Secessionists

In toto from Democrats Organizing For America.

"This is not my nation any more.

This is not my America!" they say.

Don't laugh- they're probably right.

Because if you believe that America in the 21st century should function under the same assumptions and with the same values as America in the 18th century...

then no, this actually isn't your America any more.

If you believe that "Freedom of religion" means that you have the right to make decisions about health care, family planning, equal rights, evolution and education for people who do not share your religion...

you're in the wrong place.

If you believe that black people vote for a black man only because of race but white people never vote for a white guy because of his race...

if you believe that a 90 year old veteran who has been voting for 50 years should be denied a ballot because he no longer has a driver's license...

then it's not your America any more.

If you believe that bullying and abuse is ok as long as you do it for Jesus, and that kids are better off in orphanages than with gay parents and that rape shouldn't be an 'excuse' for an abortion because some girls rape easy...

this is not your America.

If you believe that the working poor, pensioners and veterans in America just want 'free stuff' but the wealthy demand their personal income tax cuts for the good of the nation...

no, this is not your America.

If you think you have the right to say who other people can love...

this isn't that place.

And if you believe that it's not possible for your candidate to lose an election unless the "urban" people cheated...by voting... that an acceptable way to win is to try to stop as many people as possible from voting, that "bipartisan' means that all the wrong people are supposed to do things your way and that the "United" part of "United States of America" only applies when your party is running the show...

then you don't understand what America is.

It's not a country where you can just 'opt out' when things don't go your way, and where a bunch of people whining that they want to leave will make us turn our backs on our principles.

It's not a place where beginning a sentence with "I'm not a racist' makes it ok to call the President a ni**er.

It's not a country where a rich, privileged old man can attack a young woman's character in vicious and almost pornographic simply because he disagrees with her politics and not suffer consequences.

It's not a place where we believe that a helping hand in the middle of a natural disaster should come with a pricetag..

It's not a nation where we think it's ok for poor people to die from treatable diseases because millionaire CEO's don't want to cut into their profits.

And thankfully, it's not a nation where bitter, obscenely wealthy men can buy themselves an election.

You folks are the same people who yell "America- love it or leave it" at us every time we try to fix what's broken around here.

Now, it seems like you don't love it enough to stick around and work together.

Well, we're not trying to run you out, but you are certainly free to go.

Of course you don't get to take your state with you- sorry, but that 'Constitution' thing you're always going on about says the states stay together.

And you don't get the flag you're always waving; that belongs to America.

But you can leave, if that's really what you want.

The border is that-a-way.

Tracy

Thank you, Tracy.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Pretty song, positively cosmic slide show, message from God.

Thanks to 1BlueStarRising

Headline of the Day

Doctors Reveal Dick Cheney Burning Through At Least 3 Hearts Each Week

And we get to pay for it. Lucky us. Grrrr...

Rand Paul and the Sweet Smell of Your Own Crap

(Thanks to Crooks and Liars for the link)

From a post at TPM about great white hope and missionary Rand Paul venturing among the natives. Last coupla ¶:

The gist of what happened yesterday was that Paul took this clown show to an audience at an historically black college where, yeah, they actually do know that Lincoln freed the slaves and that Frederick Douglass was a Republican. And they’ve even heard about the Dixiecrats. After I reading Benjy Sarlin’s account I was surprised Paul didn’t introduce himself by thanking the crowd for welcoming him to the ‘Democrat Party Plantation.’

Rand’s surprise was akin to one of those old Bugs Bunny cartoons when Bugs’ nemesis walks over a loose floorboard and the board flies up and whaps the guy right in the face. You can become so lost in your own story that you confuse your conciliation with your aggression. The GOP is so deep into its own self-justifying racial alternative reality that there’s some genuine surprise when the claptrap doesn’t survive first contact with actual black people.

Note to Randian Paul: Pull the spears out and go back to the drawing board. Heh.

Shopping Day

Over the mountains and through the woods etc. etc. See yas. I'll leave you with this lovely thought:

Quote of the Day

El Rude-o from his post about some dumbass song:

This notion that Christians or whites or straights are persecuted or under attack is utter bullshit. Is anyone taking away any rights from you? No? So you're equating "persecution" with someone saying "you're wrong." The thing is that white, straight, Christian (mostly) men are shit-scared of their power dwindling so they have to make themselves into victims. They have to shut down progress because they see it as just an attack on them.

The "culture war" in a nutshell.

Headline of the Day

Former Tenn. Lawmaker Allegedly Drove 90 MPH While Masturbating Out Window

I've been scratching my head trying to figure out how he could do that and there's only one answer - cruise control. And alcohol. Heh.

Top 40 Ding Dong!

Following up on my post on the death of Iron Drawers:

‘Ding Dong! The witch is dead’ heads to top of UK charts after death of Margaret Thatcher

“Ding Dong! The witch is dead”, as sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, on Tuesday raced to the top of the Amazon download chart in Britain, a day after the death of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Another version sung by jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald placed at number 4 and also topped the iTunes UK vocal chart as record-buyers passed their judgement on the legacy of Thatcher, who died of a stroke on Monday aged 87.
...

The Official Charts Company, which collates sales from all outlets, predicts that the “macabre sense of humour of British music fans” will give the 1939 record a top 40 placing in their weekly chart.

The Brain is once again proud to lead cultural trends! Heh.

Gee, ya think?

Right-wing religious nuts limit Republican Party's future

Who knew the christowhackos could do the country such a service?

Click to embiggen

From the LATimes

Headline of the Day

New brain study should probe shallow recesses of tea party minds

That'll be kinda "Brain Study 101". Not hard, won't take long, good practice for studying actual brains later on.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Guided Missile Destroyer John S. McCain Sent to Korean Peninsula to Deter Threats
If that doesn’t work, we’ll send John McCain himself.

How d'ya say, "hey you kids, get off the lawn!" in Korean?

Obama Apologizes for “Best-Looking” Remark About California AG Kamala Harris
Says he should have left it at “Va-va-va-voom!”

He's right, though. Kamala's a babe!

Researchers Find Computers Can Read, Record Our Dreams
New app records, edits dreams, uploads them directly to YouTube.

Stock up on bleach. There's gonna be a shortage...

Los Angeles First City to Synchronize All Its Traffic Signals
Now when you're stuck at a gridlocked intersection for thirty minutes, so is everyone else.

Various places in L.A. have had synchronized traffic lights for years. Steve McQueen said he could make all the lights on Ventura Boulevard at 3 AM if he was going 130mph. I have reason to believe he knew whereof he spoke.

A Majority of 52% Now Supports Marijuana Legalization
And nearly 40% say don't Bogart that joint.

My friend, pass it over to me...

Thanks to Andrey Milevskiy.

Heh.

Headline of the Day

Conservatives Are Morphing into the Party of Doomsday Preppers

“It’s not that conservative people are more fearful, it’s that fearful people are more conservative,”

Old Cold War bomb shelter joke, right after the nuclear holocaust:

Knock, knock...

"...Who's there?"

Scaredy cats suck and they're trying to take us down with them as a matter of policy.

Ding Dong!

The witch is dead!

Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. She played a key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War but also using her influence to publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq. She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as "terrorists", something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. She was a steadfast friend to brutal tyrants such as Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Indonesian dictator General Suharto ("One of our very best and most valuable friends"). And as my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne detailed last year, "across Britain Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted – and for her political legacy of rampant inequality and greed, privatisation and social breakdown."

To demand that all of that be ignored in the face of one-sided requiems to her nobility and greatness is a bit bullying and tyrannical, not to mention warped. As David Wearing put it this morning in satirizing these speak-no-ill-of-the-deceased moralists: "People praising Thatcher's legacy should show some respect for her victims. Tasteless." [...]

How George Bush Gave Krazy Kim The Bomb

From October 10, 2006 by Greg Palast.

How did a berserker like North Korea’s Kim Jong Il get the bomb in the first place? Answer: He bought it from the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan in 2001 — while all our President’s men ordered our intelligence agents to keep their eyes shut tight.

Why would Team Bush pull back our agents from nabbing North Korea’s bomb connection? The answer in two words: Saudi Arabia.

The agent on the line said, “There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis.” Khan is Pakistani, not Saudi, but, nevertheless, the investigation led back to Saudi Arabia. There was no way that the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan could have found the billions to cook up his nukes within the budget of his poor nation.

We eventually discovered that agents knew the Saudis, who had secretly funded Saddam’s nuclear weapons ambitions in the eighties, apparently moved their bomb-for-Islam money from Iraq to Dr. Khan’s lab in Pakistan after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.
...

The U.S. government missed discovering Dr. Khan’s radioactive fire sale because our agents were hard at work ignoring the Saudi money trail. If the agencies had not been told to “back off” the Saudis and Dr. Khan, would the U.S. have uncovered the nuclear shipments in time to stop them? We can’t possibly know, but, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, it’s amazing what you don’t see when you’re told not to look.

Thanks again, Georgie. Worst. "President". Ever.

Well, that didn't take long...

Click to embiggen

Via Truthout.