party’s focus on social issues is going to boost Barack Obama’s re-election chances.

As much as the “swing voters” should care about the rights of women and non-whites and and non-heterosexuals and other historically oppressed minority groups, what the majority of them care about is their wallets and pocketbooks.

The U.S. economy seems to be improving, but not fast enough for the Repugnican Tea Party to ignore the economy and to instead focus instead on whom to hate and to oppress. The haters already hate. Preaching to the white-pointy-hatted choir isn’t going to sway the “swing voters,” who just want to be able to pay their bills. And, regardless of what I think about them, it’s the “swing voters,” not those of us who are committed to the far right or to the far left, who decide presidential elections these days.

The two Pricks vie to be the top fascist

Associated Press photo

“Christian” presidential aspirants Prick Perry and Prick Santorum falsely greet each other at an apparent all-white-male “prayer breakfast” in South Carolina today. With “Christians” like these, who needs demons?

Presidential wannabes Prick Perry and Prick Santorum, with the presidential primary election in South Carolina upon us on Saturday, apparently are vying to be the biggest “Christo”fascist in the 2012 Repugnican Tea Party presidential primary race.

Thank Goddess that neither one of them has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever sitting in the Oval Office.

Texas Gov. Prick Perry, who wants to represent the third and maybe even the fourth term of George W. Bush, has proclaimed that to denounce the recently revealed incident of U.S. Marines having urinated on the bodies of their kill in Afghanistan is to have “disdain for the [U.S.] military.”

That exactly is what the criminal members of the unelected, treasonous, fascistic Bush regime did: They equated any criticism of their profoundly bungled military policy or of any of their military failures (such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal) to wholesale attacks on our troops by America-hating traitors. And that is the same tack that Perry is trying to take now: Barack Hussein Obama, you see, according to Prick Perry, actually hates our troops. (Well, Obama does send them off to their pointless deaths as nonchalantly as George W. Bush did, but that’s another blog post.)

“Obviously, 18-, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that’s what’s occurred here,” Perry dismissively said today of Goldenshowergate, adding, “What’s really disturbing to me is the kind of over-the-top rhetoric from this [the Obama] administration and their disdain for the military.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta should not have condemned the desecration of the dead, which the Geneva Conventions forbid, you see. The Associated Press reports that Perry today “said the Marines involved should be reprimanded but not prosecuted on criminal charges” — even though they violated the Geneva Conventions, for fuck’s sake.

Prick Perry’s knee-jerk right-wing, jingoistic “defense” of Goldenshowergate unintentionally raises more questions than it puts anything to rest.

Why do we have “kids” in the U.S. military when, as Perry correctly states, “kids make stupid mistakes all too often”?

Why do we entrust such highly sensitive matters to “kids”?

Is it because older and wiser individuals will know that they are being exploited? Is it that it easier to send kids — with their false sense of immortality and their naive trust of authority – to their pointless maimings and deaths in the bogus wars for the profiteering of the stupid old rich men who so casually send our kids off to be maimed and traumatized and to die for their personal fortunes?

I can assure Prick Perry that President Barack Obama hates our troops just as much as “President” George W. Bush did. If Obama did not, he would never put them in harm’s way only for the benefit of the war profiteers of the military-industrial complex and the corporateers, such as Big Oil.

Obama promised “hope” and “change,” but there still is plenty of death and destruction in the Middle East that benefits only the war profiteers and the corporateers. But apparently for Prick Perry, there isn’t enough death and destruction for the obscene profits of the 1 percent.

Not to be outdone in hateful jingoism by Prick Perry, former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Prick Santorum – the evil stooge for the pedophilic Catholick church led by Pope Palpatine who fancies himself a “Christian” and is who is so hated by his own state that he lost re-election by a record margin there in 2006 – has declared that no one should condemn the assassination of a 32-year-old Iranian nuclear scientist last week.

This is (was…) 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who, according to the Iranian government, was murdered in a car bombing in Tehran on Wednesday:

Associated Press image

Whoever killed Roshan is guilty of the murder of a young father. There is no getting around that, whether Roshan’s murderers turn out to be the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (as the Iranian government reportedly alleges); Israel’s equivalent of the CIA, Mossad; or even – who knows? — fellow Iranians who for whatever reason or reasons wanted Roshan dead. While I suspect the CIA or Mossad (or both), it’s not impossible, I suppose, that even the Iranian government killed Roshan.

But to hear “Christo”fascistic assbites like Prick Santorum make such pronouncements as “Our country condemned it [Roshan's murder]; my feeling is we should have kept our mouth shut,” is nauseating.

Of whose assassination would Jesus approve?

Further, both the United States and Israel apparently have nukes.* What if the Iranians assassinated an American or an Israeli nuclear scientist on American or Israeli soil? That would be an outrage that might even be cause for all-out war, no? Why, then, is it perfectly OK for the United States or Israel to assassinate others on foreign soil?

And why is it that the United States and Israel may have nukes, but that any other nation may not? Why do the United States and its partner in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Middle East, Israel, get to determine who may and may not possess nukes in the Middle East?

This blatant hypocrisy and double standard and self-righteousness is why the United States and Israel are so hated in the Middle East, and why we have seen perpetual warfare there (and blowback here at home, such as on September 11, 20o1).

There is a lot about Iran not to like, such as its oppression of women and non-heterosexuals and those who don’t submit to the nation’s theocratic rule, but this patriarchal (and misogynist and homophobic) theocratic rule is exactly what the war-mongering, patriarchal theofascists here at home — such as Prick Santorum and Prick Perry — would love to establish for themselves right here.

And not to let Mitt Romney off the hook; a Mormon president would be a huge mistake. Although Romney’s Mormonism instructs him to pretend to be more civil than are his political opponents and to be falsely nice while in actuality he supports a great deal of evil, if we are going to elect Mitt Romney as president we might as well just move the nation’s capital from D.C. to Salt Lake City and put the control of the nation entirely in the claws of the cabal of stupid old evil white men who rule the Mormon cult, who are no different in (malevolent) spirit from the patriarchal, totalitarian clerics who control Iran and other “Islamofascist” states.

It speaks volumes of the evil of the Repugnican Tea Party that its presidential aspirants claim to be such great “Christians” but are supportive or dismissive of such evils as assassination — murder – and desecration of the dead (although, as I have noted, it’s a much, much larger crime to murder someone in the first place than it is to then disrespectfully treat his or her corpse).

How about we assassinate Prick Perry and Prick Santorum and then piss on their corpses, since such acts, according to them, are perfectly acceptable?

You know, I don’t call myself a Christian – in large part because evil people like Prick Perry and Prick Santorum and Mitt Romney call themselves “Christians” – but it seems to me that Jesus Christ’s core teaching that anything that you would not want done to yourself you should not do to anyone else is pretty fucking sound.

If “Christians” actually followed Jesus’ teachings, then we wouldn’t witness things like bogus warfare and mass murder and war crimes and crimes against humanity and assassinations and torture and desecration of the dead.

I can guarantee you that if an actual Christian — someone who actually followed Jesus Christ’s teachings as contained in black and white in the New Testament – ever ran for president, I would vote for him or her enthusiastically, but no actual Christian will win the presidency in November 2012 because no actual Christian is running.

And nor could I see a majority of the people of the United States of America ever actually electing an actual Christian president, since the majority of Americans are not only comfortable with, but very apparently want, a certain amount of evil in their leaders. After all, the vast majority of people want their leaders to be just like themselves.

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*Wikipedia notes that Israel refuses to confirm or deny whether or not it possesses a nuclear weapon. I assume that Israel does. Indeed, with the billions of our U.S. tax dollars that go to the parasitic, war-mongering Israel, I’d be surprised if Israel doesn’t have nukes.

Desperate Rick Perry takes last refuge of the scoundrel: ‘Christianity’

As is the case with Repugnican Tea Party U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, we probably safely can ignore Repugnican Tea Party Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who, like Bachmann, can’t break even 10 percent in recent presidential polls of the members of his own fucking fascistic party. Like Bachmann, Perry would be lucky even to be considered for the Repugnican Tea Party’s vice presidential spot on the 2012 ticket.

Still, Rick Perry’s “Brokeback Mountain”-like anti-gay spot (apparently primarily meant for Iowans, who will caucus early next month) has gone viral to the point that I feel compelled to chime in.

Many have pointed out (correctly) that the jacket that Perry wears in the spot is fairly identical to the jacket worn by the late Heath Ledger in “Brokeback Mountain” –

– and spoofs of the spot abound, including PhotoShop spoofs –

– and video spoofs such as this one, which is Perry’s spot “gay-dubbed”:

Perry deserves to be lampooned. Actually, he deserves worse. He apparently believes that the way to make up for his own glaring deficiencies is to attack an historically oppressed minority group, as though this were the 2004 presidential election (hey, gay-bashing worked pretty well for the last governor from Texas!). Yet the name of Perry’s Brokeback spot is “Strong.” Because yeah, it takes a big, strong, manly man to beat up on gays.

I’ve long suspected that Rick Perry in fact is a closet case, and the video of him giving an apparently drunken speech in New Hampshire in October pretty much confirms my suspicions — in the clip, it appears that Perry is drunk, and that alcohol, the great disinhibitor, brings out what’s deep inside Perry, as he displays much-less-than-macho verbalizations and gesticulations. (As I noted at the time, he acted like a giddy schoolgirl.)

Not that I want Rick Perry on my team — I do not — but if it looks like a queer duck, waddles like a queer duck, and quacks like a queer duck…

But let’s go beyond the image stuff and go ahead and tackle the “substance” of what Perry actually says in his spot. He says: “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”

Wow. This is wrong on so many levels. Where to begin?

OK, first, I suppose, we need to define the word “Christian.” To me, the word means “one who is familiar with and who strives to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

By my definition, of course, Rick Perry and his ilk are not Christians. They are ignorant, fearful, violent (at least violent at heart and violent in spirit if not also physically violent) haters who are bound together not by anything remotely like love, but by their ignorance, their fearfulness and their hatred of the same “out” groups, such as non-heterosexuals, non-“Christians,” non-whites, non-Americans, non-wingnuts, et. al.

Also fundamentally, we need to ask why Perry is conflating non-discrimination within the U.S. military and our children’s ability to “celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” Perry’s “logic” here is as clear as is the “logic” of the “Christo”fascist fucktards who protest at U.S. military funerals, claiming that God kills U.S. soldiers abroad because the United States is too permissive on homosexuality. (What? You don’t see the clear link?)

We also need to look at Rick Perry’s utterly bogus claims of victimhood. “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian,” he whines, although anywhere from around 60 percent to 75 percent of Americans call themselves “Christians.” This is a persecuted minority? Yeah, you know, I, for one, haven’t seen a so-called “Christian” tossed to any lions recently.

Speaking of which, there is no fucking “war on Christmas.” I am so not a Christian (well, I agree with Jesus’ teachings that no one follows, but I certainly don’t identify with the fascistic hypocrites who call themselves “Christians”), but I give Christmas cards and Christmas gifts every year. Christmas is pretty deeply ingrained within the American culture, and affects you whether you identify yourself as a Christian or not.

If anyone has been destroying Christmas, it is those who have commercialized it, who have sucked every drop of spirituality from it in order to make a buck, and they enjoy the full support of the “Christo”fascist Repugnican Tea Partiers, so if anyone is destroying Christmas, it’s the wingnutty fascists who hypocritically blame others when, as usual, it is they who are to blame.

Anyone who wishes to celebrate Christmas in the United States of America may do so — but not with public funds (at least in the blue states, which for the most part honor the separation of church and state). That’s fair and that’s just. The same “Christo”facists who want to use our public funds to shove their own religious beliefs down everyone’s throats would go ballistic if those same public funds were used to promote another religion, such as Islam. And how would the “Christo”fascists feel about Muslim prayers in our public schools?

Yeah, fuck the “Christo”fascists.

Perry also remarks in his spot, “You don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday” — is this Perry’s admission that he just calls himself a “Christian” since it’s good politics in the backasswards “Christo”fascist state of Texas? Is this Perry’s admission that he knows about as much about his own claimed religion as he knows about the U.S. Supreme Court, which he believes has eight justices, and not nine?

Speaking of Christianity, anyone who actually has read and comprehended the words of Jesus Christ as contained in the four gospels would oppose the very existence of the U.S. military, since Jesus taught love and peace and turning the other cheek – not bombing and gunning down and torturing and otherwise maiming and killing and inflicting pain and suffering upon others.

Jesus also said not one fucking word on homosexuality, at least not as recorded in the four gospels.

Obviously the holiday of Christmas was invented after Jesus’ death, so we can’t say that Jesus was pro-Christmas and still claim sanity, and this is what Jesus had to say about the public prayer that Rick “The U.S. Supreme Court Has Eight Justices” Perry claims is so central to Christianity:

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” [Matthew 6:5 and Matthew 6:6]

Jesus clearly repudiated public prayer as being something that only hypocrites practice and instructed that his followers should pray in private.

We have all of these so-called “Christians” here in the United States of America, and I don’t believe that in my almost 44 years I’ve actually met any more than a handful of them, not by my reasonable definition of a Christian.

Rick Perry certainly isn’t a Christian. He’s just an apparent alcoholic closet case, a self-loather who has wanted the presidency of the United States of America to fill the endless black void that is his soul, and he has demonstrated that he is perfectly willing to persecute the already persecuted in order to get there. Just like Jesus would do, right? And just like Adolf Hitler and his henchmen did.*

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*No, the Hitler comparison is not out there. The right-wing, fascistic/pro-corporate, “Christian” Nazis killed thousands of gay men, just as the American Taliban – the “Christo”fascists here at home, the majority of whom are aligned with the Repugnican Tea Party – would do if they could. Hitler’s political tactic was to whip up hatred of minorities (Jews, gays, gypsies, Communists, et. al.), and that’s what the politicians within the Repugnican Tea Party do also (with hatred of Muslims, gays, “illegals,” “socialists,” et. al.).