How the minority seized the U.S. Supreme Court (and maybe finally sparked the next U.S. civil war)

Five of the current nine U.S. Supreme Court “justices” were chosen by two “presidents” who had lost the popular vote. If it feels to you like the current Supreme Court doesn’t represent the majority of the American people, that’s because it doesn’t: five of the “justices” were picked by “presidents” whom the American people did not actually elect and who thus were illegitimate “presidents” — and President Barack Obama treasonously and anti-democratically was denied a pick altogether.

How did we get to this point today, the day that the U.S. Supreme Court, now solidly dominated — 6-3 — by right-wing nut jobs (actually, they’re fucking fascists; “nut jobs” sounds too innocuous), ruled (5-4) that each state may decide whether or not a woman may obtain an abortion after it was decided in 1973 by Roe vs. Wade that no state may entirely prohibit abortion?

How did the anti-choice minority view — about two-thirds of all Americans support Roe vs. Wade — prevail in this fight for a woman’s basic right to choose what goes on inside of her own fucking uterus?

Let’s go back to the “election” of George W. Bush as president in 2000.

The official popular vote count for the presidential election of 2000 was 50,456,002 votes for Repugnican Bush and 50,999,897 for Democrat Al Gore.

Gore won the popular vote by 543,895 votes, yet, because of the Electoral College — and because of the infamous intervention of the U.S Supreme Court in the determination of a presidential election outcome — Bush, the minority’s chosen candidate, nonetheless became “president.” The pick of the majority of the American voters simply did not matter.

On September 29, 2005, “President” Bush’s first pick to the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

You might argue that yes, Bush “won” “re”-election in 2004 — the official popular vote count for that presidential election was 62,040,610 to 59,028,444 in Bush’s favor, a difference of 3,012,166 votes this time.

However, I’d argue that obviously had Bush not been installed as president when he’d lost the popular vote of 2000, of course he never could have been “re”-elected in 2004. Because Bush’s first presidential term was illegitimate — because he had lost the popular vote — I never accepted his second term as legitimate either, because his second term depended on the fruit of the poisonous tree from 2000.

Bush went on to get another right-wing U.S. Supreme Court “justice” confirmed — Samuel Alito, who authored today’s official decision to kill Roe vs. Wade — on January 3, 2006.

Fast forward to the next presidential election in which the loser of the popular vote still became “president”: In 2016, the official popular vote count was 65,853,514 for Democrat Billary Clinton to only 62,984,828 for Repugnican Pussygrabber; Pussygrabber lost even more bigly than did George W. Bush in 2000: he lost by 2,868,686 popular votes.

Yet the illegitimate “President” Pussygrabber would go on to nominate three U.S. Supreme Court justices in just his one (and what must be his only) term.

Former President Barack Obama, who won the popular vote in 2008 and in 2012, put only two justices (Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan) on the Supreme Court during his two terms — and infamously and treasonously was denied a third pick to the nation’s highest court when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell treasonously and anti-democratically refused to allow the Senate to recognize any nomination to the Supreme Court by Obama in the wake of the overdue death of fascist “Justice” Antonin Scalia on February 13, 2016 — even though Obama had had almost a full year of his presidency left.

So “President” Pussygrabber’s first pick for the U.S. Supreme Court — Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed on April 7, 2017 — clearly had been stolen from Obama.

The unelected-by-the-majority-of-the-American-people Pussygrabber would go on to make two more right-wing-nut-job/fascist picks to the U.S. Supreme Court: Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed on October 6, 2018, and Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed on October 26, 2020, even though the Repugnicans had told us that Obama couldn’t have a nomination to the Supreme Court so “close” to a presidential election (Barrett was confirmed only about a week [eight days] before the 2020 presidential election, while, again, Obama was denied a pick to the court with almost a full year of his second term remaining).

So under the Repugnicans’ own fucking argumentation in regards to the “required” timing for Scalia’s replacement on the court, Amy Coney Barrett clearly is illegitimate, and, of course, before her, Gorsuch illegitimately was put on the nation’s high court, because that pick clearly had belonged to then-President Obama.

But, even all of this aside, if we believe that only the majority of the American voters should pick the U.S. president, who then should be able to make nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court, then George W. Bush’s picks for the Supreme Court — Roberts and Alito — are illegitimate, since Bush never legitimately became president in the first fucking place. And ditto, of course, for the illegitimate Pussygrabber’s picks to the court, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.

That’s five current U.S. Supreme Court “justices” who were nominated by “presidents” who had lost the popular vote. That’s five illegitimate Supreme Court “justices” — four of whom voted to kill Roe vs. Wade.

(Roberts did not vote to kill Roe, but of course Clarence Thomas did, because he is Clarence Thomas, who I always believed committed sexual harassment and thus never belonged on the U.S. Supreme Court in the first fucking place; I always have believed Anita Hill. [And, of course, Thomas’ baby-boomer cow of a wife’s meddling in the 2020 presidential election, which should land her behind bars along with the dozens of other traitors who illegally and treasonously tried to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results, alone makes Thomas an illegitimate Supreme Court “justice” — and a prime candidate for impeachment and removal. Thomas bemoans that the American people don’t trust “our” institutions anymore, but look what the hypocritical piece of dog shit Thomas has done: he probably committed pre-disqualifying sexual harassment, he apparently has allowed his wife to try to change the outcome of a presidential election, and he helped to kill Roe vs. Wade — and now he wants to deprive Americans of even the right to use contraception and to have sex with or marry a member of their same sex, although, of course, he’ll keep the right to have a mixed-race marriage intact, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because, being the typical baby-boomer asshole [redundant] that he is, he wants to retain his own rights while cavalierly destroying others’ rights.])

So that’s how we got to where we are today in the United States of America: the tyranny of the minority over the majority. Even though the clear majority of Americans support Roe vs. Wade, which had been settled law for almost five decades, the minority once again has acted against the majority.

Again, the American people had spoken: In 2000 and in 2016, the majorities of them — of us — voted for the Democratic candidate for president. Instead, because of the anti-democratic, obsolete Electoral College, the minority prevailed, and imposed on the American people were two Repugnican “presidents” for whom the majority of us did not vote, and these two fascist “presidents” put five fascists on the U.S. Supreme Court.

This, along with the blatant, bad-faith theft of President Obama’s third pick to the Supreme Court, is how the minority took over the Supreme Court — by 6-3, no less.

While I’d never rule out violent revolution by the majority against the tyrannical minority — if the minority dares to treasonously and anti-democratically tyrannize the majority, the tyrannical minority deserves whatever the fuck it gets — there are some ways that we, the majority of the American people, can take our nation back from the minority, even within our corrupt system of so-called “democracy,” including:

• We need to abolish the Electoral College. The popular vote alone should decide who gets to sit in the Oval Office inside of the White House. It’s supposed to be one person, one vote, but the Electoral College gives the minority in the red states significantly more say in the presidency than their actual population does. This blatantly anti-democratic bullshit must stop.
• We need to get enough U.S. senators to abolish the filibuster so that the U.S. Senate can enlarge — yes, pack, if you will — the U.S. Supreme Court. The number of justices on the Supreme Court is set by the U.S. Congress, not by the U.S. Constitution, so if the Democrats were in control of the U.S. House of Representatives and were in control of the U.S. Senate (and eliminated the filibuster, if necessary, which they could do on a simple majority vote, as the filibuster of course also isn’t in the U.S. Constitution, but is an obsolete, anti-democratic Senate rule, much like the Electoral College is obsolete and anti-democratic), they could add as many Supreme Court seats as they pleased (again, the Constitution fully allows this). After how the Repugnicans brazenly stole seats on the nation’s highest court, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. A situation in which only one side of the divide plays by any rules or norms at all is not tenable.
• We need to radically reform the U.S. Senate, and this would be significantly more difficult than abolishing the Electoral College or finally killing the filibuster or expanding/packing the U.S. Supreme Court. The fact that no matter how tiny its population is each state gets two U.S. senators — while no matter how huge its population is, each states gets only two U.S. senators — clearly is anti-democratic. An analysis by Vox’s Ian Millhiser in November 2020 found that in the current 50-50 U.S. Senate, “the Democratic half [represents] 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.” This anti-democratic situation no longer is tenable, and off of the top of my head, I’d start with this suggestion: Change the U.S. Constitution so that each state does not get two (and only two) U.S. senators, but, instead, each state gets from one to three U.S. senators, based upon its population, much how the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that each state gets is determined by its population. We could keep it at 100 U.S. senators, but reapportion the number of senators based upon the states’ population (again, with one, two or three senators, based on the state’s population).* If it were necessary, I’d be OK with adding seats to the U.S. Senate (100 senators is an arbitrary number), but in any case, each state getting two senators each regardless of its population must end. Of course, the red states wouldn’t vote to change the U.S. Constitution to give them less representation in the U.S. Senate, even if their current level of representation is unfair (and it is blatantly unfair). It might be that only a civil war — a great fucking reset — could reform the U.S. Senate so that the minority doesn’t get to continue to tyrannize the majority in a so-called “democracy.”

Yes, that’s pretty much where I am: I’m OK with a second U.S. civil war at this point. The treasonous right wing has brought it on by insisting on running roughshod over the majority of us Americans who disagree with their politics and their (theo)fascist “vision” for the United States of America. We Americans don’t even get to vote for U.S. president, for fuck’s sake, not when the Electoral College simply hands the presidency to the fucking loser of the popular vote.

Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the name of today’s dazzlingly overreaching U.S. Supreme Court decision, in which the minority yet once again has tyrannized the majority — very well might prove to have been the most proximate salvo fired in the Second American Civil War.

P.S. More to the point of the majority-illegitimate U.S. Supreme Court ruling that each state may decide whether or not a woman may control her own uterus, while I’m not a woman and so of course won’t ever need an abortion, and while I live in a state that has codified abortion rights into state law, the rolling back of anyone’s rights — perhaps especially by unelected theocrats wishing to impose their backasswards religious beliefs on the rest of us — is disturbing, and, of course, if it’s open season on others’ rights, your rights might be on the chopping block next. (And, of course, the Dobbs ruling might be just the intended first step in the theofascist-controlled U.S. Supreme Court ruling that no state may allow any abortion at all.)

I’m hoping that Dobbs inspires us, the majority, to finally take our nation back from the tyrannical minority — bloodlessly, if possible, but bloodfully, if necessary.

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*Even if my plan to change the system so that each state gets one to three U.S. senators based on its population were enacted, the smallest states still would be overrepresented in the U.S. Senate based on their population, but this still would be a move in the right — that is, the actually democratic — direction.

Taliban R Us

I’m not an expert on Afghanistan or the Taliban, but when I saw in the news that the Afghan army collapsed like a house of cards in the wake of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan after the United States’ military exit after two decades of “nation-building” in the “Graveyard of Empires,” I didn’t blame the Afghans; I just figured that the whole Afghan adventure always has been primarily if not only about members of the U.S. military-corporate complex looting the U.S. treasury via another impoverished nation in the name of “spreading democracy.”

Those juicy gubmint military contracts are just too juicy to ignore!

Further, I surmise that most Americans view the members of the Taliban as ignorant, violent, unwashed hordes, forgetting (or maybe ignoring) that we have such ilk here at home: the American Taliban.

Here, for instance, is a photo of the members of the Taliban after they recently took over the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul:

Associated Press news photo

And here are some pix of the American Taliban as they briefly overtook the U.S. Capitol on January 6:

Getty Images news photos

Actually, it’s probably not fair to compare the Taliban to the basement-dwelling incels and other assorted mouth-breathers and knuckle-draggers who briefly overtook the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

I mean, from the images that I have seen, the members of the Taliban have been much more orderly and organized, and certainly, entirely unlike the American Taliban, clearly they had a fucking plan — and clearly they are achieving their objective of a complete takeover of the gubmint.

This Q-Anon fucktard (redundant) who broke into the U.S. Capitol on January 6 wore a shirt emblazoned with “Trust the Plan” —

Getty Images news photo

— but how did that “plan” turn out on January 6 (and since then), other than resulting in a lot of arrests and incarcerations and felony convictions (and seriously beefed-up Capitol security)?

Still, we sane Americans always should be mindful that among us are plenty of troglodytes (such as those pictured above) who would love to impose their backasswards beliefs, including if not primarily their ironically evil, backasswards “Christo”fascist beliefs, on the rest of us.

There would be no vote to make the U.S. a theocracy like Afghanistan is about to become. (And indeed, this is where the “Christo”fascists are with that liberal elitist concept of democracy these days: If they lose an election, no, they actually won it! It was stolen from them! In fact, there is no way that they can lose any election!)

A “Christo”fascist theocracy here at home would be created and maintained not democratically, but via violence.

If we actually patriotic Americans were to allow that to happen.

P.S. Here is Ted Rall’s take on the hypocrisy:

Tyranny of the minority will not stand

I’ve been waiting to use this great meme for a while now. Now is the time. The right-wing, batshit-crazy push to prematurely open up the nation’s churches (and other public spaces) during a lethal pandemic exemplifies this meme.

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 others. Truly I tell you, 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 6:5-6:6

Gee, was Jesus Christ himself for social distancing and for staying at home to pray?

I say that only in half-jest. Indeed, today’s “Christians” rarely actually follow the teachings of Jesus Christ as they readily are available in black and white in the New Testament.

Indeed, today’s “Christians” — at least the “President” Pussygrabber-loving kind — are the demonic that they claim that they oppose. They certainly have a death fetish if not a death wish.

Despite a plethora of church attendees and church officials already having contracted and having become ill or having died from the novel coronavirus, the “Christians” and their “leader,” “President” Pussygrabber, are demanding that all of the nation’s places of worship be opened up immediately.

Pussygrabber is wrong about just about everything and represents only the minority, wackadoodle viewpoint on just about everything, including “treating” the novel coronavirus with a household disinfectant and with bright light somehow introduced inside the body. (Maybe just shove a very bright flashlight up in there?)

Of course, for Pussygrabber, everything these days is about his “re”-election*, such as his jihad against voting by mail, even though voting by mail is supported by almost two-thirds of Americans and will go on nonetheless at least in those states that are not paralyzed by anti-voting Repugnican “leaders,”** since Pussygrabber has zero legal authority to prohibit voting by mail anywhere in the United States.

Pussygrabber is pushing for the re-opening of churches right now — something else that he has zero legal authority to do — only because he wants the churchgoers’ votes in November. He is perfectly OK with many “Christians” dying from the coronavirus, because all that is important to him is his “re”-election. Marinate on that fact for a while.

To me, ever since January 2017 it’s been like we don’t even have a president at all. It’s like a vacancy in the White House. I mean that entirely. And, of course, in the most important sense of what a president should be, should not be, should do and should not do, we do have a vacancy, a gaping vacancy, in the Oval Office.

I believe that people who believe in God — and it’s almost always a God who hates everyone they hate and who likes everyone they like, and otherwise always agrees perfectly with them on everything, isn’t it? — range from being incredibly immature and gullible to being mentally ill, but I do believe in the First Amendment right to believe whatever cray-cray you want to believe; it’s the item in the Bill of Rights that Americans seem to exercise the most.

A right that Americans do not possess, however, is the “right” to harm others. The Second Amendment allows you the right to own a firearm for your own actual self-protection; it does not grant you the right to go around shooting people with whom you might have any issue or dispute.

Similarly, the First Amendment allows you to gather for religious purposes, but what happens if by so doing, you endanger all of those around you with a potentially lethal infectious disease? Is your “right” to infect other people with a potentially deadly pathogen absolute?

No, when it comes to the prevention of the spreading of illness and death, your constitutional rights that certainly are protected under normal circumstances may be — and should be — curtailed. You have rights, we all have rights, but it’s not actually all about you. You are a social creature, and your actions and your inaction routinely affect others.

But how great it feels to pretend that one is standing up for Jesus Christ and for God and for freedom and for liberty, blah blah blah, against that

But we don’t have modern-day martyrs. We have modern-day dipshits. A true martyr would care about not sickening or even killing others. Today’s “Christians” don’t give a fuck about that at all. They are, as I have said, in a word, demonic.

And what these demons want is total control over the United States of America. They want theocracy — their theocracy, a “Christo”fascist theocracy — as much as if not even more than do those who supposedly want to impose “Sharia law” on the United States of America.

Yes, this nationwide shutdown does suck. It affects all of us in some ways to different degrees. But thus far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we’ve had about 1.6 million apparently confirmed cases of infection with the novel coronavirus, and we are approaching 100,000 deaths from the virus.

Many more Americans will continue to die of the novel coronavirus, whose future course is unknown, and if you want a comparison, each year for the past decade, an average of about 37,000 Americans have died from the flu.

So while no, the novel coronavirus’ body count thus far has not been like that of the plagues that decimated huge swaths of the populace in world history, the novel coronavirus is not just like the flu. The flu, with rare exceptions, such as the 1918 flu pandemic, doesn’t wipe out this many people.

There is, therefore, not just a public-health justification for trying to impede the transmission of the novel coronavirus, but there is a public-health obligation to do so.

From what I can tell, the batshit-crazy “Christians” (redundant…) in the United States are too few in number to do much more than ludicrously claim to be persecuted “Christians,” you know, just like in the days when Christians were tossed to the lions.

Their deluded fantasies of being able to use national catastrophes like 9/11 and the novel coronavirus pandemic for instituting their own brand of theocracy on the entire nation are just that: deluded fantasies.

But, should these “Christo”fascists ever actually pose a threat, we can fight the coronavirus and these nasty viruses who call themselves “Christians.”

I might say that I’d be happy for the “Christians” to give each other a lethal disease by refusing to take sensible precautions — I remember how giddy most of these “Christians” have been over us gay men having died from AIDS (just like Jesus Christ taught them to be!) — but it won’t be only the “Christo”fascists who will be infected with the coronavirus should the nation’s churches return to business as usual right now. (And it sure is a business, isn’t it?) It will be probably tens of thousands of innocent people dying, too.

We, the majority of Americans, who aren’t batshit-crazy “Christians,”*** have the right not to allow a minority to cause actual harm to the rest of us. Our constitutional, human right to stay alive and well supersedes the “right” to infect others with a potentially lethal virus.

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*To me, if you didn’t win the popular vote, as Pussygrabber did not and as George W. Bush did not before him, then your entire “presidency” is illegitimate.

Democracy means that only the candidate who won the most votes should fill that office. Otherwise, it means nothing.

**To clarify, the Repugnicans just don’t want you to vote if you have a propensity to vote for Democratic candidates. They’re A-OK with you if you’re going to vote for them.

***Per Wikipedia, only 6 percent to 35 percent of Americans are evangelical “Christians,” but I’ll be generous and go with Gallup’s finding that 41 percent of Americans say they are.

That’s still a minority of 41 percent of Americans to a majority of 59 percent of Americans.

The majority must rule again in the United States of America — including having a president who is elected only by an actual majority of the American people. (Yes, the Electoral College must go.)

Repugnicans’ silence on domestic terrorist attack is deafening

So here are the booking photos of the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic gunman, one Robert Lewis Dear:

Reuters image

Surprise, surprise.

Here is what Yahoo News reports of Dear’s background:

Authorities have released few details about Robert Lewis Dear, the man identified as the alleged sole shooter in an attack on a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic that left three dead and nine others wounded Friday. But while investigators continue to search for clues to his motive, reporters have started digging into Dear’s past.

According to the Associated Press, 57-year-old Dear split his time between a house in Swannanoa, N.C., and a remote cabin without electricity or running water in Black Mountain, about 15 miles outside Asheville, N.C.

Neighbor James Russell told the AP that Dear typically kept to himself and that on the occasions when they did speak, Dear avoided eye contact and rambled about a variety of unrelated topics. However, Russell said, he’d never heard Dear talk about religion or abortion.

The AP also reported that on Saturday, Dear’s cabin was adorned with a cross made of twigs.

Other news outlets have traced Dear’s roots back to South Carolina, where police records indicate a history of arrests and domestic and neighbor disputes dating back to the mid-1990s. …

So far, searches for social media profiles and other online activity have yielded little evidence that Dear had much of an Internet presence.

Dear surrendered to police nearly five hours after he’s believed to have opened fire on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs on Friday. The city’s mayor, John Suthers, said Saturday that while investigators were not ready to discuss a possible motive for the attack — still hoping to glean more information about the gunman and his mental state — people can “make inferences from where it took place.”

Dear is being held without bond at the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center and is expected to appear in court Monday.

Robert Lewis Dear very, very apparently is a head case (a term, like “fucktard,” that I probably shouldn’t use) — I assume that he wasn’t cray-craying it up for his mugshots, and traveling all the way from North Carolina to Colorado to shoot people to death certainly indicates the cray, as does living in a remote cabin without any utilities (a picture of that “cabin” is here) — but I have little doubt that right-wing anti-abortion propaganda set him off.

The wingnuts are insane as it is, but when a certifiably clinically insane individual hears and/or reads and/or sees their insanity, yes, bad things can happen — with which, I surmise, the wingnuts are perfectly OK. (I imagine that yesterday and today, thousands of predominantly white, “Christian” wingnuts have celebrated the news of yet another “abortion clinic”* having been terrorized by one of their own, one of “God’s” “soldiers,” you know. Maybe they even had tailgate parties, just like they falsely claim the “Islamofascists” did here on 9/11.)

If it weren’t the case that Repugnican Tea Party rhetoric encourages domestic terrorism, Yahoo News wouldn’t also be reporting this today (all emphases in bold are mine):

The motive for a shooting that took place outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Friday still isn’t clear, but all three of the top Democratic presidential candidates quickly rushed to express their support for the organization. 

Meanwhile, the leading Republicans, all of whom have spoken out against Planned Parenthood, have largely remained silent about the shooting. 

Operatives from both parties suggested to Yahoo News that the incident puts the GOP field in a tough spot because of its opposition to Planned Parenthood. The organization is the country’s largest provider of abortions.*

Three people were killed in the shooting. One of the victims was a police officer who responded to a call for help. The suspect has been identified as Robert Lewis Dear, who was reportedly captured on the scene in Colorado Springs after surrendering to law enforcement.

According to the Associated Press, Dear had spent part of his time living in a North Carolina shack, and his neighbors described him as an incoherent loner with no known political or religious leanings. However, John Suthers, the Republican mayor of Colorado Springs, suggested people could draw conclusions about a motive for the attack by drawing “inferences from where it took place.” …

The three top Democrats vying to be Obama’s successor all addressed the shooting on Twitter. Both frontrunner Hillary Clinton and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley issued expressions of support for Planned Parenthood. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., took things a step further and suggested anti-abortion rhetoric could have encouraged the attack.

“I strongly support Planned Parenthood and the work it’s doing. I hope people realize that bitter rhetoric can have unintended consequences,” Sanders wrote. [Sanders, as usual, is spot-on, except that I don’t know that those consequences always are unintended. And I’m being serious, not flippant.]

Indeed, all of the leading Republican candidates have expressed opposition to Planned Parenthood. And almost none of them have made any public comment on the shooting.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is the only major Republican presidential hopeful who has tweeted about the incident.

“Praying for the loved ones of those killed, those injured & first responders who bravely got the situation under control in Colorado Springs,” Cruz wrote.

Yahoo News reached out to the campaigns of all of the other leading Republicans to see if they had any comment on the shootings. As of this writing, Anna Epstein, a spokeswoman for businesswoman Carly Fiorina was the only one to respond.

“Carly will be on Fox News Sunday tomorrow, and she’ll likely react then,” Epstein said.

There was no comment on the shooting from representatives for real estate mogul Donald Trump, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

All nine of these Republicans have spoken out against Planned Parenthood and expressed support for taking federal funding from the organization. Cruz has led a congressional push to defund Planned Parenthood by threatening a government shutdown.

A Democratic operative who works in Colorado told Yahoo News [he or she believes] the shooting will hurt the GOP field because it “reminds voters of the relentless Republican campaign against women’s health and the right to choose.” [He or she] also suggested the shooting would highlight Republican opposition to gun control.

In messages to Yahoo News, Amanda Carpenter, a Republican strategist and former top aide to Cruz, acknowledged that the shooting could be “politically uncomfortable” for GOP candidates because they oppose Planned Parenthood and also abhor the violent shooting. Carpenter suggested that the candidates should have followed Cruz’s example and commented on the shooting regardless of their stance on abortion.

“Candidates can choose to avoid commenting on crisis, but a president cannot,” Carpenter said. “While it’s prudent to wait for all information, GOP candidates should easily be able to express sorrow, whether this situation is politically uncomfortable or not.”

Carpenter went on to describe the silence in the Republican field as “sad.”

“This event happened 24 hours ago, and lives were lost. It’s sad more candidates can’t show their support for those in mourning. Republicans can disagree with what [Planned Parenthood] does and grieve for those injured and killed,” she said. “Being pro-life means opposing murder, period. Law enforcement lives are at risk each day, as shown in Colorado yesterday. They need our support more than ever, and the GOP should not hesitate to give it.”

Wow, is Ted Cruz a weasel-snake, pretending to actually give a shit about yesterday’s domestic terrorist attack and even trying to use his statement on it to give himself a leg up on his opponents within his party. No, he’s just trying to cover his precious political ass because, as Yahoo News noted, “Cruz has led a congressional push to defund Planned Parenthood by threatening a government shutdown.” Anti-Planned-Parenthood rhetoric just like Ted Cruz’s very most likely caused yesterday’s domestic terrorist attack.

It perhaps was politically astute of Cruz to (try to) politically get ahead of it, but his sincerity is less than zero.

Not only is the Repugnican Tea Party against Planned Parenthood and women’s constitutional, human right to control their own bodies, but the Repugnican Tea Party obediently supports the National Rifle Association. Robert Lewis Dear, who just might be a card-carrying member of the NRA himself, used a rifle in his terrorist attack.

And note that Cruz’s spokesweasel mentioned “law enforcement lives,” but not the lives of, say, any visitor to or employee of the Planned Parenthood clinic. Because to the neo-Nazis like Ted Cruz and his followers, the lives of those in the military and in quasi-military law enforcement are far more important than are any other lives, especially non-white-male, non-right-wing/non-Repugnican-Tea-Party, non-“Christian” lives.

So Cruz (via his spokessnake) managed to pretend to give a shit about the domestic terrorist attack that his demagoguery only encourages while at the same time blowing that dog whistle hard, noting that abortion is “murder” and singling out for special grief only the lost life of the law enforcement officer whom Robert Lewis Dear gunned down yesterday most likely because of his exposure to right-wing rhetoric.

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*Initial news reports about yesterday’s terrorist attack on the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs really incensed me, because they referred to the clinic as an “abortion clinic.”

FactCheck.org reports: “Abortions represent 3 percent of total services provided by Planned Parenthood, and roughly 10 percent of its clients received an abortion. The group does receive federal funding, but the money cannot be used for abortions by law.” (I’m not sure what “roughly 10 percent of its clients received an abortion” means. Does that mean that 10 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clients at some time have received an abortion through Planned Parenthood, or that they have had an abortion at any time in their lives, provided by any provider?)

FactCheck.org also gives this graphic:

But even though only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are “abortion services,” the fact remains that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled decades ago that the U.S. Constitution grants women the constitutional right to an abortion (with some restrictions).

Even if more than half of Planned Parenthood’s services were “abortion services,” there is nothing to argue about. Planned Parenthood is acting well within U.S. law, and those who oppose Planned Parenthood’s operation therefore are lawless — and, in my book, treasonous. The U.S. Supreme Court has spoken on this matter, backed by the U.S. Constitution. Period.

Will the Paris attacks bring back the ‘war on terror’? (The right hopes so!)

Associated Press photo

ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack on a Paris Starbucks yesterday because the Starbucks’ cups were not sufficiently religious. (Kidding! That’s called political satire. The caption for this news photo is: “Victims lay on the pavement outside a Paris restaurant, Friday, November 13, 2015. Police officials in France on Friday report multiple terror incidents, leaving many dead. It was unclear at this stage if the events are linked.” [It is fairly clear now that they were linked.])

I hate ISIS. Always have, always will, and my general feeling toward the members of ISIS long has been pound them into the sand.

It’s not that the members of ISIS call themselves Muslim; it’s that they oppress and slaughter those who do not share their insane religious beliefs — you know, they do what the “Christo”fascists here at home would do if they could. It’s not the specific religion of the members of ISIS that bothers me; it’s their theofascism, their insane, self-righteous, yes, evil belief that their insane religious beliefs give them the right to treat others any way that they please, in the name of a non-existent “God.”

That said, it’s important not to reduce it to black and white, good vs. evil. It’s important to try to view the entire context.

France, along with Britain and the United States (and Spain and some other European nations), has a long history of colonization and of meddling in the affairs of other nations, including in the Middle East. It’s much more complicated than that the members of ISIS are just “evil” and want to strike out at us “good” (that is, “Christian”) Westerners, because that’s just what “evil” people do: strike out at “good” people. No, it isn’t just that “they hate our freedoms.”

Yes, I bring up the ghost of Gee Dubya because I’ll be frank: The United States of America has been rotting from within for many, many years now. This domestic rot started no later than during the Reagan era. “Democrat” Bill Clinton did little to nothing to reverse this rot and decline, and then we had eight long, ruinous years of another George Bush, and now we’re still in another eight years of the Clintonesque/do-nothing/Democratic-in-name-only Barack Obama era.

Thus far in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, the main focus, quite appropriately, has been on domestic issues.

Then ISIS goes and attacks Paris, killing at least 127 people. (ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks of yesterday, anyway.)

The French seem prepared to strike back, which is quite human and is understandable, but which quite possibly will start a back-and-forth blood bath that will drag on.

Which will mean that very quickly, the focus in the United States of America no longer will be trying to reverse our domestic rot, but once again will turn toward “terrorism,” because we Americans, first and foremost, don’t want to be bombed or riddled with bullets when we’re out and about shopping for overpriced shit that we don’t need in our mega-malls, drinking our caffeinated hot beverages from our not-Christmas-enough Starbucks cups, or watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster or Oscar bait at a cineplex.

Our chance of being slaughtered by a fellow “Christian” citizen is much higher than is our chance of ever being cut down by an “Islamofascist” “terrorist” (or by an “illegal”), but no matter; we Americans never have been good at calculating actual risks vs. vastly over-inflated risks. (After all, They hate our freedoms!)

I am sorry that dozens of human beings were slaughtered in Paris yesterday. I don’t believe in killing innocents* in order to try to score political points, whether those innocents are killed by “Islamofascist” “terrorists” or by the U.S. military (funny how when the United States government kills innocent people in order to make political gains, which it does routinely, that’s never called “terrorism” [nor is the mass-murderous Israel even capable of “terrorism,” because, like the United States, Israel is “good”]).

While I understand the stance of ISIS and other Islamic fundamentalists that France and other Western nations are evil because they long have participated in the colonization of and military attacks upon predominantly Muslim nations in the Middle East, the “Islamofascists” apparently also dislike the Western nations more or less equally because the Western nations aren’t backasswards like the Islamic fundamentalists are, such as with their misogyny, their homophobia, their sexual repression and their religious intolerance (including severe but awfully selective scriptural enforcement) to the point of routine violence against “apostates.”

I mean, in its online statement claiming responsibility for the attacks on Paris yesterday, ISIS referred to Paris as a/the “capital of adultery and vice.”

ISIS further declared, “The stench of death will not leave their noses as long as they remain at the forefront of the Crusaders’ campaign, dare to curse our prophet, boast of a war on Islam in France, and strike Muslims in the lands of the caliphate with warplanes that were of no use to them in the streets and rotten alleys of Paris.”

ISIS also proclaimed that France “will remain at the top of the list of targets of the Islamic State.”

My impression is that France is at “the top of the list” for several reasons: One, it has more Muslim inhabitants (percentage-wise) than does any other Western nation; two, apparently there long has been widespread mistreatment of and discrimination against Muslims in “innocent” France; and, of course, France is much geographically closer to the Middle East than are other Western nations (especially the United States, of course), making France, logistically, an easier target for terrorist attacks.

My hope is that things calm down in France quickly, that tit-for-tat bloodshed doesn’t occur, and that the United States of America continues to focus on its domestic crises instead of returning to the days of the unelected, fascistic George W. Bush regime when the “war on terror” eclipsed everything, while the filthy rich continued to get even richer from stealing even more from us, the distracted-by-the-“war-on-terror” masses, and while things here at home continued to deteriorate while we focused on the “terrorists” abroad (yes, the billions and billions of our dollars that went to the war machine — mostly, to the treasonous war profiteers [a.k.a. “contractors”], such as the folks at Dick Cheney’s Halliburton — were billions and billions of our dollars that never went to our public schools, to our streets and other public infrastructure, to our health-care needs, to food, to shelter, to environmental protection, to job creation, etc.).

The Repugnican Tea Party would love for the national discussion to pivot from its current, rare focus on domestic issues and to return instead to the “war on terror.” Because that’s where the Repugnican Tea Party traitors are most comfortable, are most in their fear-based element: spooking the masses by some “enemy” “threat,” be it the often-brown-skinned “illegals” from south of the border or be it the often-brown-skinned “Islamofascist” “terrorists” from abroad come to kill us because “they hate our freedoms.”

This use of trumped-up/Trumped-up fear allows the home-grown, right-wing traitors (and yes, terrorists) right here among us at home to, even literally, get away with murder, to run rampant with their treasonous, right-wing crimes in a nation whose masses are distracted from wildly overblown concerns of harm from without, when the real harm, as almost always, actually is from within.

We truly patriotic Americans allow our nation to return to the right-wing mindset of a “war on terror” at our own peril.

We can stop it.

We simply do what we did not do last time: We stand up and we say: Oh, hell no!

—

*Yes, I get it that there are gradations of innocence.

One could argue, as the “Islamofascists” do argue, that merely to be a citizen of a Western nation that militarily attacks in the Middle East is to be guilty by complacency (if not merely by association), that is, the citizens of the Western nations, this line of thought goes, allow their nation’s military forces to strike the Middle East, and therefore, they aren’t innocent, but do have blood on their hands.

However, when it comes to revenge, I don’t believe in group revenge. If an individual grievously harms another individual, I can see revenge being taken upon the individual who actually perpetrated the harm him- or herself. But to hold an entire group of people accountable for harm done to other people whom they’ve never even encountered — harm that was perpetrated by other people whom they’ve never even encountered — is bullshit. It’s not justice. At best, it’s very, very sloppy revenge.

Billarybots in the corporate media punditry: A ‘God’-less Bernie ATTACKS!

Now that the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination is between Bernie Sanders and Billary Clinton, of course the attacks on Sanders have intensified. While Barack Obama has been painted as a Muslim, Sanders apparently is being painted as an atheist (gasp!) as well as a socialist (gasp! gasp! gasp!). And because the corporately owned and controlled media love to report on a fight, they’re portraying Sanders’ campaigning — that is, simply distinguishing himself from his main opponent — as “attacks” on poor Billary. Above is a screen grab of Sanders’ recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s television show, in which Kimmel asked Sanders whether he believes in “God” and Sanders did not give a direct “yes” or “no” response to the religious test for the presidency that long-time asshole Kimmel put before him. (Video of that exchange is here.) 

I supported Barack Obama in 2008*, and I remember that whenever he made a reference to “God” when he was running for the nation’s highest office, I cringed.

I didn’t much hold it against him, but held my nose and voted for him anyway. Although there is supposed to be no religious test for the presidency, up to now, anyway, pretty much any presidential candidate who hasn’t claimed to believe in the “Christian” equivalent of Zeus widely has been considered unelectable. Therefore, no presidential candidate has dared not to make such a claim, whether true or not.

Until now, apparently.

Last month I wrote of Bernie Sanders:

… I much would rather see a secular Muslim in the White House than I’d ever want someone like Ben Carson or Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz (or Mittens the Mormon millionaire) in the White House. Because the issue isn’t nearly so much the content of the religion that we’re talking about, but how much one who is in power (or wishes to have more power) wishes to impose his or her religious beliefs upon the rest of us.

That is the problem — when theofascists just can’t/won’t keep their hateful, insane, dangerous dogmas to themselves, but wish to shove them down our throats, a la theocrat Kim Davis and those who publicly support her, including theocratic Repugnican Tea Party presidential wannabes.

Where it comes to religion I am equal opportunity; I couldn’t support a right-wing Jew for president, either, because I can’t see a right-wing Jew keeping his or her right-wing religious ideology out of his or her governance.

Bernie Sanders, my chosen 2016 presidential candidate, was born to Jewish parents, but from his biography I gather that he’s quite secular, that he understands how critical is the separation between church and state, so he doesn’t frighten me in the least. I don’t see at all that Sanders has a hidden agenda of imposing Jewish law (which, I guess from my quick Internet research, is called “halakhah”) upon the land once in the Oval Office. …

So this isn’t news, but now that Bernie Sanders unquestionably is the only candidate who still might yet bring down Queen Billary Clinton, the attacks by the corporately owned and controlled media (which play the “God” card, since it’s good for bidness [more than 90 percent of Americans say that they believe in “God”]) — hard and soft attacks, direct and indirect attacks — are starting. (Well, not “starting,” really, but intensifying; the whole “socialist” thing has been anywhere from a sneer to a slam all along.)

Reports the Washington Post yesterday under the headline: “Bernie Sanders: Our First Non-religious President?” (remarks in [brackets] are mine):

Much of the attention paid to Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has to do with the s-word: Can a socialist be elected president? How much of a socialist is he? What exactly is socialism? [Red-baiting is fun! It gets clicks! And advertising dollars!]

What many haven’t picked up on is that a Sanders presidency would be a first in a couple other ways. First, Sanders would be our first Jewish president. [Is that meant to scare people or enlighten them?] And second, while Sanders is culturally Jewish, he has said that he’s “not particularly religious” and has been described by some as agnostic [horrors!].

Asked during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show this [past] week whether he believed in God, Sanders demurred.

“I am who I am,” Sanders said. “And what I believe in and what my spirituality is about, is that we’re all in this together. That I think it is not a good thing to believe that as human beings we can turn our backs on the suffering of other people.”

Sanders added: “This is not Judasim. This is what Pope Francis is talking about — that we cannot worship just billionaires and the making of more and more money. Life is more than that.”

In political terms, this is what’s known as a dodge. It’s an economic and cultural vision that Sanders attempts to shoehorn into a religious conversation by noting that religious people like Pope Francis feel the same way. It’s basically saying, “I’d rather talk about poor people than God.” …

Just: Wow. (Again, that’s the Washington Post.) I’d add, of course, that Jesus Christ talked an awful lot about poor people, something that most of today’s American “Christians” simply ignore because they don’t want to help out the poor. (Most of them, in fact, haven’t actually read the New Testament, and those who have, have retained very little of it.)

How about we put Bernie Sanders in a huge tank of water with huge rocks tied to him? If he sinks, then he doesn’t believe in God! — and he’ll receive his just punishment!

That would be the spirit of the mob mentality of a “Bernie-Sanders-doesn’t-believe-in-God!” meme, if it metastasizes.

I don’t much give a fuck whether Bernie Sanders believes in “God” or not. I mean, I would hope that the person who has access to the nuclear codes, to paraphrase Jeb! Bush, is not actually so insane as to believe in a non-existent Zeus-like deity who, he believes, wants him to do this or that, as though he were fucking Moses (as at least half of the Repugnican Tea Party presidential aspirants claim — that “God” has communicated to them personally that he wants them to be president).

But since Bernie just doesn’t talk about religion (thank “God”!), and since his record and his history make it pretty clear that as president he would preside secularly, I’m fine with him.

The thugs, murderers and rapists who comprise ISIS claim that they believe in “God.” (To be fair, within the U.S. military we’ve long had plenty of “Christian” thugs, murderers and rapists of our own.) The Israelis, who have slaughtered far more Palestinians than vice-versa, claim that they believe in “God” — indeed, they claim that they slaughter for “God,” as do their Palestinian adversaries (for whom I have much more sympathy than the Israelis, since far more of them die and since the Israelis long have had far more assistance from the United States than have the impoverished Palestinians [Israel apparently is the third-richest nation in the Middle East, behind Qatar and Kuwait; Palestine is the second-poorest nation in the Middle East, behind Yemen]).

George W. Bush, who, among other things, blatantly treasonously stole a presidential election in 2000; treasonously failed to protect Americans from “God”-driven terrorists on September 11, 2001 (on which almost 3,000 Americans were killed); treasonously started a wholly illegal, immoral, unprovoked and unjust, bogus war in Iraq in 2003 (in which more than 4,000 of our troops died for his lies and for Dick Cheney’s Halliburton’s war profiteering, and in which many, many more Iraqis were killed); and treasonously just allowed around 2,000 Americans to be killed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, claimed to be a huge believer in “God,” and look how much his belief in “God” benefited the nation and the world.

Billary Clinton claims to believe in “God,” but look at her record. She’s a war hawk (as the first [arguably viable] female president wannabe, she doesn’t want to appear to be weak on “defense”) — as long as she’s never put in harm’s way, it’s A-OK (she voted for the unelected Bush regime’s bogus Vietraq War in October 2002, knowing fully well that her precious ass never would be at risk). And while she claims now to be a populist, she’s always done Wall Street’s bidding, and the Wall Street weasels who give her mountains of campaign cash aren’t bothered by her populist rhetoric because, with a wink, they understand that it’s only rhetoric.

Not just to pick on Billary. Obama claims that he’s a “Christian” who believes in “God,” yet he very apparently is wholly untroubled by the hundreds of civilians whom his precious drones have slaughtered, and while he has talked about the struggling middle class, what, as president, has he done about the insane income inequality that began no later than during the presidency of Ronald Reagan? (Oh, that’s right: He’s always been too busy talking up Reagan as having been one of our greatest presidents ever.)

Jesus Christ proclaimed, “Again I tell you, 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,” and Jesus obviously was an anti-capitalist socialist. The Bible’s anti-capitalist, socialist stance long predates Jesus; I long have taken the story of the golden calf to be at least as much about the evil that is capitalism (specifically, greed, selfishness and materialism) as it is about “idolatry”; it wasn’t just the form of the calf that was being worshiped, but it also, of course, was the gold out of which it was made.

I applaud Bernie Sanders for not publicly proclaiming that he believes in “God.” Again, whether he actually believes in “God” or not isn’t nearly as important to me as is the fact that nothing in his political career (he was a mayor, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and now is in his second term in the U.S. Senate) suggests that he thinks it’s OK to shove his own religious beliefs down others’ throats. He is no theocrat.

My observation long has been that on the whole, agnostics and atheists are significantly more moral than are those who call themselves “Christians,” especially the right-wing nut jobs who proclaim themselves already “saved.” Once you’re already “saved,” you can do as you please, and you can find a way to claim that you’re just doing “God’s” bidding, whatever it is that you’re doing — even mass slaughter, such as George W. Bush did with his war crimes and his crimes against humanity (as well as with his treasonous, anti-democratic theft of the 2000 presidential election, in which he received more than a half-million fewer votes than did Al Gore).

Untold evil has been done in the name of “God” over the centuries, so to slam Bernie Sanders for possibly not believing in “God” is insane — and quite possibly evil, when we use “God” to justify our evil.

I support Bernie Sanders to the possibly-bitter end, but I’m acutely aware that it’s quite possible, if not even probable, that Bernie Sanders is way too evolved and advanced for the American people, who still dwell in their caves, knuckles dragging and mouths perpetually open, blathering about “God” and how important it is that everyone else believe in this “God.”

I’ve seen the Internet meme that Bernie Sanders is “not the president that we deserve, but the president that we need.”

That increasingly appears to be the case.

P.S. The corporately owned and controlled media, who profiteer from reporting conflict to the point that they’ll fabricate it if it doesn’t actually exist, and who of course want to take down the “socialist!” Bernie Sanders (capitalism must not be threatened!), now are reporting that he is “attacking” poor, poor Billary Clinton.

“Bernie Sanders Goes on the Attack at Iowa Democratic Dinner,” Politico reports, without actually substantiating the headline in the “news” story that’s right under it. The Washington Post takes a bit more sober approach, with “After a Long Stretch for Clinton, Sanders Turns More Aggressive,” but that headline doesn’t support the “news” story under it, either.

Read the two “news” stories yourself. You’ll see that Bernie Sanders and his campaign team simply are talking about his record and his beliefs and where his record and his beliefs differ from Clinton’s. That’s called campaigning. It’s what you’re supposed to fucking do: Tell the voter why she or he should vote for you instead of for your opponent or opponents. Duh.

I’ve seen nothing that Bernie Sanders has done or said that accurately could be deemed an “attack” on Billary — but, of course, it’s much more sensationalist to claim that “Bernie ATTACKS!”

Again: It strikes me as probably true that we need Bernie but don’t deserve him, that we deserve a President Billary or a President Rubio or yes, even a President Trump, if enough of us Americans don’t remove our heads from our rectums and finally vote in our own best interests — which necessitates that we see attacks on the democratic socialist and apparently agnostic-to-even-atheist Bernie Sanders by the corporately owned and controlled media punditry as what they are: desperate attempts to maintain the socioeconomic status quo, in which the vast majority of us Americans remain serfs to our corporate overlords.

—

*I supported and voted for him in 2008, but I didn’t vote for him in 2012 (I voted for the Green Party candidate instead), since the “change” that he’d promised never materialized — indeed, he spectacularly squandered his political capital in 2009 and 2010, which gave rise to the “tea party” and the loss of the U.S. House of Representatives to these fascists, which made me lose all of that hope.

Um, yeah: I, for one, actually hold someone to his or her campaign promises.

Throw ‘Christian’ ‘martyr’ Kim Davis to the lions! (Or, A Modest Proposal)

Kim Davis, meet Cecil’s cousin! Cecil’s cousin, meet Kim Davis!

Kim Davis, the insane Kentucky county clerk and shameless attention whore who has made a name for herself by staunchly refusing (in the name of “God”) to do her job of granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has achieved the “martyrdom” that she had been seeking; for having violated the will of even the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal judge today finally put her treasonous, theocratic ass in jail, where she belongs.

I have a better idea: Let’s really make Davis a “Christian” “martyr” and throw her to African lions!

After all, an American wingnut killed Cecil the African lion; we Americans owe it to the African lions to feed them an American wingnut, do we not?

But seriously, I have zero sympathy for Davis, who, in typical “Christian” fashion, claims victimhood for herself while she victimizes others.

The Bible – which was written centuries ago by ignorant people – might be against same-sex marriage, but who ever was trying to force Davis (who infamously has been heterosexually married herself four times) into a same-sex marriage?

Same-sex marriage is now the law of the land, but the haters still get to hate non-heterosexuals and non-gender-conforming individuals (in the name of “God” or not), and they still get to shun same-sex marriage for themselves. The U.S. Supreme Court’s quite-correct ruling in June that prohibitions against same-sex marriage violate the equal human and civil rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution doesn’t violate anyone’s religious beliefs – it only prevents theocratic haters like Davis from discriminating against those of us who don’t share their knuckle-dragging, backasswards religious beliefs.

And it is our First-Amendment right not to share their antiquated and dangerous religious beliefs and to not have their antiquated and dangerous religious beliefs shoved down our throats.

This is the central problem: So-called “Christians” believe that the rest of us must follow their beliefs. It’s not enough for them that they believe their bullshit; the rest of us must, too. They must expand their Bible-based lunacy, these lunatics believe.

This is theocracy, and it is no more acceptable for “Christians” to attempt a theocratic takeover of the United States of America than it would be for theocrats like those of the Taliban, al Qaeda or ISIS to do so.

Kim Davis does not work for a church. She works for a county government, and county governments (as well as all state and local governments) are bound by the U.S. Constitution, by U.S. Supreme Court case law (the U.S. Supreme Court is the final arbiter on the U.S. Constitution), and by federal laws.

Kim Davis is no martyr, no victim, and she does have a choice: Do her job or quit her job — or remain in jail for her refusal to do her job.

This is justice.

God bless America!

Update: It’s being reported that five of the six of Davis’ deputies will begin to issue same-sex marriage licenses starting tomorrow. (The lone holdout is her son; the Podunk County clerk’s office reeks of nepotism, among other things.)

The federal judge who put Davis behind bars for her blatant contempt of court has indicated that he intends to keep her behind bars for a while to prevent her from trying to stop the issuing of the licenses.

Indeed, the constitutional rights of the many are far more important than is Davis’ bullshit claim that she’s simply defending her right to her religious beliefs by imposing them on others.

She can rot in jail for all that I care.

Or be thrown to the lions.

Either one.

Here’s her booking photo, by the way:

As others have noted, it’s ironic that she’s so homophobic, because she really could use some gay men to update her look to this millennium.

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.