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  • Joe Arpaio – Vile and Rotten

    Joe Arpaio - Vile and Rotten

    Why is this guy still in business? Sheriff Joe Arpaio's volunteer investigation into documents pertaining to President Barack Obama's place of birth and citizenship now includes the services of a taxpayer-funded ...

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  • Romney The Liar

    Romney The Liar

    The lies roll off the man's lips like music off Yo-Yo Ma's cello. Both are virtuosos - one a cellist, the other a liar. A partial list. Bush had nothing to do ...

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  • Late Night Political Humor

    Late Night Political Humor

    Happy Friday. The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor. "Barack Obama supports same-sex marriage. Mitt Romney doesn't even support same-sex car pools." –David Letterman "The head of ...

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  • Another Unexceptional Republican Claims Obama Is Not An American

    Another Unexceptional Republican Claims Obama Is Not An American

    Republican Rep. Mike Coffman at a Saturday afternoon fundraiser in Colorado. I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I ...

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  • Idiot Quote of the Day: The “Gayer” Obama

    Idiot Quote of the Day: The Gayer Obama

    Rand Paul: Call me cynical, but I didn’t think his [Obama's] views on marriage could get any gayer. We won't call Rand cynical. Ignorant, bigoted asshole is more fitting. An adult using ...

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  • Late Night Political Humor

    Late Night Political Humor

    Happy Friday. The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor. "President Obama came out with approval of same-sex marriage. He said that over the years, he has ...

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  • What The Hell Is The Problem With Gay Republicans?

    What The Hell Is The Problem With Gay Republicans?

    I've never understood Log Cabin Republicans - gay conservatives who give their support to a homophobic political party that derides their sexuality and refuses to grant them equal rights under ...

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  • Obama – Same-Sex Marriage and Doing The Right Thing

    Obama - Same-Sex Marriage and Doing The Right Thing

    Finally. “I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own ...

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  • Another Day, Another Vote – Indiana, NC and Wisconsin

    Another Day, Another Vote - Indiana, NC and Wisconsin

    Election roundup: Indiana. As polls forecast, the Tea Party's efforts to cleanse the GOP of any impure conservatives has Dick Lugar out and teabagger Richard Mourdock in. Mourdock is the new Republican ...

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  • ‘Romney – The Man Who Saved The Auto Industry’ and Other Fairy Tales

    'Romney - The Man Who Saved The Auto Industry' and Other Fairy Tales

    There are lies...and then there are lies. My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help. And frankly, that’s finally what ...

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  • A Madman and Fox News

    A Madman and Fox News

    From the papers captured last year at Osama bin Laden's Pakistani hideout comes this. Like any public figures, bin Laden and his advisers were mindful of the media. Adam Gadahn, one ...

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  • Late Night Political Humor

    Late Night Political Humor

    The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor. Happy Friday. "Today Mitt Romney visited a firehouse here in New York City. Of course, he was disappointed ...

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  • New GOP Logo

    New GOP Logo

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  • Can Obama Be Swift-Boated?

    Can Obama Be Swift-Boated?

    It happened to Kerry. Can it happen to Obama? Nope says Margaret Carlson. Obama’s belief system -- in that hopey-changey business and the post-partisanship thing -- has been altered by reality. ...

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  • Quote of the Day: The Gay Republican

    Quote of the Day: The Gay Republican

    Sullivan: What do Republicans call a gay man with neoconservative passion, a committed relationship and personal courage? A faggot. Exactly right, but then could one expect anything different from a political party that ...

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  • Christian Pastor: Fixing Gay Is Like Squashing a Cockroach

    Christian Pastor: Fixing Gay Is Like Squashing a Cockroach

    And they claim that atheists are immoral? The ugly side of religion shows its face once again. The words below were spoken at a Sunday sermon by Sean Harris, a pastor ...

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  • GM Alive, bin Laden Dead

    GM Alive, bin Laden Dead

    It's been fun watching conservatives and Romney twist themselves into pretzels trying to undo Mitt's past words on GM and bin Laden. Romney, April 2007: It’s not worth moving heaven and earth ...

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  • Republicans Are The Problem

    Republicans Are The Problem

      In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, a couple of scholars from liberal and conservative think tanks, discuss the state of American politics. We have been studying Washington politics and ...

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  • Marco Rubio – Just Another Weasel

    Marco Rubio - Just Another Weasel

    Romney's VP-in-waiting, Marco Rubio, is perfecting the conservative sleaze play. He has proposed his version of the Dream Act in which people who entered the country illegally as children will be ...

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  • Obama’s Move Forward

    Obama's Move Forward

    Beyond the rhetoric, the political BS, the lies - that is, the concerted effort by the right-wing noise machine to distort and misinform at every opportunity - is the very ...

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Gay and Icky

You don’t have to be an atheist to understand what it is that really bothers opponents of same-sex marriage.

Exactly right.

If you’ve ever spent time with a homophobe attempting to explain away their bigotry and the reasons they’re against same-sex marriage, they’ll most probably speak of their belief that marriage is a sacred covenant reserved for one man and one woman. Same-sex marriage, they’ll tell you, violates the sanctity of marriage. They might even at some point grin and snort and inform you that homosexuality is a choice thing. The implication here is that if a gay person wants to get married, all they need do is choose a person of the opposite sex to marry. Easy. Switch on, switch off.

Well, the choice part speaks of their ignorance in regard to science’s understanding of sexual orientation, while the sanctity bit speaks of their ignorance in regard to how the Bible deals with the institution of marriage.

It’s got pretty stuff like Genesis 2:22-24,

Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.  The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman, ‘ for she was taken out of man.”  For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

…and then it’s got the not-so-pretty stuff like Deuteronomy 21:10-14.

When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife.Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nailsand put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.

It’s all quite clear. Raid their land, kill their husbands, take their women, shave their heads, force them into marriage and rape them at will. But when she displeases you and you feel the need to cut off her shackles and let wifey loose, don’t you dare try to sell her for you’re about to make her an outcast. Just let the bitch go.

The sanctity of marriage indeed.

Tell you what, the next time some narrow-minded bigot brings up the sanctity of marriage in regard to same-sex marriage, feel free to ignore them and walk away with the knowledge that what really bugs the hell out of them is that they think gay people are icky.

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Catholic Bishop Spews Right-Wing Garbage

Jesus (c. 30 CE):

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of the Catholic diocese of Peoria, Illinois (2012 CE) who obviously missed the above Jesus quote in his many readings on his way to becoming a bishop.

For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire.

The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism. And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry.

The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.

In our own families, in our parishes, where we live and where we work – like that very first apostolic generation – we must be bold witnesses to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We must be a fearless army of Catholic men, ready to give everything we have for the Lord, who gave everything for our salvation.

Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like those first disciples before the Resurrection locked together in the Upper Room.

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, President Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

Is there anything this President does which is not viewed as “radical” or “extreme” by the right?

And here’s Jenky sounding every bit Santorumish as he pours it on as thick and ugly as any politician with an agenda and an audience.

This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries — only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down.

Yes, that’s it. Obama the anti-Christ hard at work on shutting down every Catholic institution across the land.

It’s going to be one very long, very ugly election season.

Discussion on the Church and other such institutions with tax-exempt status prohibited under federal law from electioneering here.

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Offer A Mormon A Gay Afterlife

I’m liking this idea. Via Dan Savage of google/santorum fame:

HEY, EVERYBODY: You know how Mormons “baptize” dead people who weren’t Mormons—including Holocaust victims—because Mormons believe they have a right to choose Mormonism for the deceased? And you know how the Mormon Church says that being gay is a choice? The same church that doesn’t think you should have a choice about being posthumously baptized? Well, now you can choose homosexuality for dead Mormons! Just go to AllDeadMormonsAreNowGay.com, enter the name of a deceased Mormon or ask the site to find a dead Mormon for you, and—presto!—that dead Mormon gets to have a gay afterlife!

I wonder what Mitt Romney would think of Mormons enjoying a gay afterlife? Given that his deceased father-in-law, a staunch atheist who despised organized religions, was posthumously baptized into the Mormon church, I’m guessing that Mitt might be open to the idea. But then again, maybe not.

In any case, I’ve got dibs on converting Mitt should he leave this earth before me.

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The Sick Mind of Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum is a strange, strange man. More we hear of him, the more frightening the thought that a man as disturbed as he could possibly one day occupy the White House. Santorum’s religious zealotry utilizes Christian dogma as an excuse to spread a special brand of hate and divisiveness. And while his homophobic bigotry is a well documented fact, his religious bigotry might be a little less known.

Rick Santorum has sought to project a sunny suburban, regular guy appeal as he vies for the GOP presidential nomination. But whenever I have seen him during the campaign, there seems to be a seething and loathing just beneath the surface that he has to struggle to keep from leaking out.

But back in 2008, while a senior fellow of the neoconservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, we got a glimpse of what it is that is so churning under his public face.  In a speech, he quietly explained to students at Ave Maria University, in Naples, Florida  that Satan, the “Father of Lies”, is destroying America.  Part of Satan’s effort, according to Santorum, has been to so transform the mainline Protestant churches in America — that they are no longer even Christian.

This may come as a surprise to the 45 million people of the member communions of the National Council of Churches, such as The Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA).  But Santorum’s view that the mainline churches have gone the way of Satan is unambiguous —  as is his suggestion that his own Catholic Church remains Satan free.

Can there be any doubt that a President Santorum would seek to create a theocratic state governed primarily by his strict interpretation of the Bible? Over the weekend, he criticized President Obama as one who adheres to “some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.“  Santorum later explained the theology he was referring to.

“I accept the fact that the president’s a Christian,” he said. “I just said that when you have a worldview that elevates the Earth above man, and says that, you know, we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the Earth by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven, like for example that politicization of the whole global warming debate, this is just all an attempt to centralize power, to give more power to the government.”

The well-being of the planet, Santorum tells us, should not be our concern. It is God’s. Our job is to simply rip open the earth’s crust and fill up our pockets as best and fast as we can – not unlike a child let loose in a candy store. The consequences of our deed are not our worldly concern.

Rick Santorum is a sick fuck. He really is.

The thing to know about Santorum, unlike Romney, is that he honestly believes each and every word he says. It’s not an act. When he speaks of banning contraception or when he compares homosexual conduct to bestiality or when he states his belief that Satan has infiltrated every religion except Catholicism, the man is serious. He leaves no doubt that every decision he would make as president would be guided by those very same beliefs.

Conservatives and Republicans have a clear choice in choosing their next presidential nominee.  They can pick an empty shell who has no core beliefs or they can have a man who views the world as a battle, literally, between God and Satan and would thereby base his decisions on a personal interpretation of the Bible. How lovely a choice.

If ever there was a lose-lose proposition being offered to Americans, this is it.

 

(The Rick Santorum source photograph for this illustration is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.)
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The Pope’s Hate Speech

In case you missed the story, Pope Benedict made headlines this week by doing what it is popes do best – putting the irrational fear of God into his followers.

The pope made some of his strongest comments against gay marriage in a new year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican in which he touched on some economic and social issues facing the world today.

He told diplomats from nearly 180 countries that the education of children needed proper “settings” and that “pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman.”

“This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself,” he said.

Of all the things which could actually bring an end to human existence (e.g. nuclear war, global warming, a Rick Perry presidency), the Pope picks on same-sex marriage. It’s right out of a Rick Santorum stump speech. Scary stuff but how exactly would same-sex marriage end life as we know it?

Jimmy Kimmel to the rescue.


I find it pathetically ironic that one could always count on religion to spread a little more hate and bigotry around. How nice if religion truly was a place where tolerance and love found refuge, safe from a world where intolerance and hate is gaining ground.  But, not so.  As demonstrated by Pope Benedict’s words, religion has been and still is a major player in sowing the seeds of bigotry.

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