AFTER THE ELECTION – EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH GOD

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[Since Barak Obama's surprise and seemingly inexplicable re-election, Republican pundits have been struggling to figure out what went so horribly wrong.  They have considered multiple explanations, most of which focus on blaming Karl Rove for persuading them to declare war on women, minorities,  immigrants, homosexuals and the science.  There is a consensus, however, that the true culprit responsible for Barak Obama's re-election is bad weather - aka Hurricane Sandy.   God - the Supreme Being and Creator of the Universe - agreed to sit down with PEOPLE OF EARTH and discuss this theory.]

PEOPLE OF EARTH:  First of all, how would you like me to address you?

GOD:  Call me Ted.

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POE:   Ted?

GOD:  Sure. Why not?  I like the name Ted.  I’m God. I can do what I want.  A week ago I was Debbie. What of it?

POE:  I was thinking more in the line of “Lord” or “Jehovah.”

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GOD:  That’s so old fashioned. I suggested Jehovah because the ancient Hebrews had difficulty pronouncing Ted. Or Debbie.

POE:  Okay. Well, Ted, let’s cut to the chase:  Haley Barbour, who served as Mississippi governor when Hurricane Katrina hit his state, asserted Thursday that “Hurricane Sandy saved Barack Obama’s presidency.”  Doesn’t that imply divine intervention to influence the election in Barack Obama’s favor?

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GOD:  I see what you are getting at: I’m God, I make storms, so I must have sent that hurricane to break Mitt Romney’s momentum, allow Obama to appear presidential, and swing the election to an Obama victory. Is that it?

POE:   That is sort of what the Republican’s are arguing.

GOD:  Well, then they are a bunch of idiots.  Seriously. I could go on and on about everything they did wrong. I mean, come on, it doesn’t take a supreme being to notice how important women and latinos are to any candidate’s election prospects.  But the Republicans declared war on everyone who wasn’t an uneducated white male – and then expected women and blacks and latinos and homosexuals and immigrants and students to vote for them. What a bunch of maroons.

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POE: So you are denying responsibility for Sandy?

GOD:  Not in the least.  I made that.  I mean, do you have any idea how many unbelievably unlikely variables had to be in play to get that storm to hit as hard as it did, where it did, when it did?  That’s Divine Intervention, baby.  That was all me.  But I didn’t do it to help Obama win re-election.  Contrary to what you are being told by guys who claim to talk to me, I do not get involved in elections or wars or anything like that.  Hell, the thing that annoys me most is when some stupid fuck of a high school football quarterback says that he owes a recent victory to me.  I had nothing to do with winning a football game. I mean, come on, I made the universe. Do you really think I am going to say “hmmmm, I want the Blue Devils to win and the Honkers to lose.” Are you kidding? Like I care.

POE: So you are admitting responsibility for Hurricane Sandy?

GOD:  Of course I am.  I am responsible for the volcanic eruption that wiped out the Minoan civilization. I am responsible for the earthquake that leveled Lisbon in 1755 and all but destroyed Haiti in 2010.  Those are my works. So was Sandy.  But I didn’t send Sandy to help Obama. I sent Sandy to punish the US east coast. New York City in particular.  I hate that Mayor Bloomberg. He banned big soft drinks.

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POE:  You sent Sandy because you dislike Mayor Bloomberg?

GOD:  Do I need a better reason?

POE:  I guess not.

GOD:  But the important point to take away from all of this, other than apparent divine arbitrary and capricious behavior, is that Republicans are fooling themselves if they think Sandy got Obama elected.  Republican stupidity got Obama re-elected. I had nothing to do with it. Sandy had nothing to do with it.  I mean, come on, they selected Mitt Romney to challenge Obama, not Chris Christie or Jeb Bush or even Jim Huntsman.  Then they actively and vigorously alienated the voters they needed to win.  What were they thinking?  I’ll tell you – they weren’t thinking. They were living in a dream world where history from 1950 to the present didn’t happen.  They were trying to wish it all away back to the good old days when women, minorities and homosexuals knew their place. They did this to themselves, and their attempts to blame anyone other than themselves and anything other than their stupid strategy and tactics only proves how pathetic they are and is ultimate proof that they don’t deserve to hold the reins of power.

POE:  Well said.

GOD:  Of course it was well said, you idiot. I’m Ted.

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YES, BUT WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO SAY?

The medium is the message.

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“The cows are all liars!!” yelled Farmer Brown when he heard the news.

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH PAUL RYAN

[In this frankly fictitious interview, Congressman Paul Ryan – Mitt Romney’s choice for Vice President – talked with People of Earth about his recent refusal to discuss Mitt’ Romney’s tax proposals because it would take too long to explain.]

PEOPLE OF EARTH:  Congressman Ryan, let’s cut to the chase.  You recently appeared on Fox News and refused to discuss yours and Mitt Romney’s tax proposals because it would take too long to explain.

RYAN:  That’s right.  When Mitt Romney and I are elected, within the first 100 days of our first term in office we will cut every American’s taxes by 20%.

POE: How will you do that?

RYAN:  We will do it by closing tax loopholes.

POE:  Which ones?

RYAN:  Isn’t America great, Paul?

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POE:  Hold on. Let’s not get distracted.

RYAN:  What? Do you deny that America is the greatest nation the world has ever seen?

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POE:  About your tax proposals –

RYAN:  It’s about freedom, Paul.

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The freedom to die in the street.

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POE:  Congressman Ryan, I will talk with you about freedom later –

RYAN:  Freedom is great.

POE:  No argument there.  But –

RYAN:  It is great to be free.

POE: How would you cut taxes 20% for all Americans?

RYAN:  Could you repeat the question?

POE: How would you cut taxes 20% for all Americans?

RYAN:  We would do it by eliminating tax loopholes.

POE:  Which ones?

RYAN: Which ones what?

POE: Which tax loopholes would you eliminate to cut every American’s taxes by 20%?

RYAN:  We would cut a lot of them.

POE:  Yes, but which ones?

RYAN:  Well, it would take a lot of time to answer that question, Paul, so I would rather not do it.

POE:  We have all the time in the world.  Please feel free to explain.

RYAN:  I have many demands on my time. I am busy trying to save America from being destroyed by a secret Muslim socialist baby killer.

POE:  Clearly, you are a busy man.  So let’s use what time we have left hearing your explanation of how you and Mitt Romney are going to cut taxes by closing tax loopholes.

RYAN:  The explanation involves a lot of math.

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POE:  Do you understand the math?

RYAN:  I sure do!  I have the reputation in congress of being a number cruncher.

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“I TOTALLY crunched these numbers, you crunching mother cruncher!”

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POE:  Good, then why don’t you explain what you understand?

RYAN:  Because, even though I understand it – because I am real smart – it would take too long for you to understand it.

POE:  I am real smart, too.

RYAN:  Not as smart as me.

POE:  I have advanced degrees in mathematics and economics.

RYAN:  There still isn’t enough time for me to explain it.

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POE:  So you just want America to take it on faith that you are right – without any explanation before the election.

RYAN:  Bingo. On the nose.  Yes, exactly.

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POE:  But why should we believe you?  You lied to us about running a marathon in record time.

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RYAN:  (Laughing) yeah, I did lie about that, didn’t I?  But this is different.  I’m telling the truth here.  Mitt and I have a great plan to cut taxes by closing tax loopholes and it is a great plan but it is too complex for the average voter to understand.

POE: Okay. Then let’s try to apply some basic math here.  You want to cut taxes by eliminating tax loopholes.  That doesn’t add up.

RYAN:  Sure it does.

POE:  No it doesn’t.  People use tax loopholes to cut their taxes, to pay less tax.  Eliminating a tax loophole will increase the taxes for people who rely on those loopholes.  So by eliminating tax loopholes you are just shifting the tax burden from one group to another.  Some may see a tax decrease, but others will see a tax increase.

RYAN:  Not if you cut spending.  If you cut spending, then the tax reductions won’t increase the deficit because we are spending less than we are taking in overall.

POE:  You are talking about trillions of dollars in spending cuts.

RYAN: (Pausing) uh huh.

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POE:  What spending are you going to cut?

RYAN:  Isn’t America great, Paul?

POE:  Don’t change the subject.  True or false: you are proposing huge tax cuts for the richest Americans.

RYAN:  Can you repeat the question?

POE: Yes or no: you are proposing huge tax cuts for the richest Americans.

RYAN:  You changed the question from “true or false” to “yes or no.”

POE:  I did that to make it easier for you to answer. Here is the question again – yes or no: you are proposing huge tax cuts for the richest Americans.

RYAN:  Yes.

POE:  Yes or no:  without an increase in taxes or, in the alternative, a cut in spending, cutting taxes for the wealthy will cause further budget deficits.

RYAN: We prefer to call rich people “job creators.”

POE:  My question, again is – yes or no:  without tax increases or spending reductions, cutting taxes for the wealthy will cause further budget deficits.

RYAN:  Yes. President Obama failed to -

POE:  Yes or no:  if elected, you will not cut military spending, corporate welfare, tax breaks for oil companies, or federal give-aways to red states with Republican majorities, but will, instead, cut education funding, food and safety regulations, entitlement programs for the poor and elderly.

RYAN: No, that isn’t true.  We are going to save Medicare and social security.

POE:  But the rest is true?

RYAN: (Pausing) yes, but we are going to save Medicare and Social Security.

POE:  How are you going to do that.

RYAN:  It would take too long to explain.

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POE:  Yes or no:  you intend on “saving” Medicare and Social Security by privatizing them.

RYAN:  Yes, but we won’t be making any changes that will affect any people currently retired or about to retire.

POE:  What about people like me who have paid taxes our whole lives into the Medicare and Social Security system but who aren’t going to retire for at least ten years?

RYAN:  Oh. Well, people like you are shit out of luck.

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“I feel your pain, you poor, sick, homeless, irrelevant asshole. Get a job.”

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POE:  How so?

RYAN:  By the time you retire, the Medicare and Social Security systems as we now know them will have been abolished and replaced by a voucher system where every American gets a flat payment they can use for retirement living expenses or medical care.  Or they can invest that money in the stock market and become rich the way Mitt Romney and his rich friends have.

POE:  What if the stock market crashes after I converted my retirement and health care vouchers into stock?

RYAN:  Shit out of luck.

POE:  What if I keep the money, but my living expenses and medical care are higher than what the voucher covers?

RYAN:  Shit out of luck. But so what? That’s your fault for not working harder and saving more, or, if your stock investments tank, its your fault for not having enough money to hire expensive investment advisors like the kind Mitt Romney and I have to help us know when the stock market is going to crash so we can take our money out before that happens and make huge profits off of the backs of people like you who can’t afford the same level of financial advice and so couldn’t get their money out of the market before it crashes.  And it is going to crash. It always crashes.

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RYAN:  That’s how people like Mitt and me make our money. We buy low after a crash, then sell high right before the next crash.  This process essentially takes money out of your pocket and puts it in ours.  And we didn’t have to do anything other than hire someone to tell us when to buy and when to sell – people you can’t afford to hire.  The free market is a beautiful thing.  We get rid of Medicare and Social Security and give you a check instead to invest in the stock market. Then we take that money the government gave you when the stock market crashes and you lose that money you invested – to us!  We get richer, and better able to pay for the advice we need to do it again, and you get poorer and less able to pay for the kind of financial advice you need to avoid being a victim to the financial game that we are essentially forcing you to play but that we fixed to benefit us at your disadvantage!

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RYAN:  When the US government encouraged people to gamble with their retirement money by investing it in the stock market it resulted in the biggest redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper class in history!  We can do the same thing with Medicare and Social Security, and the beauty part is that these “vouchers” will be paid for with tax money – middle class tax money – being snatched out of the hands of elderly Americans and sucked right into the offshore tax sheltered secret bank accounts of the wealthy!

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It’s socialism in reverse! Instead of redistributing wealth downward from the rich back to the poor, it redistributes wealth upward!

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POE: So that is how you are going to save Medicare and Social Security?

RYAN:  Yup.

POE: By destroying it and replacing it with a voucher system that favors the rich at the expense of the middle class and poor?

RYAN:  We prefer the term “reform.”

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POE:  A distinction without a difference.

RYAN:  That is free market economics, baby!  It is what made American great. Well, to be honest – and, as we’ve determined in this interview, honesty does not come easy to me – free market economics made some Americans great, but not all.  And for a good reason. Someone has to be so afraid of starving to death and dying of preventable disease to work for near starvation wages and be grateful for it in order for a very small group of people who don’t work at all to be super rich forever.

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If they get hungry enough, they will be satisfied with less.

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RYAN:  That is how every system that allowed a small group of people to get rich and stay rich has worked through the ages.  Something went wrong here in America, but Mitt and I – joined with a Senate and House of Representatives controlled by social conservatives – will set it right.  I mean, look at China!  They have what we want:  a huge group of serfs without health insurance of any kind working hard for virtually nothing to make less than 1% of the Chinese population rich!

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RYAN: Sure, you get the occasional peasant riot in factories, that are more like prisons with barbed wire fences and guard towers around them, but look at how the Chinese deal with those ingrates – they round them up, throw them in real prisons where they make them work, this time for no pay, and then sell their internal organs to rich people all over the world who get the best medical care their money can pay for so they can live on virtually forever.

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RYAN:  Look at Dick Cheney!  He should have died years ago.  For a while he didn’t even have a heartbeat!  But he is rich!  We are so close. So close to getting that for everyone who counts, who matters – the job creators.

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RYAN:  It is so close.  But with voter suppression efforts, voter vigilante gangs that will harass minority voters at the polls, and with the grace of God, we will win this election and the revolution will be an accomplished fact.  This may be our last chance.  If Obama wins, he will improve education, which means the average voter is more likely to see through the bullshit I am spouting and realize that I want to use Big Government to make me and my rich friends even richer and to impose an economic system on America that is the modern equivalent of feudalism where workers have no rights and the poor are free to die, and where the wealthy ruling class uses modern technology to suppress dissent by listening to phone calls and reading emails and text messages to find the potential leaders of any popular revolt and have them arrested because they are terrorists trying to overthrow the political system oppressing and enslaving them.

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RYAN: We are so close. Everything is in place.  We have the legislation we need to suppress dissent. The vast majority of the population is now dependent on electronic means of communications like phones and the internet; there are CCTV cameras everywhere, which means we have everyone under surveillance. We control the Supreme Court.  The Press is now irrelevant as a watchdog.  We are about to take over congress and the executive office. We won’t get a chance like this again for a generation, if ever.  So this is it. We have to take advantage of a stupid, undereducated electorate before steps are taken to teach them critical thinking skills.

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HEADLINE – DONALD TRUMP SAYS “VENGEANCE IS A CHRISTIAN VALUE”

 

“Jesus wants me to take vengeance against my hair stylist.”

MUNCIE –   During a speech on Monday at the Lynchburg, Virginia Christian college, Liberty University, Donald Trump gave the assembled Christian students some advice: “Get even.”

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“A few of you may say my advice is anti-Christian. Wrong!” Trump said.

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A student pointed out that Trumps advice conflicts with Christ’s Sermon on the Mount recorded in chapters 5-7 of the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus tells his followers to reject the Old Testament rules on eye-for-an-eye justice and, if slapped, turn the other cheek rather than retaliate.

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 ”Don’t believe any of that malarky,” Trump responded.  ”Jesus was being misquoted by the liberal media.”

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The liberal media makes Jesus very, very angry.

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“Believe me, the central message of Christianity is “every man for himself” and “always kick a man when he’s down because there is no better time to do it,” Trump said.

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Trump, married three times, then advised the assembled students to get prenuptial agreements before they get married.

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“Jesus wasn’t married and I know why,” Trump said.  ”It is because they didn’t have prenuptial agreements in those days so if you got married you were screwed if you wanted to get out of it, especially if you had a lot of money and the woman seduced you because she wanted your money.  But Jesus avoided all of that by not getting married. I’m not saying he didn’t play the field. He just didn’t get married.  I am absolutely sure that, if Jesus had access to a prenuptial agreement, he would have been married. At least once.”

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Maybe more than once.

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The university has posted a video of Trump’s speech on its website, noting that Chancellor Falwell introduced Trump as ”one of the greatest visionaries of our time.”

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EVEN MORE PROOF THAT MITT ROMNEY SHOULDN’T BE OUR NEXT PRESIDENT

This is real.

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Here is exactly what Romney said:

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When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous.

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This man – who doesn’t know that, if you open a window on an airplane, you and everyone in the aircraft will die – is very likely going to be the next president of the United States.

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“I know there is a airplane around here somewhere….”

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“Hey, look at that! All the people look like ants!”

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THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR MITT ROMNEY

I’ve made no secret of my opinion that Mitt Romney is the wrong man at the right time to run for POTUS.  The time is definitely right: Obama should be easily defeated.  He is an unpopular president serving during a severe economic crisis that really hasn’t improved enough to get him re-elected.  Only Franklin Delano Roosevelt succeeded in obtaining a second term under similar circumstances, and Obama is no Roosevelt.

So the time is right.  But Romney is the wrong man.  I don’t agree with Rick Santorum on much, but I agree with him when he stated during those ridiculous GOP debates that Romney ”is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.”

Santorum knew what we all now know – that Romney is a political opportunist: a rich guy who dabbles in politics as a hobby, who doesn’t really believe in anything and is willing to say anything and do anything to get elected. A recent example of how far Mitt Romney is willing to debase himself to get votes is his recent admissionhthat he admires Snooky.l

And he isn’t really all that smart.   He makes George W. Bush look like a genius.  Let me give you just one example. Here is something Romney said at a campaign rally:

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This quote is worth repeating just so there is no doubt about just how stupid it is:

“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that is the America millions of Americans believe in.”

This statement is a whole lot more perplexing than anything Bush ever said, including the Bush line about “how hard it is to put food on your family.”  That was a slip of the tongue.  Romney’s  circular and nonsensical statement about what he believes was not a slip of the tongue: it was an example of what is going on inside of Romney’s head.

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[Look at it this way:  John McCain had a choice between Romney and Sarah Palin for his running mate, and he chose Palin. Does that tell you anything?]

Santorum realized this about Romney.  I knew it.  Others did, too.  Yet Romney won the nomination.

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Why? Because he does best when he faces no competition.  His opponents dropped out of the primary races because they couldn’t compete with Romney’s ability to put out pre-vote advertising.  Romney won the nomination because he was able to outspend his impoverished competitors – which is exactly the way he made money buying and breaking up smaller companies when he ran Bain Capital.  He won from a position of overwhelming financial advantage (the story of his life).

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More importantly, Romney won the nomination because he had the support of right wing media and news outlets like Fox News that habitually overlooked and even excused his failings.

Those two conditions have changed. Romney is now facing vigorous competition. He is losing because he is no longer the richest guy in the race.  Obama’s money machine is generating as much if not more than Romney – even though Romney is getting huge donations from billionaires.  So Obama can match Romney’s political advertising.

And the support he received from right wing media is beginning to crumble.  Joe Scarborough is an extremely conservative Fox News pundit who has, in the past, been one of Romney’s chief apologists.  Not anymore.  When Mitt Romney tried to politicize the deaths of American diplomats in Libya by criticizing Obama’s response as being too soft, for “sympathizing with terrorists” by refusing to link Islam with terror, Scarborough said:

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And when Romney made matters worse by doubling down on his criticism of Obama’s handling of the murders, Scarborough said:

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This is the sign of a sea change. It is the beginning of the popular recognition that, even if Romney could win, he doesn’t deserve to win.

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And when other right wing news outlets like the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal find the courage to say the same thing, Romney’s candidacy is doomed.

Americans are fairly sure they want to replace Obama.  But we are increasingly convinced we don’t want to hire Romney as Obama’s replacement.  A large majority of Americans believe Obama hasn’t done a good job.  But we are not prepared to fire him and hire the one guy who is applying for the position.

Hating Obama is no longer enough.  ”Anybody but Obama” is no longer a viable political slogan.  The character and intelligence of the man who replaces him matters, and Romney’s character and intelligence are not up to the task.

It is a mistake to back this man.  Doing so will end up destroying the GOP.  I do mean destroy.  If Republicans continue to support Romney, and he loses (which is likely) the GOP will break apart into smaller “rump” political parties.

This political season has been a disaster. We need to accept that. Like Romney, doubling down on a losing bet is just plain stupid. Republicans need to concentrate on keeping the House of Representatives and winning a majority in the Senate – and reform the internal mechanisms of the GOP to make sure that, in the next election, the GOP fields a viable candidate.

THE DAMNED

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The Blue Church of God is much more forgiving.

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Vegetarians?

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OBAMA VS ROMNEY – THE TRUE DIFFERENCE

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I’m betting on the Professor.  For obvious reasons.

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HEADLINE – Michigan woman censored for saying “vagina.”

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DETROIT – A Michigan lawmaker has been banned from speaking on the House floor after saying the word “vagina” while debating a Republican sponsored bill that would strictly restrict abortion rights in the state.

“I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina,” Rep. Lisa Brown said, addressing the Speaker of the House, “but ‘no’ means ‘no.’”

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Brown was gaveled into silence by House Speaker James Bolger (R-Bumfuck) for “violating the decorum of the House.”  Brown was then barred from speaking during the debate about a school employee retirement bill because she used the “V-word” in an unrelated debate.

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James Bolger

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“Listen, silly, even the concept of a vagina is offensive and is probably an anti-American commie liberal socialist secular humanist plot,” Bolger said.  “Like global warming and a deserving poor person, I don’t think it exists. I married  two women, not at the same time of course – so there is no way I could be gay – and I never found either of my wives’ vaginas, and I tried terribly, terribly hard for years,” Bolger said before explaining how fabulous  Joan Crawford, Judy Garland and musical theater is.

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“I think I saw one over there.”

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“Seriously. Years,” said Bolger’s second wife, Charlene. “I did everything I could think of to help James locate my vagina, but he just can’t get past his fear that girls have ‘cooties.’”

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“If girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, then why do they smell like sardines?” whispered conservative Republican former Senator Larry Craig (married, with children) on the Senate floor during a debate to defund Planned Parenthood a few months prior to being arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a men’s bathroom. Senator Craig didn’t realize the microphone was on when he whispered his joke to a fellow conservative Republican Bob Allen.

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“I haven’t worn underwear since 1978 and I have a big red arrow painted on my abdomen pointed down. Nothing seems to help,”Charlene added.

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Bolger’s first wife, Betty, agrees. “Jim doesn’t know anything about vaginas. On our wedding night he burst into tears, locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out until I promised to “put that thing away.”

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For many Republicans the “V word” issue is less about abysmal sexual ignorance, misogyny or covert homosexuality, and more about returning America to a better time before non-whites “ruined everything.”

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“Fair is fair. If I can’t say nigger then you can’t say vagina, okay?” said Republican political strategist, Baptist minister, Holocaust denier and high school drop out Trip Tripperson.

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Trip Tripperson

“You let me call negroes niggers again, and Mexicans wet backs, and Asians gooks, and the mentally handicapped morons, and homos faggots, and women bitches and cunts –  just like God intended – and I’ll let you call beavers vaginas.  I want my country back, okay? Where’s the birth certificate?? Where’s the birth certificate??!!!” Tripperson shouted in presumed support for Republican sponsored legislation requiring women to post nude photos of themselves in fetish poses on “Christian D/s lifestyle” websites before obtaining an abortion.

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Ron Severstone – the sole remaining moderate Republican – suggests a possible compromise. 

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Ron Severstone

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“There are plenty of ways white men can effectively discuss the plan to turn back the clock and utterly dominate the sex lives of women without offending the lunatic fringe that has taken over the GOP,” Severstone said, a Republican politician who will soon be accused of “hating America” for offering to compromise with “satan worshiping baby killers.”

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“For example, we can call it ‘the hoo ha’ or “the bad thing” or “the otter’s pocket” or – my personal favorite – ‘the lady cave,” Sevestone suggested before running for his life.

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Still others simply view this recent kerfuffle as part of an ongoing process. “History has shown that, when male dominated societies wants to control women, they make sure that women’s bodies are considered obscene as part of reducing a woman’s status to that of a servant and  as property, rather than as a person,” said Professor Judith Holmes.

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 “That is what is essentially happening now.  And, to be brutally honest, it’s working,” Professor Holmes said just before renouncing her American citizenship and emigrating to Australia.

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Prof. Judith Holmes

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The anti-abortion law passed in the House 70-39, with all Republicans voting in favor of it. The legislation now goes to the Senate and is expected to pass with only democrats voting against it.

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HOW ADORABLE!! (MUST SEE!)

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Something to warm your heart from the American Heartland.  This vid shows a totally adorable three year old boy singing to his church congregation a song with the message “Ain’t No Homo Gonna Make it to Heaven.”

See for yourself!

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That little bigot got a standing ovation from that Christian crowd.

Teaching hate.

Teaching intolerance.

Round ‘em up, put them in camps with electrified fences, and let them die.

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Jesus came and preached a message full of Good News: God wasn’t vengeful, but full of love.  The old rules of hate and retribution were gone, replaced by kindness, understanding and acceptance.  ”An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was replaced with “turn the other cheek.”  And most important of all, Jesus admonished us to give up our burning desire to judge others.

Matthew 7:1-5

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.

Luke 6:37

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.

John 8:7

And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

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It is utterly horrifying that people who gather together to remember Jesus teach three year old boys to hate and to judge.  And it is terrifying because if Jesus’ clear and unequivocal message can so easily and readily be perverted, then what hope do we really have?

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AMERICAN PASTOR SUGGESTS “FINAL SOLUTION” FOR HOMOSEXUALITY

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No kidding.  A “final solution” like the kind Hitler suggested for Europe’s “Jewish problem.”

You simply won’t believe how evil this man is.  And he isn’t alone. Millions of Americans see no problem with what he proposes.

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Perhaps Bangar was right:  the central tenant of Christianity for these people is “love thy neighbor, but it’s okay to hate them and kill them if they are different from you.”

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THE NEW SOCCER MOMS

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The American political world is abuzz withhnewsnthat, when Mitt Romney was attending a private preparatory school in Michigan during the time his father was Governor, he lead a mob who chased down a gay boy and held him down while Romney personally used a pair of scissors to cut off the gay boy’s hair.

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Romney first denied the story. When it was corroborated, he said he didn’t remember it happening.  When even more witnesses came forward to support the story, Romney said that he doesn’t remember this particular incident, but that he participated in lots of pranks and engaged in youthful hijinks when he was in high school, he is sorry if he offended anyone, and if it happened he didn’t know the boy was gay.

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The Original Prankster

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Romney supporters have attempted to brush the news story off as a “hit piece” designed to distract the American electorate away from the issue of Obama’s failed presidency and substitute it with the issue of gay rights.  They may be right.  It is an amazing coincidence that, right after Obama publicly declares his support for same sex marriage, it is revealed that Romney was a gay-basher in high school.

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However, despite the very best efforts of the Romney camp to refocus on economic issues, this story just won’t go away.  It is increasingly resonating with the electorate in a way no one could have anticipated. The reason for this resonance is simple: either Romney really doesn’t remember the event or he is lying about it, and either option is troubling to the American voter.

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Let’s not sugarcoat the incident. What Romney did wasn’t a “prank” and it wasn’t “high jinks” (as Romney himself tries to describe it).  Leading a pack of boys that hunted down, subdued and then forcibly cut off the hair of another boy who was “different” with a pair of scissors was an assault, a battery and a hate crime.  This is a graphic example of bullying in its most pure, most evil and most damaging sense. The fact that Romney lead the mob and actually committed the act makes it worse. 

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Imagine it happening to you.  Imagine you running, scared, being knocked down by a gang of boys, held down so you cannot move, while one of them sits on top of your chest and cuts off your hair “in large clumps” as one of the witnesses to the incident describes.  Imagine yelling for help and crying as you look up into the face of a young Mitt Romney grinning down at you and most likely laughing.

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 I’ve imagined this and it is terrifying.  I’ve been bullied when I was younger, but nothing this bad happened to me.

Let’s contrast Romney’s attempt to laugh off the incident with something from Obama’s past that Romney supporters point to as evidence that, if Romney was a bully, that Obama was a bigger bully.  In Obama’s autobiography Dreams of my Father he describes an event from his early childhood when he pushed a girl. Here is what he writes:

 Before my arrival she had been the only black person in our grade. She was plump and dark and didn’t seem to have many friends.  I ran up to Coretta and gave her a slight shove.  She staggered back and looked up at me, but still said nothing.  ‘Leave me alone,’ I shouted again.  And suddenly Coretta was running, faster and faster until she disappeared from sight.  Appreciative laughs rose around me.  For the rest of the afternoon I was haunted by the look on Coretta’s face.

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Any moron can compare what Romney did with what Obama did and see the differences between the two events.  Obama isn’t denying what he did, excusing it or attempting to trivialize it. He is “owning it” and is ashamed.

Romney, on the other hand, attempted to hide it, when discovered tried to deny it, when proven tried to trivialize it as a simple prank not worthy of even remembering.

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This was an event worthy of remembering, so Romney is probably lying when he says he doesn’t remember, and if he is lying, well, Americans don’t like liars. 

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We joke about politicians lying, but we get upset when they get caught doing it. Scooter Libby wasn’t prosecuted for revealing the name of a covert CIA operative; he was prosecuted for lying about doing it. Bill Clinton wasn’t impeached because he had sex with a chubby intern – he was impeached because he lied about it.  If he had come clean when he was caught the odds are the American public would have forgiven him. 

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So Romney is lying about not remembering that he chased down a gay student, held him down and cut off his hair displays a character flaw that troubles the average American voter and only serves to reinforce the uneasy feeling they have about him.  The Democrats say he is willing to change his position and “flip-flop” to get elected, and Romney’s lying about what he remembers only reinforced that perception.

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The average American voter, on the other hand, does not believe the same thing about Obama. Sure, right wing lunatics shout, scream and froth at the mouth about Obama’s duplicity, but the average person doesn’t see it. They view Obama as a basically honesty guy, and his “owning up” to his own bullying incidents reinforce that favorable view – and this means that undecided voters are now more likely to choose Obama over Romney in November.

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But what if Romney really doesn’t remember such a graphic and horrible bullying event that he himself perpetrated?  If that is true, then it is even more troubling than lying about it.

Some bullying experts say that Romney may actually not remember what he did because bullies often lack empathy. They don’t feel any of the pain they are causing, so in their minds the individual acts of bullying really are trivial and not worth remembering.

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Let’s review: Romney did it; he did the horrible thing described above. He was a bully. If he doesn’t remember it is because, at the time, he lacked empathy.

And this is the problem. Lack of empathy is one of the signs of psychopathy.

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Please control your outrage. I am not accusing Romney of being a psychopath in the popular sense – i.e., an insane killer.

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I am, however, suggesting that these recent events place into sharp focus many aspects of Romney’s personality that have troubled millions of Americans, especially conservative Americans.  And the reason why is that Romney may very well be, in a clinical, non dangerous sense, a high functioning emotional/interpersonal psychopath.

Psychopaths possess a general lack of empathy, and this includes deficiencies in comprehension and appreciation of others’ experiences and motivations, and lack of tolerance of differing perspectives.   Emotional/interpersonal psychopaths (as differentiated from socially deviant psychopaths) are often glib and superficial, egocentric and grandiose, lack remorse or guilt, and have shallow emotions. h[1]8  They display a lack empathy with no anxiety along with a predisposition to tell people what they want to hear. h[2]9 

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This describes Mitt Romney. When people complain that he is “wooden” and “boring” they are complaining about his lack of emotions.  When he says the wrong thing or “puts his foot in his mouth” he is being glib and superficial. His regular “flip flopping” is a manifestation of his predisposition to telling people what they want to hear.  He is clearly egocentric and his plans for the nation are undeniably grandiose. When people complain that he is “robotic” they are observing that he never shows any signs of anxiety.  A big complaint about Romney is that he is distant and not in touch with the common person – i.e., he has deficiencies in comprehension and appreciation of others’ experiences and motivations.

The bullying event and his reaction to the public learning about it provide the final pieces for a diagnosis:  he cut off that boy’s hair because it was dyed blond and draped over one eye, causing Romney to openly and loudly complaint that it “isn’t right; he can’t do that” which means that Romney was motivated to organize and lead a lynch mob and to assault and batter that boy because of Romney’s lack of tolerance of different perspectives. Romney cannot remember the event because of his lack of empathy.

A lot of politicians, especially those on the extreme right wing of the political spectrum, are emotional/interpersonal psychopaths. Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich certainly fit the description.

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Romney does, too.  We’ve all felt it, wondered about it, asked ourselves why we cannot support Romney and are still reluctant to do so.

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We are troubled by the inescapable fact that Romney is either lying about remembering his bullying history, or he actually doesn’t remember, and we don’t know which is worse.

Finally, the story about the boy Romney chased down and molested resonates with a brand new demographic:  those who were bullied in school and kept their silence.  They hate bullies, hate their excuses, hate the privilege that keeps bullies safe from any consequences that should result from openly expressed cruelty and sadism.

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You know these victims. They are short. They are fat. They are unattractive. They are weak. They are powerless.  They are poor. They are gay. They are “different.”

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They are Legion, and they all hate Romney.

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Bulling Victims are the new Soccer Moms.  They are a demographic that cuts across social, economic, regional and political boundaries.  And they all know what happened. They all know that Romney lead a lynch mob of rich boys who chased down a gay kid and cut off his hair for expressing  his individuality and difference.  They marked him and humiliated him in a way that neither the victim nor the bullies can ever forget.

And they are going to be the swing vote that gives Obama a second term as President of the United States.

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WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?

 

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“While the U.S has moved up in the rankings, ahead of last year’s 31st place, we still fall below most wealthy nations. A woman in the US is more than 7 times as likely to die of a pregnancy-related cause in her lifetime than a woman in Italy or Ireland.”

 

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/245207.php

SOME PARENTS SHOULDN’T BE PARENTS

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“Pout, baby, pout! Give me all you got! Oh yeah… Yeah! That’s it. Now walk slower. No, slower….”

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At least they didn’t dress her up like a pot of honey.

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SIMPLE MATH [UPDATED]

On January 20, 2011, when George W. Bush took office as President of the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was at 10,587.60

Bush immediately implemented his economic plans based on right wing ideology, and this had an immediate negative effect on the US economy.  For example, on March 20, 2001, the DJIA closed below the previous year’s low for the first time since 1982.

Barack Obama took office on January 20, 2009, and when he did, the DJIA was at 7,365.

As of the date this is posted, the DJIA closed at 13,149.55

Let’s crunch the numbers a bit:

During Bush II, the US economy experienced a steady decline that culminated with a virtual systemic melt down. During Bush’s term in office, the DJIA lost 3,222.6 points.

The Obama years saw, at first, a worsening economic climate, with the DJIA dropping even further.  Non partisan economists believe this was due in large measure to the downward momentum from the collapsing economic system Obama inherited from Bush II.  However, as of now, during Obama’s term the DJIA has added 5,784.55 points.

The GOP is offering us Mitt Romney to replace Obama.  Here is the problem:  Mitt Romney is a somewhat stupid rich guy who is out of touch with the real world and who relies on weird economic nonsense born more of ideology than reason.

Romney wants to give the rich a tax break and pay for it by taxing the poor. No fooling.

 But we already tried that with Bush II. It didn’t work.  Obama, for all his many, many faults, has made it better.

The American people are being asked to try again what didn’t work the first time and to replace a devil we know with a devil we don’t.

The American people will pick the devil they know – warts and all. They won’t believe the shrill screams from the lunatic Right that Obama is responsible for the economic mess he inherited.  They won’t believe that he can’t take credit for the recovery we’ve experienced.

That’s all there is to it.  Romney cannot win without moderate republican votes like mine, and I won’t vote for a return to the policies of Bush II.

I am going to do what most Americans will do – I will look at the DJIA for a sign of economic health and I will look to see if my SEP retirement fund has recouped the losses it suffered during Bush II.

It has. My retirement fund is in the black again for the first time in years.  And I’m feeling a bit more secure and eating out more.  Buying that bottle of wine. Taking that short vacation.  Not caring quite as much if the lights are left on or not.

I hated living otherwise. I hated being afraid. I remember being afraid that the banking system would crash and the rest would follow.  I started wondering if I should hoard black pepper because it might be hard to get when the international trade system collapsed.

I will never forget what that felt like.  I won’t jeopardize the positive change that has come – albeit slowly.

The GOP could have given us Jim Christie.  The GOP could have embraced Ron Paul.  But it didn’t.  They found someone as much like George W. Bush as they could.

It isn’t my fault if Romney isn’t a viable candidate.

 It isn’t my fault that the GOP did everything it could to keep the economy from improving – and failed.

It infuriates me that keeping the economy bad was their big strategy to being with.  It isn’t my fault that the Republican elite is praying – and scheming – for an economic downturn right before the next election.  It isn’t my fault that the GOP strategists decided it was a good idea to spread rumors that Obama was born in Kenya and pander to bigotry by spreading the rumor that Obama is Muslim (or “muslin” as they say in the deep red states).

All they had to do was run on Obama’s record – which is really, really bad, – and give us a viable alternative.  It isn’t my fault they decided to focus on something else.

I feel bad I cannot vote for Romney. All I am doing is pursing my personal best interests. That is all any American voter should be expected to do. And that is why Romney will lose.

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UPDATE:  The latest employment figures were disappointing: unemployment dropped, but the number of jobs created was lower thane expected.  

Romney wins in November!!!

SHADOWS OF NOVEMBER

We Americans find ourselves at the beginning of the end of a presidential election cycle.  Historians will look back and note this election as the national election where the Republican Party – or the Grand Old Party (GOP) – ended its run as a national political party.

The following three images are only a few that are flying through cyberspace from computer to computer, in and out of the minds of voters:

and…

and…

The moment the Republican dominated legislature of the Great State of Virginia attempted to pass a law requiring women who want an abortion to have a “trans vaginal ultrasound” prior to the abortion – which, essentially, requires a doctor to shove big stick up into the vaginas of women wanting an abortion (the procedure provides no medical benefit to the woman whatsoever) – those “conservative” morons altered the history of the world.

American women feel that the GOP is waging a war on them, and women are fighting back by turning away from the GOP.  

The GOP alienated homosexuals. No big deal: there are not a lot of them.

The GOP alienated Hispanics. No big deal: they are still in the minority and do not affect the crucial “swing states” the GOP must win to unseat Obama.

The GOP alienated educated people.  No big deal: they won’t vote Republican anyway, and demonizing educated people – like “scientists” – panders to the barely literate, unwashed, Bible thumping, reactionary mass that is now the Republican base.

When the GOP decided to wage a war against women, you know those back-water, red neck, social conservatives thought “no big deal: wives and daughters will do what they are told and women aren’t that smart anyway.”

Big mistake.  Big, big, mistake. The GOP has alienated the key political demographic they need to retake the White House. 

The irony is that educated people would not have made that mistake.

Goodbye, GOP. You will never recover from November 2012.

And good riddance. We moderate, educated Republicans need something a little less stupid to represent us.

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A GRIM FAIRY TALE – Free Among the Monkeys And Elephants

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"Hello, children. Would you like to hear a story?"

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I just saw a ten minute preview of the new movie John Carter, and it got me thinking.

I’ve met a lot of professional writers, many of which I admire as artists who have skills I cannot and could not possibly match.  But not all the writers I’ve encountered in my life fit that description. The simple fact is that being a good writer and being a successful writer are often different things and depend on factors that have nothing to do with skill.

So I see the John Carter preview and it looks great. And I am reminded of the book and the author that inspired it back in 1912 – exactly a century ago. And I realize, again, that no one can say what is good or predict with any accuracy what will last.

What follows isn’t exactly a grim fairy tale, but it’s close enough to fit in that category.

So, without further faffing, I give you…

FREE AMONG THE MONKEYS AND ELEPHANTS

On night in late October, 1913, in Dover, England, in a pub at the bottom of a hill, in the shadow of Dover Castle – walking distance to the beach where Matthew Arnold heard ignorant armies clashing by night – George Bernard Shaw was working hard to persuade Lydia, an aspiring American actress, to have sex with him.           

“Should we be going?” Lydia asked.  The piercing cry of gliding seagulls sounded loudly throughout the thick seaside darkness. “The train back to London leaves in ten minutes.”

 ”We can catch the next one,” Shaw responded. 

 ”Do you really think you can get me a reading for Liza?”

 ”I am the playwright.  Of course I can.”

 ”But I don’t know how to do a cockney accent.”

 ”That’s won’t be a problem,” Shaw said.  “I can teach you.  Look, since we’re waiting for the next train, why don’t we take a walk down to the beach?  Matthew Arnold wrote his famous love poem there.”

  “Who? Lydia asked.

 ”Never mind,” Shaw said, taking her hand and guiding her out of the pub.  They passed where James Joyce sat with his traveling companion and lover, Nora.  Joyce listened to Nora and watched her face as she drank pint after pint of bitter, dark, thick beer.   He listened as she talked about her sex life prior to meeting him.

“I think he made them a bit firmer sucking on them so long,” she slurred, nourishing her thick Irish working-class accent each time she lifted her glass and gulped beer. 

Joyce and Nora were on their way to Paris from Dublin by way of London.  Joyce was struggling to find a publisher for two books – a collection of short stories and a short semi-autobiographical novel.  At that moment, in the middle of her beer-sodden reminiscence, Nora could not have cared less.

 ”He made me spend the second time tickling my behind with his finger,” Nora laughed, red eyed.

Joyce smiled and nodded, encouraging her to continue. 

 ”I tried it with the banana,” she confessed. “But I was afraid it might break and get lost up in me somewhere.”  Joyce looked concerned, but wasn’t.  He listened carefully, trying with all his might to memorize every single word.

In the same pub, Edgar Rice Burrows sat with his friend and fellow writer, William Seabrook.  Burrows eagerly described a novel he was writing.

 ”Thuvia is this voluptuous Martian princess,” he began

 ”Are there any other kind?” Seabrook asked.  He genuinely liked Edgar, and admired his success as a popular writer, but nevertheless believed that Burrows was an idiot.

“She is in love with the son of John Carter, the Warlord of Mars -” Burrows explained.

“The Martian princess?”

 ”Yeah.  So she’s in love with this big warrior type who can jump really far and high because his father is from the Earth.”

 ”He can jump high because his father is from Earth?”

 ”Yeah.”

 ”Sort of like a handsome, muscular grass hopper.”

 ”Look, do you want to hear about this or not?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. Please go on.”

“So Carthoris – that’s the guy – he has the hots for Thuvia -”

 ”Carthoris and Thuvia?”

“Yeah.”

 ”Sounds like a bad Shakespearian play.”

 ”So she’s got the hots for him, too, but bad guys kidnap her and make it look like Carthoris did it.”

 ”So he sallies forth to rescue her.”

 ”Yeah. What do you think?”

“Charming.  But tell me about that ape-man novel you are writing.”

“Sure.  It’s based on the short story I published.  Did you read it?”

 ”No, but I’m still interested. It is about a man who is half man, half ape, if I remember correctly.”

“Not half-man half-ape.  He is an ape-man named Tarzan.”

“Whatever.  You say that your publisher is willing to pay you in advance to write it?”

 ”Yeah.”

 ”Well then, why waste your time with your Martian Romeo and Juliet until you’ve finished the Tarzan novel?  What are you going to call it?”

“Tarzan.”

 ”I should have guessed.  Sort of a foreign adventure piece I take it?”

“On, yeah. Lots of adventure.  Tarzan is a guy who was raised in the African jungle by apes.”

“It sounds ghastly.  Are you sure they’re going to pay you for this?”

“You bet.”

“I wonder what the appeal is?” Seabrook pondered.

“Every guy wants to be Tarzan,” Burrows explained.  “Tarzan has everything a man could want.”

“Fleas?”

“Tarzan doesn’t have fleas,” Burrows said, irritably.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not going to give him any,” Burrows said. “I’m giving him a great life.  He’s king of the beasts, lord of the apes.  He can talk to elephants.” 

“Elephants?”

“He can call elephants if he needs them.”

“Why would he need elephants.”

“If he needs a ride, or if he needs help.”

“How helpful can an elephant be?” 

“Lets say he’s surrounded by bad guys, and there’s no way out.  Well, he calls to the elephants and they come and trample the bad guys.”

“Deus Ex Elephant?” Seabrook asked.

 “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “The point is that Tarzan does what he wants.  He is totally free from the pressures of the modern world.  He could have been anyone, any one of us.  And that’s my point.  I want the reader to think, ‘Hey, if I had been dropped into a jungle, I could have been Tarzan.  Tarzan and me are the same guy, we were only brought up different.”

 ”You see this Tarzan as leading some kind of idyllic life?”

 ”Not idyllic – ideal.  Idyllic lives are boring lives.  Tarzan faces plenty of danger to keep things interesting.  And there are things missing that he really needs.”

“Soap and water?”

“No.  Women.  There aren’t any women around.”

“What about native women?”

“Oh, yeah, plenty of those.  But there are no white women anywhere.  So he meets this beautiful explorer, and she shows him the ropes -”

Seabrook smiled at the reference.

” – and brings him back to London.  Good stuff.  But the biggest reason why my readers are going to admire Tarzan is his total freedom, so it won’t surprise anyone when Tarzan would rather be in the jungle instead of in civilization.”

“Free among the monkeys and elephants?”

“Exactly.”

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Elmo Lincoln, in the first Tarzan film (1918)

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William Seabrook

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Nora Barnacle

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James Joyce

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George Bernard Shaw

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Lydia Atherton

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Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Thuvia

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Cathorsis (the one doing the stabbing)

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THE COMING AMERICAN RELIGIOUS WAR

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I consider myself a Republican, conservative Christian man of faith. The problem is that I am Greek Orthodox, which the vast majority of the GOP base does not recognize as being Christian.

I cherish my freedoms, including the freedom to worship the Almighty the way I want. I will be damned if anyone is going to use the political process to impress their religious views upon me – and that is exactly what thehNew Republican Party is hell-bent on doing./

At it’s heart, this conflict is about the same things that caused and fueled the European religious wars of past centuries as well as every Jihadi’s fervor.  This conflict is about power and hate – in particular, the power to hurt those you hate.

The New Republican Party hates women.  Allow me to rephrase that – it hates independent, educated, thinking women who work outside of the home. Let’s call them modern women. And the reason why they hate these women is because their social, intellectual, economic and sexual independence violates a myopic interpretation of antiquated religious doctrine that has nothing to do with the central message that Jesus came to us to teach.

The New Republican Party is waging a war on modern women, and they have corrupted Jesus to do it.  They want to force women out of the job market, out of public life, out of graduate school and back into the four walls of the male dominated homes where ancient Semitic women were imprisoned and enslaved.

The revolutionary message central to Jesus’ teachings – and the reason the political system of his day murdered him – is charity, freedom and love.  This American crusade against women is about selfishness, control and hate.

And, to get the power to hurt the women they hate, these American Taliban have taken over and corrupted the GOP.  They support insurance coverage for Viagra to foster men having sex, but they are dead-set against insurance coverage for contraception or the use of tax dollars to pay for an abortion.

And who pays the ultimate price for this draconian scheme?  Women.  Like a male chimpanzee, a man has recreational sex and then walks away.  The women pays the price for that mutual decision by having no choice but to carry that embryo to term and then raise that child by herself.  She cannot work. She cannot go to school. She cannot participate in any meaningful way in the political process.  She is back where she belongs.

And what is the New Republican Party’s solution to this horrible conundrum?  Just ask Rick Santorum. He will tell you with absolute certainty that his solution is not just correct, but pleases God.  His solution is, essentially, to outlaw sex for any other purpose than procreation.  If Santorum, and the millions of right wing Americans who support him, get their way, the power of government can and should be used to make sure that every single time two people have sex they had better be prepared to have a child, and if they don’t want a baby, then they simply better not have any sex.

This is only one example of what the New Republican Party wants to do to America.  They want to use the power of government to force each and every one of us to live lives no different than the Puritan’s lived in Salem back in the 1600’s.  They pick and choose among the ideals of our Founding Fathers, agreeing with the freedom to bear arms but disagreeing with the separation of church and state.  They want our every day lives, what we do in the privacy of our own homes, to be regulated, to be dominated, by their perverted view of Christian values.

They are masters at self-deception and outright lying.  They try to minimize what they are doing by calling it “social issues.”  When the world found out that the Virginia legislature – dominated by right wing religious fanatics – was passing a bill that would force every woman who wants an abortion to first get a big stick shoved up their vaginas, the outcry was so powerful that those responsible for that repulsive law scurried around like the cockroaches that they are and revised the law.  And the governor of Virginia expressed his disappointment that Virginia’s consideration of a “social issue” would get such a negative reaction.

One person’s social issue is another person’s freedom.  By legislating social issues, the New Republican party is trying to take away everyone else’s freedoms.

Our founding fathers were personally aware of the wreckage the European religious wars caused.  For thirty years, what is now Germany was the battlefield for protestant armies fighting catholic armies. Thirty years.  Our founders decided to spare the people of the new nation they were creating that same pain.  To do it, they manufactured, for the first time in world history, a nation where people could worship God any way they wanted, so long as that worship didn’t mix with political power.

But that separation of church and state our founders created no longer exists.  Santorum – who could actually be elected our next president – actually states publically that there should be no separation of church and state.

The result is going to be the very war the Founding Fathers sought to avoid.  But what the hell. As Tom Petty sang, everybody’s had to fight to be free.

I am prepared to fight to keep these people out of my bedroom and out of my wife’s vagina.  What are you prepared to do?

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Headline – Newt Gingrich surges

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I certainly hope he cleans up after himself.

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INTERVIEW WITH RICK SANTORUM

In this frankly fictitious interview, former senator Rick Santorum – the near winner of the recent Iowa Republican Caucus and candidate for President of the United States – discusses his views on birth control, gay marriage, the non existence of Palestinians and why it was an outrage for President Obama to take any credit for killing Osama bin Laden.

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Rick Santorum

PEOPLE OF EARTH:  Senator Santorum, you base your platform on what you call traditional family values, and that includes opposition to any kind of sex outside of marriage.

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Correcting his campaign poster to remove the word "freedom."

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RICK SANTORUM:  That is correct. If I were president, I would criminalize all sex with anyone but your spouse.

POE:  But haven’t our courts recognized the right to consensual sex between adults whether they are married or not?

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SANTORUM:  I don’t know of any court that has said that. But let’s say its true. If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.

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POE:  You are also against all forms of birth control.

SANTORUM:  Yes. If I am elected president I will outlaw contraception. And I believe that any doctor that performs an abortion, I would advocate that any doctor that performs an abortion, should be criminally charged for doing so. Contraception is not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. Sex is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal but also procreative. Sex within marriage is the only way that a sexual union should happen. And when I say marriage I mean good old American red blooded heterosexual marrige.

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Rick Santorum and his extremely unhappy family.

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POE:  You seem obsessed with homosexuals. Why is that?

SANTORUM:  I wouldn’t say I am obsessed with homosexuals but I will say that I spend most of my time thinking about them and trying to stop our society from recognizing homosexuality as anything other than an abomination forbidden by God.

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POE: So your opposition to homosexuality is religious?

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SANTORUM:  It starts with my faith but it doesn’t end there. There are lots of reasons to oppose homosexuality. First of all, they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people. The argument that people are born homosexuals, like black people are born black, is a lie. There are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t gay anymore, like Marcus Bachmann.

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Successfully choosing not to be gay.

SANTORUM: That isn’t the case for anyone that’s black. It’s a behavioral issue as opposed to a color of the skin issue.

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POE:  But you deny hating gay people.

SANTORUM: You can say I’m a hater. But I would argue I’m a lover. I’m a lover of traditional families and of the right of children to have a mother and father.

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POE: So you love traditional families.

SANTORUM:  That’s right.

POE:  And what is a traditional family?

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SANTORUM:  A traditional family is the kind of family God describes in the Bible – a father as the head of the family married to a submissive woman who cooks for him, cleans the home and bears his children.

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POE:  Okay, you love that kind of family. But that means you must hate other kinds of families.

SANTORUM:  There are no other kinds of families.  All other groupings are not families.

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Not a family.

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Not a family.

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Not a family.

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Not a family.

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SANTORUM:  I would argue that the future of America hangs in the balance, because the future of the family hangs in the balance. Isn’t that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending the sanctity of marriage?

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POE:  You are unabashedly against gay marriage and have said that, in the battle against gay marriage, it is a hill you will die on.

SANTORUM:  Gay marriage threatens my marriage. It threatens all marriages. It threatens the traditional values of this country.

POE:  You recently said in New Hampshire to a group of college students that marriage isn’t an inalienable right, that it is a privilege granted by society.

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SANTORUM: And I also said marriage is a right that society grants because it provides society with benefits.

POE:  Okay, so what you are arguing is that heterosexual marriage gives society benefits, so it is good and should be allowed, but gay marriage doesn’t give benefits, so it should be prohibited?

SANTORUM:  That’s absolutely correct.

POE: So what are the benefits that marriage gives society that gay marriage does not?

SANTORUM: Children.

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POE:  You don’t need to be married to have children.

SANTORUM:  Yes you do.  And if I am elected President, I will imprison all single mothers.  They all vote democrat anyway because the democrats give them money.

POE:  Are you thirsty? Hungry?

SANTORUM:  I’m a bit thirsty.

POE:  Okay, drink this.

SANTORUM:  Oh Jesus, I thank thee for the beverage this godless sodomite has given me to slake my thirst so that I may proclaim the wickedness of homosexuals and prevent our children from even learning that homosexuals exist so that they don’t ever get the idea and decide to turn gay.

POE:  You just referred to me as a “godless sodomite.” You think I’m gay?

SANTORUM:  Yes. You are clearly a liberal defender of sodomites who hates America and Christendom.

POE:  And you’ve come to this conclusion how?

SANTORUM:  You have a beard.

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POE:  So all people with beards are gay atheists who hate America?

SANTORUM:  Yes.

POE:  We are getting away from the interview, but I really think I need to point out that I am not gay, I’ve been married for over 22 years, have a son, and am a baptized member of the Greek Orthodox Church.

SANTORUM:  But you have a beard.

POE:  My priest has a beard.

SANTORUM:  Then he’s gay, too.

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POE:  And a liberal atheist who hates America?

SANTORUM:  Yes.

POE:  Because he has a beard.

SANTORUM:  Yes.

POE:  Moving on – oh, how was the mineral water I gave you?

SANTORUM:  Very refreshing. Praise Jesus.

POE:  I’m glad Jesus provided it.  Anyway, you also said recently that prohibiting gay marriage isn’t discrimination it is only discrimination to deny rights and marriage is a privilege and not a right.

SANTORUM: That is absolutely true.  The only rights any American has are those clearly described in the Constitution.

POE:  What about the right of privacy?

SANTORUM:  Privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution, so no one has the right of privacy.

POE:  So the police can tap our phones and read our mail without violating our rights?

SANTORUM:  Yes. Only those with something to hide have something to fear from being watched by the authorities. 

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SANTORUM: Do you have something to hide?

POE:  No, but I want to be able to scratch my testicles without the police watching me do it.

SANTORUM:  It is against the Laws of God to scratch your testicles.

POE:  You’ve never scratched your testicles?

SANTORUM:  No. Never.

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POE:  They certainly must itch.

SANTORUM:  They do.  Every blessed minute of the day.  Every second of the night.  But suffering is a good thing.

POE:  Yes, I’ve read where you use that to support your argument that the Government shouldn’t try to help poor people.

SANTORUM:  That’s right.  It doesn’t matter if someone is suffering.  Suffering is part of the human condition. Suffering is nature. And it is a punishment from God.  God punishes the wicked and makes them suffer.  Poor people are being punished by God for being lazy.

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A bread line during the Great Depression (1937)

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POE: How are you feeling?

SANTORUM:  Fine.

POE: You don’t look fine.  You look all clammy and you seem to be holding your stomach.

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POE: I’m fine. Please get on with the interview.

POE:  Okay.  So, according to you, marriage isn’t mentioned in the constitution, so it isn’t a right, so it isn’t discriminatory to let heterosexuals marry while forbidding gay people to marry.

SANTORUM:  Yes.

POE: What about civil rights?  Are civil rights found in the Constitution?

SANTORUM:  There are no “civil” rights.  The Constitution only recognizes criminal rights, so there are no civil rights.

POE:  Ah. So the “rights” recognized by the Civil Rights Act are really privileges.

SANTORUM:  Exactly.

POE: And, because they aren’t rights, it isn’t discriminatory grant some people those privileges while denying them to others.

SANTORUM:  Yes. Exactly.

POE:  So let’s say it is a privilege to be able to go into a diner and order a cup of coffee.

SANTORUM:  Yes, that isn’t right. It is a privilege.

POE:  So it is okay for the owner of a diner to choose not to serve homosexuals?

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SANTORUM:  Yes.  That’s his right.  Can we take a break?  I really need to use the bathroom.

POE:  Not quite yet. What about black people?  Is it discriminatory for the owner of the diner to refuse service to black people and serve only white people?

SANTORUM:  No.  Discrimination only happens when someone is denied a right. Being served isn’t a right because it isn’t included in the constitution. It is a privilege. So denying service to someone based on their race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or place of national origin, or whatever, isn’t discrimination.

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POE:  And you want to be President.

SANTORUM:  Yes, God willing.

POE:  Okay, moving on…. You’ve also said that there are no Palestinians.

SANTORUM:  That’s right. There aren’t any.

POE:  What about all those people who identify themselves as Palestinians?

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SANTORUM:  It doesn’t matter what they call themselves. They live in Israel so they are Israeli.  Palestinians are a myth.

POE:  Are there any other myths you want to talk about?

SANTORUM:  Yes.  Global climate change is a myth.

POE:  Why do you say that?

SANTORUM:  Because I refuse to believe it.

POE:  Like the existence of the Palestinian people?

SANTORUM:  Yes. Exactly.

POE:  So if you don’t believe in something, it doesn’t exist?

SANTORUM:  Yes. Life revolves around faith, and faith is belief. I don’t believe that  man-made CO2 is responsible for climate change. I don’t believe there are any Palestinians. I don’t believe in the theory of evolution. And I don’t believe that anyone is born homosexual.  So none of those things are true or exist. And I don’t believe the Crusades happened.

POE:  Do you mean the Crusades in the middle ages when European kings raised armies to invade Palestine to retake Jerusalem from Muslims?

SANTORUM: The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical.  Are we almost done here?  I really have to go.

POE:  We’re almost finished.  You also argue that President Obama deserves no credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.

SANTORUM:  Obama didn’t do it. He ordered other people to do it. Obama didn’t do the hard work. The people he’s going after did the hard work. And that is an outrage.

POE:  So you are saying that people who make decisions and give instructions don’t deserve credit for the result?

SANTORUM:  I really have to go.

POE:  Actually, by my clock you have a few hours before the explosive diarrhea kicks in.

SANTORUM: What are you talking about?

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POE:  That mineral water you drank was laced with a chemical that causes stomach cramps followed a few hours later by explosive diarrhea.

SANTORUM:  You did this?

POE:  Don’t blame me. Remember, you thanked Jesus for that mineral water.

SANTORUM:  I need a doctor.

POE:  Suffering is a good thing, remember?

SANTORUM:  What are you doing?

POE:  Relax, big boy. I’m reaching into your pocket to take your wallet. Nothing more.

SANTORUM: You’re looking through my wallet!

POE:  Why not?  There is not right to privacy, remember?  Hey! What’s this I’ve found?

SANTORUM:  I can explain!

POE:  I thought you were against contraception.

SANTORUM:  It’s been there since high school!

POE:  Looks new to me.

SANTORUM:  Please stop!

POE: No. You certainly have a lot of photos in your wallet. Who is this guy in the cowboy hat and chaps?

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SANTORUM:  No one!

POE: I would like to thank Rick Santorum for being our guest today, and would like to remind everyone that he came within eight votes of winning the Iowa Republican Caucus, which means a whole lot of people agree with everything he said in this interview.  To all my fellow American citizens, I wish you the best of luck. To all my foreign friends, please pray for us, but please do not pray to the God Santorum worships.

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SOURCES:

http://www.ontopmag.com/article.6

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/05/31-rick-santorum-quotes/

http://online.wsj.com/article/wsj

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum

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A Grim Fairy Tale – THE HANDSOME MONSTER

Hello, children. I am Brother Grim. Would you like to hear a story?

Once upon a time, there was a handsome monster.  But he wasn’t born handsome.

He wasn’t born at all.   He was made.  A brilliant young scientist with a fetish for reanimating dead tissue made the monster from bits and pieces of dead people.

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An early attempt.

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 The young scientist did it in a laboratory he built in an abandoned castle in the middle of nowhere.

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He chose the abandoned castle for four reasons. First, the price was right.  The place where the castle was built was experiencing a deep economic depression.

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Years before, the local real estate market was red hot.  People bought castles and then resold them at a profit, over and over again.

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But when this bubble burst, it drove property values lower and lower until, by the time the young scientist was looking for a place to do his experiments, he could buy a castle for next to nothing and, if it was a “fixer-upper” he could buy it for even less.

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"It only needs a little work."

The second reason the young scientist bought the castle was because it was isolated and provided him with privacy.   The young scientist wanted to keep his experiments secret because, at that time, the reanimation of dead tissue upset stupid people much like stem cell research upsets stupid people today.

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Is also afraid of frozen food (not mentioned in the Bible).

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 The third reason the young scientist wanted to experiment with dead tissue in secret was because he found the creation of life distinctly enthralling, and people with socially unacceptable desires prefer privacy when there is any chance their socially unacceptable desires might manifest.

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The obvious benefits of privacy.

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 The fourth reason the young scientist chose that particular location to perform his viscerally unsettling experiments was because the economic conditions that depressed the local real estate market also impoverished a nearby village.  The young scientist was from a wealthy family, and, as a member of the 1%, he knew that poor people embodied four virtues that would advance his interests – poor people lack curiosity, they keep to themselves, they overlook the eccentricities of the rich, and they die in large numbers.

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Poor people are buried on their sides to save space.

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 So the young scientist built his laboratory high inside a castle in the middle of nowhere near a poor village with a busy graveyard.  He built a man, stitched together from bits and pieces of dead people he “borrowed” from the village graveyard and, in time, his experiments bore strange fruit.

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“It’s alive! Alive!!!” the young scientist shouted, filled with a love that dare not speak its name.

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But, as quickly as the thrill coursed through his body, it vanished just as quickly when the young scientist realized that the man he made was incredibly ugly.

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It was a gross miscalculation. Even worse, the young scientist overestimated poverty’s effect on the local populace. They found out about his monster, but they did not shrug it off due to lethargy or indifference.

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The villagers didn’t look the other way as they would have overlooked the excesses of other wealthy people acting badly, such as flamboyant homosexuals, or those who abuse their domestic servants, or those who use political influence to manipulate economic policy to their further enrichment at the poor’s expense and enhanced demise.

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Reanimating dead bodies scavenged from the local cemetery was just too much to overlook and, in response, the local populace organized into a large mob, armed with torches and pitchforks, bent on killing the young scientist and destroying his unholy monster.

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They killed the young scientist, but the monster got away. He wandered  alone, afraid, and friendless.

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Then one day, deep in the forest, the monster stumbled upon a little cabin where lived an old, kindly plastic surgeon (the cabin was a  vacation home).  The old man took the monster in and offered to inject some collagen into his lips.

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At first, the monster refused.

“Needles, bad,” the Monster said. 

But, in time, he learned to trust the old man, signed some consent forms, and submitted to the procedure.

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The result was nothing less than spectacular.  Rounder, fuller lips transformed the monster from ugly into handsome.

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And, in the twinkling of an eye, the monster’s fortunes changed. 

He found an agent.

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He made a sex tape that was “accidentally” released to the internet.

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He was recruited for a new reality television show The Real Monsters of the Enchanted Forest.

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His sudden fits of anger and violence were especially popular with the audience.

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He was a frequent guest on late night chat shows, with interchanges similar to the following:

LENO

I’m told you don’t like fire.

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MONSTER

Fire, bad!

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LENO

I’m also told that you are being considered to play Joey in a remake of the poplar television show Friends.

MONSTER

Friends, good…

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But some things are just not meant to be.  One day when the monster was on tour promoting his new celebrity fragrance Menacing, he was killed by a mob of blind peasants

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(who lost their sight due to malnutrition and lack of basic health care) – which is a powerful sermon on the fragility of modern celebrity.

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HEADLINE – Rick Perry reassures GOP about debating Obama

WASHINGTON — Rick Perry on Sunday sought to reassure GOP primary voters concerned about his wobbly presidential debate performances, apparent low intelligence and general lack of basic education, saying he would draw sharp distinctions with the Democratic incumbent in televised showdowns next year.

“I’m not worried a bit to debate Barack Obama,” Perry said.  ”And I believe in Santa Claus,” he added.

The Texas governor, driving for front-runner status as the most viable conservative in the wide-open field, offered up samples of the scathing rhetoric he used to get elected as Governor of Texas.

“President Obama’s policies are poopy,” Perry said with a grin.

“And he is ugly and his mother dresses him funny.  President Obama’s mother is so ugly, well, she is pretty ugly. And she is white. Can you believe that? A white woman having sex with a black man?  In Texas we don’t take kindly to any sort of race mixing.”

“And we don’t like Mormons. They are a cult,” Perry concluded  before further demonstrating his wit by firing a gun into the air.

“Yee ha!” Perry screamed. “Now, don’t that qualify me to be prez-o-dent?” he asked.

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HEADLINE – Scarlett Johansson Opens Up about Divorce

MUNCIE, Indiana – Actress Scarlett Johansson is finally opening up about her divorce from Ryan Reynolds, which was finalized this past June.

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In a candid interview with German magazine GALA, the usually tight-lipped star revealed what caused her marriage’s demise. “I can be overcritical. And I don’t compromise,” she said. “I pass judgment on people quite quickly. If I don’t agree with someone or if I’m annoyed I will tell people to their face — no matter how hurtful that might be.”

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“In other words, Ryan left her because she is a total bitch,” an anonymous source summarized.

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Ryan Reynolds had no comment. Friends say he is in seclusion and receiving counseling from Fisher Stevens.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/scarlett-johansson-divorce_n_1011485.html

Michele Bachmann vis-a-vis Charles Manson (a fair and balanced examination)

In my last entry, I argued that Newsweek did not try to make Tea Party favorite presidential candidate Michele Bachmann look “crazy” by featuring a certain photograph of Ms. Bachmann on the latest Newsweek cover.

I attempted to support my argument by showing other, much less flattering photographs of Ms. Bachmann that most definitely make her look crazy.

The point I was trying to make was that, if Newsweek really wanted to make Michele Bachmann look crazy, they could have and would have easilly used a less flattering photograph of her.

A number of you commented that Bachmann’s eyes remind you of notorious serial killer Charlie Manson.

I don’t think that is true, but, in the spirit of fairness, I will let you judge for yourself.  Michele Bachmann’s eyes look like this:

Whereas Charlie Manson’s eyes look like this:

As you can see, any similarity is entirely superficial.

HEADLINE – Skydiving quadriplegic plunges to death in Montana

SALMON, Idaho (Ass. Press) – A quadriplegic skydiver plunged 18,000 feet to his death because he was unable to manually deploy his parachute, authorities said on Monday.

Zack Fogle, 27, died Saturday afternoon just minutes after he was tossed from an airplane during a celebrated skydiving event in northwest Montana that drew scores of Montana parachutists, said Flathead County Undersheriff Skip Henderson.

Fogle’s physical disability likely interfered with his ability to activate his primary parachute. “He hit the ground from a fall estimated at 120 miles per hour,” Henderson said.

“Falling at that speed, he probably left a sizable impact crater,” Henderson added.

An examination of Fogle’s equipment showed no malfunctions, suggesting the skydiver inexplicably failed to reach up and pull the cord to deploy his parachute.

Skydivers can manually deploy reserve chutes mid-fall, but physical challenges probably resulting from being paralyzed from the neck down likely prevented Fogle from taking advantage of what is considered a last-ditch but fail-safe practice, said Henderson, a licensed pilot..

A Montana State police investigation is under way and will likely take weeks, agency spokesman Allen Whiteman said Monday.

According to the Montana Parachute Association, improvements in skydiving equipment and training are credited for an overall decline in Montana skydiving deaths, which are the highest in the nation. However, the rate of skydiver accidental and unforeseeable deaths among quadriplegics - paralyzed from the neck down - who cannot, for some reason, deploy their parachutes, is rising, but is expected to improve as Montana’s supply of quadriplegic skydivers declines.

“This is a problem that will, essentially, fix itself, given enough time,” Whiteman said.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/01/skydiving-quadriplegic-pl_n_915737.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl2%7Csec3_lnk2%7C82987

HEADLINE – Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces

TOKYO - Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. 

“The process is very complex and expensive,” Ikeda explained. “The result is definitely edible. The problem is that it tastes like shit.”

“That tsunami really messed those people up,” said Evan Boylan, a student at Illinois State University, upon learned of the Japanese excrement-to-meat scientific breakthrough.

“That’s worse than f**king Soylent Green,” Boylan added.

SOURCE: http://japanesescientistscreatesmeatoutoffeces-

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HEADLINE – Radio host says Rapture actually coming in October

OAKLAND, Calif. – California preacher Harold Camping said Monday his prophecy that the world would end was off by five months because Judgment Day actually will come on Oct. 21.

 

“When I was making my mathematical calculation, I inadvertently forgot to carry the 2,” Camping admitted. “Next time I will double check my math,” he promised.

 

“But there won’t be a next time because this time I am absolutely certain that the world is going to end on October 21,” Camping insisted.

 

When the Rapture didn’t arrive Saturday, crestfallen followers began turning their attention to more earthly concerns.

 

John Biberson had figured the gas money he spent driving back and forth from Long Island to New York City would be worth it, as long as people could see the ominous five foot neon sign atop his car warning that the End of the World was nigh.

 

“I’ve been mocked and scoffed and cursed at and I’ve been through a lot with this lighted sign on top of my car,” said Biberson, 49, a former television producer. “I was doing what I’ve been instructed to do through the Bible, but now I’ve been stymied. It’s like getting slapped in the face. Thanks a lot, God. Thanks for making me waste $20,000 on that sign,” he said.

 

“No one warned me that God could be such a jerk,” he said.  “A loving, all seeing, all knowing God would have ended the world so that I could avoid looking foolish,” a very bitter Biberson concluded.

Source:  http://news.yahoo.com/ 5

HEADLINE – PR campaign for the apocalypse seems to be working

Heaven is apparently going to be minority-free.

MUNCIE –  Evangelical American Christians are not satisfied predicting the end of the world. So they hired a public relations firm to convince the rest of the world that the end is near.

 “More people than ever before are open to the idea of the End of Days,” says Ralf Rabinowitz, Chief Account Executive at Rabinowitz, Rabinowitz, Rabinowitz & Murphy, one of the world’s top PR firms with corporate offices headquartered in New York City.

Ralf Rabinowi

 “We started with some catchy slogans,” said Rabinowitz. “ ‘The apocalypse is great!’ has appeared on bill boards everywhere in five languages. ‘Capture the Rapture’ was my own idea,” Rabinowitz continued.

 It seems to be working.

 “If you asked me how I felt about the end of the world a year ago, I would have been skeptical,” said Phil Henderson of Fort Wayne, New Jersey. “But now I feel, what the hell, why not?”

 

Phil Henderson

“As long as I am among those who are yanked up to heaven when the rapture comes, then I am for it,” said Samantha Dunning of Mar Vista, California. “Everyone else can just go to hell. Literally.”

Samantha Dunning (right)

 Evangelical churches have poured millions of dollars into the PR campaign to convince non believers that the end is near.

 “It’s good for business,” said Harold Camping, an evangelical radio preacher who has predicted the end of the world six times in the last 20 years. “As long as the money keeps rolling in, I plan on keep predicting Doomsday.”

Harold Camping

Camping owns a corporation that manufactures the materials used to make signs announcing the end of the world.

Cha – ching!

 Source: http:// pr-campaign-for-the-apocalypse-seems-to-be-working

Racist Christians are in for a surprise.

THE PARENT FILES: Rendesvous With Goethe

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Within this blog I’ve often mentioned the single most important, pivotal event of my life – i.e., the seven months I spent wandering through Europe and the Middle East when I was 18.

For reasons I cannot fathom, German came easily to me and, as a result, I spent significant time in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.  I still dream in German every now and then. For those who think German is an ugly, guttural language, you have never read or heard German poetry.  It is a musical, incredibly expressive language. I defy you to find the poetic equivalent for angst or zeitgeist in any language. You won’t.  The list of German words that cannot easily be defined in any other language is endless.

My wife and I just talked with our son via Skype videoconference.  He is jet lagged, hungry, and about to go out to try to find food in a small German town where he will spend the next two weeks attending German language classes by day and practicing what he has learned at night.

Or at least that is the plan.  I really don’t know how much German he will be able to pick up in this short time. I know he isn’t me. I know he doesn’t have the same gift for learning new languages that I had at his age.  But I am still hoping that this is the start of a chain of events that will act as a foundation, and an incentive, for more intensive study later.  I want, if possible, for him to experience the pleasure and insight the exposure to German provided me.

And if not, at least I can say to myself that I did my best to make it so.

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HEADLINE – Osama Bin Laden Home Videos Expected To Be Released

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MUNCIE – Files recovered from Osama bil Laden’s personal computer reveal that the world’s most wanted man spent most of his days making intimate videos.

“Apparently, bin Laden considered himself the equivalent of a rock or movie star,” said Assistant US Secretary of State Vince Portho. “The homemade videos that will be released can only be described as bin Laden’s sex tapes.”

Celebrities often memorialize their erotic exploits through “sex tapes” that eventually are leaked to the media. Rob Lowe, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Colin Farrell, Pamela Anderson and figure skating sensation Tonya Harding are examples of celebrities that made private sex tapes.

Portho was quick to temper public expectations about bin Laden’s sex tapes. “Please understand that bin Laden was a very conservative muslim. Consequently, the tapes won’t be all that exciting by Western standards,” Portho cautioned.

“The videos mainly depict bin Laden sitting in the same room with fully clothed women, covered from head to toe in full niqab burkas. Neither bin Laden nor the women do anything other than just sit there, with the exception of bin Laden occasionally looking over at the women on the other side of the room, then looking back into the camera and wiggling his eyebrows suggestively,” Portho said.

Included in bin Laden’s video stash investigators also found thousands of photos bin Laden took himself.

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Source:  http://bin-laden-home-videos_2

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