God Is Good. Well, Not *THAT* God…

In the aftermath of the terrible killings in Oslo, Norway, there is a clear take-away message that I’m getting, and I’m so glad that right-wing pundits, conservative nutjobs and Tea Party members, among others, are brave enough to share this insight:

If a Muslim kills folks, it’s clearly terrorism, and also proof that Islam is an inherently violent religion that is obsessed with taking over the world and crushing the United States to dust.

If a Christian kills a bunch of folks, it’s simply a sign he was slightly too aggressive in expressing his understandable bigotry and/or he isn’t practicing his religion properly.

Thanks for clearing that up, folks. I feel so much better now.

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Here’s Your Trickle Down

Hey, Tea Party morons and most other Republican supporters (and no small amount of independent voters, too)!

Do you want to know why people who earn $250,000 or more should be taxed at a higher rate (like the wealthy used to be in the early- and mid-20th century)?

First of all, they represent around 3% of the U.S. population, so they most certainly aren’t the bulk of hard-working Americans who have trouble making ends meet.

But you know what the real reason is?

This figure:

The richest 1% of Americans now take home almost 24% of the income in the nation, up from around 9% of the income in 1976.

Yeah, do you still believe the myth launched by Ronald Reagan, and perpetuated by Republicans ever since, that if you let the wealthy keep more of their money, the whole nation will benefit?

If you do, you’re an idiot, as there is no clearer evidence of the fact that if you give them huge tax breaks so they can hang on to their excessive wealth, they don’t spread it around. Instead, they hoard even more of it.

Company executives get paid more and more outrageous salaries even though they don’t work THAT much harder than their employees (do you really think your company CEO works 40 to 100 times harder than you do? Get real). Companies won’t give workers raises that match or keep ahead of inflation, and take away more and more days off and more of their benefits, and make them pay more and more for health insurance…just so that they can keep making their top execs richer and richer.

Reagan’s trickle down theory DOES work.

But it isn’t money trickling down to all of us poor folks and us blue collar, pink collar and middle class professionals.

It’s the hot piss of the rich running down our backs as they laugh.

What Is In Their Tea, Anyway?

I know the mid-term elections are over, but this is the best breakdown I’ve seen of the Tea Party and all the Republicans who passively co-sign their “ideals” and let them run rampant, so it deserves to be shared even post-election.

By the way, before anyone mentions crazy liberals, let’s remember that the Democrats actually remain a largely centrist party and the whack-jobs on the left don’t drive the direction of the Dems nor end up getting such a voice in party policy. So far, the Dems know how to contain their crazies, while the GOP elevates theirs to star status.

Tea Party = Tiny Brains?

So, I’m really hoping that Christine O’Donnell’s nomination to be the Republican candidate in Delaware really does mean a win for the Democrats, because she’s starting to make Sarah Palin look like a member of Mensa.

The Tea Party movement has been generating some of the most intellectually ill-informed and ideologically fired-up people I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s a scary combo. I don’t want people in political power who say things like this:

“American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.”

Yes, O’Donnell said that.

The thing is, in scientific research, animal cells are sometimes fiddled with to make things more human-like so that drugs and such can be tested on them and we can have a reasonable chance to feel like when human testing time rolls around (a.k.a. clinical trials) that the drug will work properly in humans.

To show just how far off O’Donnell was though, click here to read a story about the real situation and how badly O’Donnell mangled the truth of it.

So, 1% of the mouse’s brain being a “human brain” is pretty far off, even for the average uninformed Tea Party candidate (hey, show me a well-informed, well-educated Tea Party candidate and maybe I’ll stop ragging on them, but I haven’t seen one yet). But let’s assume for a moment that a scientist really did get clearance to do 100% human brain cells in a mouse.

What does O’Donnell think is going to happen?

That the little tiny mouse skull with a tiny collection of human brain cells is going to develop human-level thinking? Does she think we’re going to end up with a scenario like “Pinky and the Brain” with a super-genius mouse trying to take over the world?

I’m just shaking my head, and preparing for the end of the world, or the rise of Fourth Reich fascist state, or whatever is in the works if the Tea Party keeps gaining momentum in the United States and we really do put people this dangerously uninformed and activist into power.

For Hate’s Sake

If you haven’t heard about the Shirley Sherrod debacle, you might want to leave now, because I’m only going to give it a cursory overview before I get into the meat of this relatively short post (Miz Pink just went on a race thing the other day here, so why not me, too, eh?)

So, conservative asshole (or assholes), mess with video from a presentation that USDA official Shirley Sherrod made, in an attempt to make her look like a black racist who had perhaps been screwing over white farmers. Conservative dickhead Andrew “I don’t care if it’s true as long as it gets me hits” Briebart puts up the video. Fox News has a field day with it. Many others in the media, wanting to show they aren’t liberal elitists, jump all over Sherrod, too. The USDA reacts hastily and makes her quit.

In the span of a day, give or take, a woman is torn to pieces metaphorically. Then comes CNN with massive coverage showing that the tapes were doctored to make Sherrod look bad, when in fact white farmers and many other people have been quite happy with Sherrod’s work at the USDA.

Now, the head of the USDA is apologizing, and the White House is trying to make good and polish its image after what seems to be yet another attempt by the administration to show that it won’t play favorites with blacks, and will in fact throw them under the bus (as the saying goes).

Here’s what I’m not going to do:

Cuss out Andrew Briebart (he’s a dick and apparently cannot cease being so any more than Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck can. No one should have trusted anything that he touches, and the media should be ashamed for being led down the primrose path by him)

Blame Barack Obama (or anyone else in the White House. There is no reason to believe that Sherrod’s situation and firing would have gotten that high on the food chain. Obama and his core staff had bigger fish on the grill at that point with unemployment benefits and financial reform)

Here’s what I am going to do:

Shake my head, mutter and swear about how easily duped the mainstream media is these days.

Lament that people can get fired lickety-split these days over a controversy or rumors without anyone bothering to investigate whether there’s any basis to it all.

And finally, I’m going to ask, “Why?”

Why did someone think it was necessary to murder Sherrod’s reputation? Why paint her as evil and as some racist black woman in power? Why? Why doctor a video to target her?

Race. Hate.

That’s it. Someone was racist enough and hateful enough to try to ruin a black woman who apparently has done a  lot of good (much of that good for white farmers and white poor people), just because she was black and, probably, because it might help make our black president look worse.

It’s not enough to just blame black folks for crimes they don’t commit or play up isolated incidents in their past to make them look militant or extreme. It’s not enough to jail them for crimes at higher rates and deny them not only their freedom but take away their future right to vote when white folks go free for the same crimes routinely.

No, none of that is enough.

Now, it’s necessary just to flat-out make shit up about a black person just because. Not even someone who’s at the top in power. Just a key official in a certain region doing her job. But because she’s black, it’s OK to make her look like a villain. With outright lies. Doctored video. Out of context comments.

*sigh*