Oh fer cryin' out loud....

You know, some days I'm glad I'm not a full time blogger. I think having to deal with Teh Crayzee seven days a week would drive me insane.

Today, Faux Noise misses no excuse to get its panties in a twist about the Secret Kenyan Muslim Manchurian Candidate in the White House:

President Obama did not include any reference to God during his weekly address titled, “On Thanksgiving, Grateful for the Men and Women Who Defend Our Country.”

His remarks were void of any religious references although Thanksgiving is a holiday traditionally steeped in giving thanks and praise to God.

The president said his family was “reflecting on how truly lucky we truly are.”

For many Americans, though, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on how blessed and thankful they are.

The president said the “most American of blessings” is the “chance to determine our own destiny.”

He called the very first Thanksgiving a “celebration of community”

“We’re also grateful for the Americans who are taking time out of their holiday to serve in soup kitchens and shelters, making sure their neighbors have a hot meal and a place to stay,” he said. “This sense of mutual responsibility – the idea that I am my brother’s keeper; that I am my sister’s keeper – has always been a part of what makes our country special.”

The president said that belief is “one of the reasons the Thanksgiving tradition has endured.”

But nowhere in the 11-paragraph address does he mention the Almighty.

Because after all, unless you invoke the Baby Jesus 5,498,632 times a day, God only knows what might happen. Hell, you might start to think....and thinking means asking questions. And we mustn't have that. It would be unseemly.

Someone in the media needs to ask Rick Perry about this

If Barack Obama had to answer for the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and explain his association with him, then Rick Perry has to answer for this guy:



(h/t this, via DCap)

Making having a period a crime

There are times when I wish Abraham Lincoln had just said "Don't let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha."

Mississippi is about to vote on an amendment to its state constitution to bestow personhood on fertilized eggs:

A national effort to put abortion bans into state constitutions is looking for its first victory next month in Mississippi, where voters are being asked to approve an amendment declaring that life begins when a human egg is fertilized.

Supporters hope the so-called personhood initiative will succeed in a Bible Belt state that already has some of the nation's toughest abortion regulations and only a single clinic where the procedures are performed.

The initiative is endorsed by both candidates in a governor's race that's being decided the same day. While Mississippi is the only state with such an amendment on the ballot this fall, efforts are under way to put the question to voters in at least four other states in 2012.

[snip]

"We feel like the docs and the patients are getting caught in the middle of a war between the anti-abortion folks and the pro-choice folks," said Dr. Wayne Slocum of Tupelo, head of the Mississippi section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a group that opposes the initiative.

It's one thing to declare that human life begins at implantation of a fertilized egg, since that's when a pregnancy actually begins. That too has its problems, because of the possibility of making miscarriage a criminal, or even capital, offense (something the state of Georgia has already considered).

The American College of Obstetricans and Gynecologists has stated unequivocally that pregnancy does not occur intil a fertilized egg is implanted, and that up to 1/3 to 1/2 of fertilized eggs never implant. These then dissolve and become part of the so-called "products of menstruation."

Of course science and medicine have absolutely no place in the misogynist dogma of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade. What's imiportant is that the evil sluts who won't keep their legs closed must be punished by bearing a child -- and those who harbor that 1/3 to 1/2 of eggs that never implant must be investigated, and perhaps criminally charged, if they have a period.

There's only one way to deal with this, and that is for women of reproductive age to start sending their used sanitary products to the Mississippi statehouse, along with letters asking if legislators of that state plan to examine every woman's menstrual fluid in a futile search for dissolved fertilized eggs....or if they just plan to jail every woman who ever has her period on the grounds that she might have "murdered" a fertilized egg.

Why not thank Irving Berlin? Or was he too Jewish?

Sorry for no posting for a few days, but I was out of town visiting family, and couldn't connect to the intartoobz for a few days despite having two laptops with me. Besides, I've kind of been in a funk for a few days about the death of Steve Jobs. Not quite sure why, other than the obvious narcissistic ones about the Apple stock in my IRA and the fact that Jobs was only four months older than I am, and how it kind of feels like the end of an era -- sort of the way it did when George Harrison died. But I'm back now, and while I'm too tired to muster up too much righteous outrage, this tidbit made my head explode:

Bryan Fischer of the conservative Christian group the American Family Association floated an interesting theory about why there hasn't been a "Muslim attack" since Sept. 11 during his speech before the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.

"By God's blessing, we have not been hit by a Muslim attack since 9/11," Fischer said. "I suggest that in part, we have Major League Baseball to thank. You remember that the week after 9/11 Major League Baseball converted the seventh inning stretch from the singing of 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame' to the singing of 'God Bless America.'"

"Now 'God Bless America' is not just a song, it is a prayer. When we sing that we are inviting God to bless America, to stand beside her and to guide her through the night with a light from above," Fischer said.

"So for one brief, shining moment every night, Major League Baseball has converted our stadiums into cathedrals in which tens of thousands of ordinary Americans lift their hearts and voices as one and ask God to watch over and protect the United States," Fischer said.

"Ladies and gentleman, I think that those prayers have been heard and they have been answered," Fischer said.

For some strange reason, Talking Points Memo chose to accompany this insane raving of a lunatic with a photograph of Mr. Met, of all mascots. I'm not sure if this is some kind of Jew Jew Jew code, given that the Mets are owned by the Wilpon family who are embroiled in the Bernie Madoff mess. But please forgive me for echoing that scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen says to Tony Roberts that even the waitress asking "'d'you eat?" was really saying "Jew eat?" as some kind of anti-Semitic slur; I'm sure I'm looking for hidden meanings where there are none.

But while I've gotten used to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade insisting that their Great White Alpha Male Punitive Father Figure In The Sky thinks they are so important that He has nothing better to do than listen to these ignoramusus mutsche him all day long, when you start bringing the game of baseball into your insane ravings, and at the risk of going all Annie Savoy on you, that's cause to take these people to the woodshed.

Fred Wilpon didn't write God Bless America, and neither did the Yawkey family, nor the Steinbrenners, nor (Goddess forbid) the Bush family. None of those infuriating baseball players (I'm talking to YOU, Mr. Reyes) who think God hit their home run for them wrote the song. It was written by a guy whose history is similar to that of my own grandparents and to so many Jews who came to this country from Russia and Poland in the early years of the 20th century to escape the pogroms in their home countries.

Irving Berlin wrote God Bless America in 1918 after being drafted into the Army specifically to write patriotic songs and songs of Army life that were performed in all-soldier revues such as "Yip Yip Yaphank". Like most Tin Pan Alley songwriters, he had cranked out an astonishing amount of material before the war, and "God Bless America" was just another throwaway tune that he'd written and put away until Kate Smith's manager asked him twenty years later if he had a song put away somewhere that she could sing. There's tons of material on Irving Berlin at Wikipedia and elsewhere, so I needn't do a full biography here.

Irving Berlin, like the mother from whom he'd originally heard the phrase "God bless America", loved his country for the opportunities it had given him and his family -- opportunities for which the people Bryan Fischer would like to see running government would deprive future generations of immigrants, as well as those who see their status in the middle class fleeing from them more every day. Irving Berlin was a man whose family fled religious persecution to come here to the very same country in which people like Bryan Fischer and the Republican candidates seeking his favor would deprive people like him, and other non-Christians, of their own ability to worship as they please -- or not to worship at all.

But why let things like the history of the song that religious bigots like Bryan Jeffers want to co-opt get in the way of feeding their own religious chauvinism? It's so much easier, and more comforting, for them to forget that their favorite song was written by a Jew whose family came here after watching their village burned to the ground and instead to believe that like the King James Bible, which they seem to think was written by God in English, that it somehow belongs to them and then alone.

No one can say they weren't warned

I still think that the Money Guys who ran the Republican Party are going to rally behind Mitt Romney. Rick Perry, who has demonstrated again and again that he's for sale for the right price, is someone with whom the Money Guys thought they could do business, but the only deity the Money Guys worship is Mammon, and Rick Perry can't necessarily be relied on, since he refuses to tone down the religious batshittery even to run for president.

I realize who his audience was here, but this is 100% consistent with his Apostolic Reformation beliefs.

One can only wonder what those Americans who are not Christian face under a possible Perry presidency after seeing this (emphasis mine):

Perry said Americans need more Christian values in general. “It is important that [Christian leaders] stand in the pulpit every day and defend those values, those Christian values,” Perry said. “America is going to be guided by some set of values. The question is going go to be: Whose values?”

The Texas governor said he believes America will be guided by “the Christian values that this country was based upon.”

And if you don't subscribe to Perry's notion of Christian values? Who knows? He's already perfectly comfortable with executing those who have done no wrong.

Dear Rick Perry: God is not interested in your prayers.

As far back as 2007, I was quoting the old Jewish joke that you can find in Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, the punch line of which is "Because day after day after day, all you do is mutsche me!" On a less humorous note, Matthew 6.5 says:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

Funny how when Rick Perry talks about throwing up his hands and saying, "OK, God, YOU fix this mess", and holds his massive stadium prayergasms, he forgets this one passage from his precious Bible.



Well, if he's left Texas in God's hands, God is telling Rick Perry just what He thinks of Texas and about how day after day, all Perry does is mutsche him:

Dozens of wildfires continues to burn out of control across tinder-dry Texas on Monday as calls went out for off-duty firefighters around the region to report for duty.



The Texas Forest Service reported 56 separate fires on Sunday that had burned some 30,000 acres. Neighborhoods across eastern and central parts of the state were reporting widespread damage.



Authorities said the fires were propelled partly by the high winds brought by Tropical Storm Lee. A late-summer cool front brought winds of 30 to 40 mph to the region, which is already gripped by one of the worst droughts in history.



The National Weather Service said South, Central and East Texas were all under "red flag" warnings for critical fire conditions until late Sunday night.

If Irene is God's punishment for the Godless heathen homosexual socialist Jewish commie Northeast, then what of the Texas wildfires?

Oh this is just swell.

Can we please stop taking End Times lunatics seriously as presidential candidates? Why on earth should we elect someone who thinks there'll be nothing to lead?

But perhaps Rick Perry's most damaging baggage comes in the form of the extremist pastors with whom he has been breaking bread these days. On August 6, the governor is hosting "The Response," a seven-hour, Christians-only prayer event at Houston's Reliant Stadium. His office hyped the event as "a Day of Prayer and Fasting for our nation to seek God's guidance and wisdom in addressing the challenges that face our communities, states and nation."

And as Perry said on the event's website, "As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles." The list of endorsers and sponsors of the event reads like is a who's who of hard-right Christian fundamentalism, including Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and the American Family Association -- the anti-gay group designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Rick Perry's decision to pal around with these ultra-conservative religious groups and pastors will undoubtedly help him in the GOP primaries, though these affiliations could render him unelectable in a general election. This courtship began in 2009, when two Texas pastors from the New Apostolic Reformation movement -- Tom Schlueter of Arlington and Bob Long of San Marcos -- approached Perry.

These pastors, whose followers believe the End Times are near and they have a direct line to God, told Perry that God has a grand plan to anoint Texas as "The Prophet State" that would lead America to godly government. And they told Gov. Perry that he is God's man to lead the nation.

You know, we scratched our heads in disbelief that there were so many people who would be willing to fly airplanes into buildings because they believed they'd get 72 virgins in heaven. How is that any different from this idea that you're going to get to sit and eat nachos on the sofa with Jesus while you watch all those gays and Jews and people who think life is for enjoying burn in the tribulations? And please spare me your huffy comments about how Christians have never done anyhthing like the 9/11 attacks, particularly after what happened in Norway last weekend. I'm sure that if I dig hard enough I can come up with 3000 incidents of Christians who are willing to kill anyone, even their own children, who they feel aren't right with God...even more if we want to go back through history.

If you need religion to get through this massive cosmic joke that is life in America in the 21st century, have at it. But now that this notion of "candidate of faith" has changed from someone who marginally believes and goes to a house of worship on occasion to someone who is actually looking forward to the End of Days, I think it's time to call them "Crazy People" and rule them out from holding any kind of power over the rest of us. But instaed we get pundits having orgasms over Rick Perry's pearly white teeth and perfect hair and most of all, those real macho cowboy boots.