Factory Farms’ Employee of the Month: Tennessee Rep. Andy Holt

Factory farms and slaughterhouses are determined to keep the public from finding out about the horrifying animal abuse that goes on inside.  It’s bad enough our bought-and-paid for Congress won’t do anything about this.  Even worse, factory farms have ordered some of their prostitutes in state legislatures to pass laws making it illegal for anyone to photograph or report the animal torture going on inside these factories.

Report a crime, go to prison.

Lawmakers in Iowa and Utah have passed these “ag gag” laws, and the laws have already been signed by the teatard governors of those two states.  And now the Tennessee House has just passed an “ag gag” bill.  This bill — HB 1191 — was sponsored by state Rep. Andy Holt (R—Fishnet Stockings).

Not only is Andy Holt a used-up streetwalker spreading his legs for the factory farm industry — he also went stark raving mad when Kayci McLeod of the Humane Society wrote to him and asked him to oppose HB 1191.  His foaming-at-the-mouth response:

“I am extremely pleased that we were able to pass HB 1191 today to help protect livestock in Tennessee from suffering months of needless investigation that propagandist groups of radical animal activists, like your fraudulent and reprehensibly disgusting organization of maligned animal abuse profiteering corporatists, who are intent on using animals the same way human-traffickers use 17 year old women.  You work for a pathetic excuse for an organization and a pathetic group of sensationalists who seek to profit from animal abuse. I am glad, as an aside, that we have limited your preferred fund-raising methods here in the state of Tennessee; a method that I refer to as ‘tape and rape.’ Best wishes for the failure of your organization and it’s true intent.”

Legislative aides weren’t sure why Andy Holt was foaming at the mouth.  Either he was just in the throes of his rabid response to the Humane Society, or he had just finished sucking off a room full of factory farm lobbyists.

Tim Eyman: Astroturf “Grass Roots” Front for Rightwing Millionaires

About forty-eight years ago, Howard Jarvis fucked Grover Norquist and they named their hideous love child Tim Eyman.  If you don’t live in or near Washington State, you probably haven’t heard of this guy.  But every state probably has its own anti-tax folk hero — somebody to give a populist voice to the joy and pain of being a plutocrat:

“I’m mad as hell at the unwashed masses and I’m not going to take it any more!”

Since the late 1990s Tim Eyman has been determined to bankrupt the State of Washington with one anti-tax initiative after another.  Some of his initiatives have been passed by voters; some have been defeated.  And some of the ones that passed were later overturned by the courts.

Tim Eyman’s newest initiative — not on the ballot yet — would require all new tax increases to automatically expire after one year.  And it would require all state voter pamphlets to list each legislator’s voting record on all tax measures.  (I personally would be more interested in who contributed to each candidate’s re-election campaign; but that’s just me.)

Joel Connelly of the Seattle PI has Tim Eyman dialed.  Nailed.  He articulates exactly how and why Tim Eyman is such a phony bloodsucking piece of shit.  And he does it without any cursing or name-calling.  (I wish I could do that.)

From Joel Connelly’s column:

“He has turned into the favorite populist of local plutocrats and corporations wary of having loopholes closed or taxes raised.  The state’s major oil refiners put in $350,000 to fuel  Eyman’s 2011 super-majority measure onto the state ballot.  The Legislature in 2010 came close to passing a small per-barrel cleanup fee.  The Beer Institute topped that with $400,000.

“Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman Jr. put more than $1 million into an Eyman initiative that sought to block Sound Transit from crossing Lake Washington with a rail line extending to Bellevue and Redmond.  Financier Michael Dunmire has underwritten campaigns on issues ranging from taxes to traffic cameras.”

Ah, the voice of the people.

Andrew Villeneuve, of the Northwest Progressive Institute, also has some kind words for Tim Eyman:

“Eyman wants to clog up our ballots with nonbinding advisory votes that amount to nothing more than useless opinion research conducted at taxpayer expense.  If Eyman’s wealthy benefactors want to pay for one-sided poll questions intended to reinforce their talking points, that’s fine.  But the rest of us shouldn’t be forced to.”

As one of the commenters at the end of the linked article said:

“If Eyman had some 'nads, he would run for office and try to get things passed the way things were intended.”

Finally, a chance to Save the Post Office

As most people know — or should know by now — the U.S. Postal Service is drowning in red ink because of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006.  Under this brilliant law, the Post Office is required to pre-fund seventy-five years worth of employee health benefits.  This is way way beyond what’s required of any other government agency.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has introduced legislation to put the U.S. Postal Service back in the black by repealing the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.

Unfortunately, saving the Post Office isn’t exactly a burning issue for most members of Congress.  They’re too busy with higher priorities like repealing Obamacare and protecting Wall Street CEOs from those meddling bureaucrats.

So Rep. DeFazio is trying to get around Congress’ corruption and inertia.  He’s created a petition at the White House petition platform, We The People, to petition President Obama to take a stand against the Post Office’s 75-year health benefits requirement.

Your “representatives” in Congress don’t care whether the U.S. Postal Service survives or not.  But YOU can help save the Post Office by signing this petition.

Bi-Partisan Bill to crack down on Too Big To Fail

Senators Sherrod Brown (D—Ohio) and David Vitter (R—Louisiana) are cosponsoring a bill that would require stricter capital requirements on the six largest megabanks.  These six banks — which all have more than $500 billion in assets — are JPMorgan Chase; Citigroup; Goldman Sachs; Morgan Stanley; Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

Instead of breaking up these megabanks into smaller banks, this bill would require the banks to finance at least fifteen percent of their investments with equity.  This would hopefully make them less likely to become insolvent and require another trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout.

In addition to preventing another 2008-style crash, this bill would dilute some of the largest banks’ political clout.  Sherrod Brown said:

“These six banks are from $600 billion to $2.2 or $2.3 trillion in assets, and you know it’s really … way more than the economic power these six banks have. It’s also the political power they have. The power to slow down the rules coming out of Dodd-Frank.  If we do nothing here and things continue — these six banks will have 65 then 70, who knows what percent of GDP their assets will represent. Their political power and their economic power go together.”

And as long as we’re cracking down on Wall Street — or daydreaming about it anyway — the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) might start requiring all publicly traded companies to disclose all political contributions to their shareholders.  Imagine that:  hundreds of millions of dollars in secret anonymous contributions, suddenly on public display.

Needless to say, congressional Republicans are scared shitless of having their secret donors dragged out from under their rocks and into the sunlight.  Also needless to say, they’ll pull every possible stunt and parliamentary maneuver to keep the lowly public from ever finding out who owns which candidate.

Three Cheers for Rightwing Talk Radio

Seriously.

Yes, we know rightwing talk radio is nothing but a few twisted demagogues preaching to an inbred choir.  But there’s a bright side:  Talk radio is hurting the Republican Party.

GOP strategist Frank Luntz spoke to a group of college Republicans about the problems caused by the tsunami of radio bilge:

“And they get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it's really problematic.”

He was particularly concerned about Marco Rubio’s immigration reform efforts being sabotaged by rightwing spewfucks:

“He's getting destroyed by Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He's trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn't the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him. That's what's causing this thing underneath. And too many politicians in Washington are playing coy.”

All right!!!  Let the GOP civil war heat up and up and up.  Fan the flames!

How Democrats can Win Back the House

That’s the title of this article by James Carville and Stan Greenberg.  They make the point that the middle class has pretty much fallen off Obama’s radar since his re-election.  My own top priorities are to protect (a) the environment and (b) the middle class from the corporate juggernaut.

These aren’t separate issues.  Whether it’s eliminating clean air/water protections and the Endangered Species Act, or giving more tax breaks and loopholes to the wealthiest one percent — at everyone else’s expense — both of these agendas are being pushed by the same shadowy billionaires and their useful idiots.

If I had to pick the two issues where I’m the least opinionated, it would be guns and immigration.  And this is where President Obama is spending most of his political capital.  And what has he gained?

The authors point out that Republicans have aliened key voters in regards to immigration, guns and the budget.  But they conclude with:

“But if Democrats want to take control of Congress, they must return to an issue that has disappeared since election night:  the ongoing struggles of the middle class.”

Bravo.  What are we waiting for?

Internet Sales Taxes

The Senate will begin debating a bill which would allow states to require Internet retailers to collect sales taxes.  Currently, states can require online retailers to collect sales taxes only if the retailer has a “physical” location in that state.

This current situation gives Internet retailers a huge advantage over their bricks-and-mortar competitors.  And as anyone who lives in or near an urban area knows, we need our bricks-and-mortar shops to survive if we don't want even more downtown areas to go belly up.

A lot of Republican senators are in favor of this bill.  So are most governors, Democrat and Republican.  Even Amazon.com — probably the main reason this bill is needed  — is in favor of it.  An Amazon spokesman said:

“Amazon.com has long supported a simplified nationwide approach that is evenhandedly applied and applicable to all but the smallest volume sellers.”

The bill was sponsored by Senator Mike Enzi (R—Wyoming), who said:

“I believe it is important to level the playing field for all retailers.  We should not be subsidizing some taxpayers at the expense of others.”

Dan Crippen, executive director of the National Governors Association, said:

“It's a matter of equity for businesses.  It's a matter of revenue for states.”

The House is less favorable to this bill.  It’s opposed by eBay — ya think? — and by Heritage Action for America, an activist offshoot of the Heritage Foundation.  Heritage Action for America has warned congress that it will be counting votes and keeping score.

OOOOHHHH!!!!  In other words, anyone who votes for this piece of communist claptrap will get primaried by a Far Right Teabagger; and said Teabagger will then go on to lose the general election to a Democrat.

The main argument against an online sales tax is that it’s too burdensome for small online retailers, and too overwhelming to grapple with the different sales tax rates in thousands of jurisdictions.

To this argument, Dick Durbin pointed out that if this law is passed, states will be required to provide online retailers with free software that calculates sales taxes based on where a shopper lives.  He said:

“We're way beyond the quill pen and ledger days.  Thanks to computers and thanks to software it is not that complex.”

You can Believe in Free Market Economics OR Science. Not Both.

I never would have thought Libertarian “The Marketplace!” types had anything in common with religious Fundamentalists.  But a new study shows that these groups have one thing in common:  Both of these groups reject science — or anything else that contradicts their pre-conceived beliefs.

Come to think of it, when somebody starts getting all dreamy-eyed over The Invisible Hand of the Marketplace, this person could just as easily be talking about Adam and Eve or the Rapture.

Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia, who directed this study, said:

“The conspiracist ideation that all of the world’s scientific academies have conspired together to create a hoax known as global warming has found traction in American mainstream politics.”

He also said:

“The pivotal role of personal ideology in the rejection of climate science has been repeatedly demonstrated.  We highlighted the magnitude of this effect among climate-science blog denizens, who have a strong interest in the issue, and we additionally showed that endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of two other well-established scientific facts.”

Those other two well-established scientific facts denied by the Free Marketeers:  the fact that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer and the fact that the HIV virus causes AIDS.

Climate change deniers also have a strong tendency to believe the 1969 moon landing was a hoax; just a Hollywood production.

Figures.

Is Chechnya the same as Czech Republic?

I’m trying to get this all straightened out here.  Those two sickfucks that bombed the Boston Marathon, they were from the Czech Republic, right?  Or was it Chad?  Czechoslovakia?  Chen Tai Chi?

Seriously though, the more opinionated somebody is about international politics — the more CERTAIN this person is that he/she is RIGHT — the less this person knows about geography or the intricate relations between countries and regions.

Yesterday at Townhall.com there was an article about Eastern Europe being a hotbed of Islamic militancy.  [roll eyes]  [sigh]  It was just a video, no text, and the video took too long to load so I gave up and left.  Damn it, I was looking for a good laugh.

Several years ago, when Russia invaded Georgia — psssst!  guess which Georgia — Americans’ embarrassing ignorance was front and center.  What really happened:  The Georgian army invaded two regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  These two regions were officially part of Georgia, but most of their people were ethnic Russians, and their loyalty was towards Russia.  For awhile this seemed to be OK with the Georgian government, until it wasn’t.  When Georgia invaded Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia sent in troops to protect the Russian people living in those two territories.

The above paragraph is a way oversimplified description of an intricate long-simmering situation.  But it’s still much too complicated for millions of Americans, who would rather just go “Ugh!  Russia Bad!  Georgia Free!  Russia Invaded Georgia!”

The “liberal” media took part in this whole charade.  There were screaming headlines about Russia invading Georgia, usually accompanied by pictures of Georgian citizens standing in the street weeping and wailing as Russian tanks rolled by.  For some odd reason we never saw any pictures of South Ossetians or Abkhazians weeping in the streets as Georgian tanks rolled by.

Americans’ knowledge of the outside world probably hasn’t improved since then.  To most Americans, there’s The Greatest Country in the History of the World, and then there’s that big glob of OTHER countries that aren’t us.

Hopefully Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will reveal some valuable information before he dies.  Were he and his brother just two fucksticks working alone?  Were they part of a terrorist cell?  There have been generations of mutual hatred between Chechnya and Russia, but what’s that got to do with us?

If Chechnya — or even just the two Tsarnaev brothers — hate the United States as well as Russia, then maybe Russia and the U.S. aren’t as far apart as we think.  “The enemy of my enemy” and all that…

Anyway, let’s hope the Boston Marathon murders don’t set off a new round of geopolitical ignorance and xenophobia.  It won’t help.

Bremerton, WA Cracks Down on Foreclosed Abandoned Buildings

The city council of Bremerton WA has unanimously passed a local ordinance to crack down on abandoned foreclosed buildings.  This new law is the first of its kind.  Let’s hope it sparks a nationwide trend.

Beginning August 1st, the owner of an abandoned residential or commercial property will be required to register the property with the city of Bremerton.  The owner will be responsible for checking the property once a month for tall grass, unlocked doors, broken windows, graffiti and any other nuisance that can blight a neighborhood.

Since most if not all of these abandoned properties are in foreclosure, the owner is most likely to be a bank which may or may not have a branch nearby.  (This ordinance does NOT apply to landlords who don’t currently have a tenant, or owners who live on a property but are out of town for long periods of time.)

Bremerton’s community development director described the urban blight that results from too many abandoned buildings:

“You’ve got basically shells of buildings in the middle of neighborhoods.  These things are bad for everybody.”

As the linked article says:

“That deterioration is accelerated when squatters invade, bringing trash and crime. The result is a less safe neighborhood, a diminished sense of community and lower property values.”

Failure to register a property, or allowing the property to deteriorate, could result in a fine of $1,000 and a $100-a-day penalty until the violation is corrected.

It’s about time banks and foreclosure mills started taking responsibility for the properties they confiscate.  It’s not enough to just say “OK, we’ve kicked them out of their home.  Our work here is done.”

It’ll be interesting to see how the banking industry reacts to this ordinance, especially if laws like this start spreading like wildfire.  We might start seeing some new Astroturf groups staging choreographed “demonstrations” on behalf of the foreclosure mills’ property rights.

Or maybe the banks will order their congressional prostitutes to pass a federal law banning this type of local ordinance.  We’ll see…

And God Shall Strike Ye with Paranoid Schizophrenia

If you’ve ever known any hardcore sanctimonious Biblehumpers, this latest research probably isn’t surprising.  People who believe in an angry god are more likely to suffer from certain mental disorders.

These findings have been published in the Journal of Religion and Health, April edition.  The research was conducted by Marymount Manhattan College Assistant Psychology Professor Nava Silton.  She used data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of American adults.

The research was based on three types of believers:  people who believe in an angry vengeful god, people who believe in a loving god, and a third “neutral” category that doesn’t see God as angry, loving, bigoted, kind and gentle, or any other particular personality trait.

People who believe in a loving forgiving god are more likely to have positive psychological traits.  The researcher, Nava Silton, described them as “almost protecting against psychopathology.”

And what about those people who believe in an angry vengeful punishing god?  Nava Silton says: “That belief seems to be very much related to these negative symptoms.”

“These negative symptoms” include social phobias, paranoia, obsession, compulsion, and anxiety disorders.

I guess we should feel sympathy for these people.

Nah.

Chinese Poachers Caught Red-Handed in The Philippines

Twelve crewmen from a Chinese fishing vessel are being held by Philippine authorities.  Their boat rammed into a coral reef, and the authorities discovered the boat was holding 22,000 pounds of pangolin meat.

The pangolin is a rare species of anteater.  It’s protected in most of Asia, and there’s been an international trade ban since 2002.

The Chinese vessel — F/N Min Long Yu — crashed into a coral reef that was part of a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site on Palawan island.  A spokesman for the World Wide Fund for Nature Philippines said:

“It is bad enough that the Chinese have illegally entered our seas, navigated without boat papers and crashed recklessly into a national marine park and World Heritage Site.  It is simply deplorable that they appear to be posing as fishermen to trade in illegal wildlife.”

The Chinese poachers could get up to twelve years on poaching charges, and an additional six years for possession of pangolin meat.

Throw the fuckin’ key away.

And in a strange twist of Karma, two Chinese tourists — they were in their car — were attacked by an elephant in a South African game preserve.  The elephant overturned their car.  They were both injured but not killed.

They were driving through Kruger National Park at around 6:30 a.m. when the elephant charged their vehicle.

All jokes about Karma aside, this was of course a tragic occurrence and the two victims presumably have nothing to do with the global trade in endangered species.  But the comments at the end of the linked article are a glimpse at how people perceive the Chinese and their role in the worldwide slaughter of endangered wildlife:

“Payback for all the endangered species being poached in the name of ‘traditional Chinese medicine.’”

“Elephants are sick and tired of being mistreated. The Chinese drive the ivory trade, how apropos that the elephant should attack them.”

“Maybe when the elephant saw they were Chinese it was trying to get his uncles tusks back.”

Lose Your Home Through Illegal Foreclosure, Receive $300 Compensation

The Justice Department sure did sock it to the banking industry.  Three million victims of illegal foreclosure practices — foreclosure mills, robo-signers — will receive $300 to $500 in “compensation” for their troubles.  Oh Boy!!!

OK, you’ve been compensated.  Run along now.

In a related story, Senator Elizabeth Warren blasted two banking industry “regulators” for favoring banks over homeowners.  The two henhouse-guarding foxes, Daniel Stipano and Richard Ashton, admitted that they had information about illegal foreclosure activities but they had withheld that information from the victims of those practices.  The foreclosure victims were seeking justice in the courts and could have used this information.

The two prostitutes told Elizabeth Warren that they still hadn’t decided how much information they would provide.  Hmmm, maybe there IS a case for waterboarding.

Warren told them:

“So you have made a decision to protect the banks but not a decision to tell the families who were illegally foreclosed against?…So I just want to make sure I get this straight.  Families get pennies on the dollar in the settlement for having been the victims of illegal activities or mistakes in the banks’ activities. You now know individual cases where the banks violated the law and you’re not going to tell the homeowners — or at least it’s not clear yet whether or not you’re going to do that?”

Fuck waterboarding.  Bring on the Chinese Bamboo Torture.

If you’re fed up with Too Big To Jail, it’s time to make your voice heard.  Please click here and ask Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama to hold Wall Street accountable by prosecuting the bankers who destroyed our economy.

Power Grab by Michigan State Legislature

Voters in Michigan, as in lots of other states, have made frequent use of the initiative process.  Among other initiatives, voters enacted a ban on the target shooting of Mourning Doves — which passed by a landslide in 2006.

And an organization called Keep Michigan Wolves Protected has turned in their petition — with over 250,000 signatures — to the Secretary of State’s office.  This group has a referendum, to ban the hunting of wolves, which is expected to be on the November 2014 ballot.

And now, state senator Tom Casperson (R—Inbred) is trying to squelch those pesky treehuggers.  Tom Casperson sponsored the 2012 law that allows wolf hunting in Michigan, and his law could be overturned in the upcoming referendum sponsored by Keep Michigan Wolves Protected.

Can’t let that happen now, can we.  Tom Casperson has introduced a bill, SB 288, which would take these decision-making powers away from the voters, and even from the state legislature.  If SB 288 becomes law, the state Natural Resources Commission — which is heavily stacked with ranching and trophy hunting advocates — will have the sole power to determine which species are protected and which ones are fair game for hunting, trapping, poisoning, you name it.

The Natural Resources Commission could open a new hunting season on ANY species, with no public input whatsoever.

SB 288 also contains a million-dollar appropriation, which means that if this bill gets passed, it can’t be overturned by a citizens’ referendum.  Sleazebag.

Here is a link asking Michigan residents to call and/or e-mail their state legislators and ask them to oppose SB 288.

Workplace Drug Testing = Corporate Welfare for Hoffman-La Roche

Sometime during the 1980s — if not earlier — America’s anti-drug hysteria began turning into a lucrative industry.  The Drug & Alcohol Testing Industry Association (DATIA) is the trade association for the multi-billion-dollar drug testing industry.

Hoffman-La Roche — a DATIA member, needless to say — got this whole thing started in the mid 1980s.  By 1987, Hoffman-La Roche’s drug-testing labs were “earning” $300 million a year from the Pentagon.  The following year, Hoffman-La Roche launched a huge PR campaign to get corporate executives all fired up over the evil drug menace.  Their campaign was called “Corporate Initiatives for a Drug-Free Workplace.”

Hoffman-La Roche teamed up with a lawyer, David Evans, and together they organized workshops all over the country to convince employers to start drug-testing their workers.

By 2006, workplace drug-testing had reached its peak.  84% of American employers reported that they were testing their employees for drugs.  Since then, the percentage has been steadily decreasing.  More and more employers have decided either that the drug tests aren’t worth the expense and/or that the “problem” had been exaggerated.

After losing so many corporate clients, the drug testing industry had to search for new frontiers.  Voila!  In recent years there’s been a tsunami of new state laws requiring drug testing for everyone who applies for public assistance of any kind.

Coincidence?  Hoffman-La Roche is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  Birds of a feather.  And ALEC is the source of these boilerplate state laws requiring all public assistance applicants — including laid-off workers applying for unemployment benefits — to be drug-tested.

And here’s another gold mine for Hoffman-La Roche and other DATIA members:  School children.  Besinger, DuPont & Associates — another member of DATIA — has described schools as “potentially a much bigger market than the workplace.”

Invest your sons and daughters Now!

And that’s not all.  The recent trend of decriminalizing and even legalizing marijuana has produced an Astroturf “grassroots” backlash.  Three guesses where this manufactured “grassroots” backlash is coming from.  [see above]

Mitch McConnell Gets Outed, Wants to Prosecute the Outer.

Last February, when Ashley Judd was planning to run against Mitch McConnell for the Senate in 2014, McConnell and his aides talked about using her history of depression as a campaign issue.  (Ashley Judd has since pulled out of the senate race.)

This February conference was secretly recorded and leaked to Mother Jones, which published the audio of the conference.  Here’s the audio.

And now — just like factory farms that try to prosecute people who take undercover videos of animal abuse — Mitch McConnell wants the FBI to investigate the recording and publishing of his secret go-for-the-jugular conversation.

It’s OK for Mitch McConnell to be a sleazy underhanded douchebag; but it’s not OK to reveal this fact.

In the formerly secret conversation, Jesse Benton, McConnell’s campaign manager, said:

“She's clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced. I mean it's been documented. Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she's suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the '90s.”

I guess if you don’t have any valid issues to campaign on, the next best thing is to dig up dirt on your opponent.  The dirt they’ve “dug up” on Ashley Judd was already spelled out in her autobiography, so I don’t know who would be swayed or shocked by their “findings.”  But give ‘em an E for Effort.

Let’s hope this secret recording does for Mitch McConnell what Romney’s secretly-recorded speech did for him.  Mitch McConnell is too slippery to be a ditch digger, let alone a U.S. Senator.

Margaret Thatcher: Bleeding Heart Liberal, COMMUNIST

Establishment Republicans and RINOs can go ahead and idolize Margaret Thatcher if they want.  But me and my fellow Teabaggers can see that Nanny State Freedom-Killer for what she really was.

While the lamestream media gushes over that fallen socialist, let’s set the record straight:

First of all, she was in favor of socialized medicine!  England’s National Health Service is even worse than Obamacare!  And here is what Pinko Thatcher said about it:

“I believed that the NHS was a service of which we could genuinely be proud.  It delivered a high quality of care — especially when it came to acute illnesses — and at a reasonably modest unit cost, at least compared with some insurance-based systems.”

That F$%&#!# Commie!  As any true conservative will tell you, sick people need to get out of the way and just go and DIE somewhere.

Furthermore, Margaret Thatcher INCREASED taxes!  She robbed Peter to pay Paul.  She confiscated the hard-earned wealth of successful people and REDISTRIBUTED it to the poor and unworthy.  She also increased the Value Added Tax (VAT), which Newt Gingrich has rightly referred to as “European Socialism.”

She also was in favor of gun laws.  Gun laws?!?!?  Did that damn fool woman actually think guns go around firing themselves???  After a shooting spree in England, she said:

“If gun laws need to be tightened up, or if we think that it could prevent anything more like this, then of course that will be considered.”

And a year after that, she backed up her Fascist rhetoric by outlawing semi-automatic weapons.

And that’s not all.  Hold onto your tri corner hats, boys:  Margaret Thatcher actually believed in that moonbat Global Warming hogwash.  She once said:

“The danger of global warming is as yet unseen but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”

And there you have it, fellow Patriots.  The Teahad does NOT need phony RINOs like Margaret Thatcher.

Harry Reid Threatens Nuclear Option against Republican Filibusters

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has threatened to start using the Nuclear Option if Republicans keep filibustering judicial nominees.

On Nevada Public Radio, he announced:

“All within the sound of my voice, including my Democratic senators and the Republican senators who I serve with, should understand that we as a body have the power on any given day to change the rules with a simple majority, and I will do that if necessary.”

As you know, the Nuclear Option means (temporarily) squelching the filibuster.  As a result, the president’s nominees have to be approved or disapproved by a simple majority vote.  Majority rules — what a concept.

Reid continued:

“I’m a very patient man... If the Republicans in the Senate don’t start approving some judges and don’t start helping get some of these nominations done, then we’re going to have to take more action.”

Too patient IMHO.  The highly publicized filibuster “reform” last January was either nonexistent, or incomprehensible to anyone without a Ph.D. in Legalese.  I hope Harry Reid actually carries out this threat.  Enough is enough.

We are all affected by the huge backlog of federal court cases.  This backlog is the result of dangerously understaffed courts, which are the result of almost every one of Obama’s judicial nominees being filibustered by Republicans.

Go Nuclear!  Give ‘em Hell Harry.  Tell those corporate GOP prostitutes to Make Your Day.

Plan B available Over-The-Counter, “right out there with the bubble gum”

Bad news for snake-handlers and Biblehumpers; good news for everybody else.  U.S. District Judge Edward Korman has ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make the morning after birth control pill, known as Plan B, available without a prescription to all women of reproductive age.

Currently, girls under 17 need a prescription, and all women can be required by the pharmacist to show identification.  And there have been numerous cases of pharmacists — who are clearly in the wrong profession — refusing to provide the morning after pill because it violates their “moral” beliefs.

And now, pharmacists are out of the equation.

The ruling was hailed by medical organizations — including the American Academy of Pediatrics — and by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Expressing an opposing view, Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, said:

“When these are right out there with the bubble gum, they're going to be part of the date rape cocktail.”

[sigh]

Two years ago the FDA tried to make Plan B available to everyone without a prescription, but they were overruled by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Susan Wood, a former FDA assistant commissioner, said:

“This has been a 10-year saga during which the FDA was not allowed to do its role properly, not allowed to make science-based decisions.  This decision gives the FDA the chance to reclaim its ability to make decisions based on science, medicine and evidence, not politics.”

And Judge Korman reprimanded Kathleen Sebelius for stymieing the FDA because of her political beliefs:

“Nevertheless, even with eyes shut to the motivation for the secretary's decision, the reasons she provided are so unpersuasive as to call into question her good faith.”

Roger Ebert

Film critic Roger Ebert died of cancer today.  He was 70.

Nowadays if you want to learn more about a movie, all you have to do is Google it and see what Rotten Tomatoes and Wikipedia and IMDb have to say.  But for decades, Siskel and Ebert (Gene Siskel died in 1999) were the go-to guys for movie reviews.

They were always entertaining, whether you agreed with them or not, or even if you didn’t care about the movie they were discussing.  “Two Thumbs Up” will probably be part of the general vocabulary for decades to come.

Plus, they often disagreed with each other.

I always assumed that the comedy feature Men on Film — from In Living Color, starring Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier — was at least partially a spoof on Siskel and Ebert.  “Two snaps up for the title alone,” “Haaaaaaate it!”…

In 1975 Roger Ebert won a Pulitzer for distinguished criticism.  He was one of only three film critics to receive a Pulitzer.

R.I.P.

The Truth about North Korea

Is North Korea’s Kim Jong-un a dire threat to America and the rest of the Free World?  Or is he just a paper tiger?  Is President Obama’s response to Kim Jong-un too aggressive, not aggressive enough, or just the right amount of assertiveness?

And finally, WHY is North Korea acting in such a belligerent manner?

OK, enough with the questions.  The mystery of North Korea has finally been unraveled by TruNews host Rick Wiles and a guest on his program, Dr. Fred Luter, president of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Here is the enlightened discussion between these two visionaries:

Rick Wiles:  “Could our slide into immorality be what is unleashing this mad man over here in Asia to punish us?”

Dr. Fred Luter:  “It could be a possibility, man.  I am not that strong into prophecy.  But I would not be surprised if there were not a connection there, simply because we have seen it happen in Scripture before.  I would not be surprised that at the time when we are debating same-sex marriage, at a time when we are debating whether or not we should have gays leading the Boy Scout movement, I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that we have a mad man in Asia who is saying some of the things he is saying.”

Oh.  My.  God.

Well, we know what we have to do here.  Get them homos back in the closet or America gets it.

Sixty-six Percent of Americans in Favor of Keystone XL Pipeline

Un-fuckin’-real.  According to a new Pew Poll, 66% of Americans are in favor of building the Keystone XL pipeline.  Only 23% are opposed.

DUUUHHH!!!

Supposedly the original inhabitants of Easter Island died off after they had used up the last of their resources.  There was no more food, and the last tree had been cut down, so they couldn’t even build a boat to go somewhere else.

Has the human race gotten any smarter since then?  [see above]

Last week’s Exxon Mobil pipeline rupture in Arkansas is just a preview of what we can expect if/when the Keystone XL Pipeline is built.  Thousands of barrels of crude oil flooded streets and people’s lawns and killed some of the local wildlife.

Can’t wait ‘til this starts happening on a massive scale.

And there’s more good news (if you’re a tar sands oil executive).  The type of crude oil that’s being carried in the Exxon Mobil pipeline through Arkansas — and will be transported through the Keystone XL Pipeline — is actually NOT oil.  I mean, it pollutes like oil, and it gets all over everything and kills wildlife, just like oil.

But thanks to a law written in 1980, the tar sands oil being transported through pipelines is NOT classified as oil.  And because tar sands oil technically/legally isn’t oil, the companies transporting tar sands oil are NOT required to pay into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.  This is the fund that ensures there will be enough money to pay for the cleanup of oil spills.

Producers of “conventional” oil are required to pay eight cents per barrel into this fund.  But tar sands oil producers and transporters don’t have to pay into it, since tar sands oil isn’t oil.

Somebody should tell the residents of Mayflower, Arkansas (site of last week’s tar sands oil spill) to cheer up.  That’s not oil gushing into their yards and covering their pets — it’s just tar sands oil.

Paul Ryan RESIGNING from U.S. House of Representatives

Paul Ryan — U.S. Congressman from Wisconsin and failed vice presidential candidate — has abruptly announced his resignation from Congress.  During the 2012 election, opposition researchers dug up a lot of incriminating information on Paul Ryan.  According to sources, he wants to get out of the public eye before even more damaging information gets revealed.

Paul Ryan’s credibility took a huge hit last fall when it was revealed that his own family was rescued by Social Security, after a family tragedy, when Paul was sixteen.  As you know, Congressman Paul Ryan has spent the past few years trying to get rid of Social Security for everybody else.

Paul Ryan was also deeply embarrassed — or should have been anyway — when it was reported that he had made numerous requests for federal stimulus money for his district in Wisconsin, AFTER having repeatedly slammed the “failed” stimulus as being ineffective and wasteful.

And there’s the ongoing rumor that Paul Ryan traded on insider information right before the 2008 crash.  This hasn’t been proven of course, or he’d be in jail as we speak.  But the grapevine has it that investigators are still probing some of his financial dealings and they’re getting a little too close for comfort.

And then there are the lies.  Jillions of them.  Lies just for the sake of lying, not even to cover something up.  Or as one journalist put it, “Lies, damn lies, statistics, and Paul Ryan.”

Most damaging of all, of course, has been Paul Ryan’s simultaneous devotion to the Bible AND Ayn Rand.  In a recent interview, Ryan confided:

“After decades of touting Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy — you know, that needy people should either get a grip or curl up and die — I finally decided to actually read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged so I’d know what I was talking about.  And I was like ‘Holy Fuckin’ Christ, she’s an ATHEIST!’  I mean, couldn’t my campaign managers have, uh, TOLD me about that???  Christ on a pony, here I was, day after day, year after year, plugging the Bible AND Ayn Rand at the same time.  Fortunately, most of my Biblehumping constituents were probably too dumb to notice the contradiction, but still…”

He added:

“And on top of that, Ayn Rand looks like a bull dyke.  God Damn, what a dog!  Her mother must have pounded on her with an ugly stick.”

When asked what he’d be doing after he leaves Congress, Paul Ryan said:

“My two favorite hobbies.  Hunting — if it moves, shoot it!  Heh!  And fitness.  As you know, I can bench press 580 pounds for forty reps, and then, without even stopping to catch my breath, jump up and run a mile in less than three minutes.”