Conservatives unite! Rush over to DailyKos and read an urgent call to arms regarding action in rain-ravaged Georgia!

(original article here)

Calling all John Galts in Georgia

We really need your help.

As you may have seen in the newspapers, radio and the intertubes, much of the state of Georgia is underwater. People have lost their homes, cars and other precious things (like children and loved ones, but I know those are not quite as important to you folks…).

But foolishly, they are looking to the Government for help.

Starting with our Governor Sonny ‘rugged individualist’ Perdue, they are now calling on the Government to help.

That’s where we need you John Galts and teabaggers who really, really want the Government out of all our lives.

As authorities reported flood-related deaths had climbed to nine and scores of roads and portions of some highways remained closed, Gov. Sonny Perdue asked President Barack Obama to declare a federal state of emergency.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was reviewing the request Tuesday, and Georgia’s congressional delegation contacted the White House and emergency officials, urging them to hustle.

There they go again: asking the Government to hustle. In case you did not know it, the Georgia Congressional delegation includes stalwarts such as Rep Tom Price, through whose district runs the swollen Sope Creek and the Chattahoochee rivers.

Now, here is how you can help:

Please call Rep Price (1-770-565-4990) and tell him to stand fast to his principles of no Government intrusions in our personal lives. Remind him of how steadfastly he shares your belief that the Government is never the answer.

Also, we are looking for some volunteers to go into Douglas County and tell the homeowners in the area that they should fix their flooded homes themseleves. After all, no one gave Midas Mulligan a helping hand when he was acquiring that wonderful place in Colorado.

Please remember to picket the fire department to remind people that they are depending on a ‘Government service’ to show up in boats to help them leave their flooded homes. Ideally, in a free market economy, the market should determine what it is worth to you to be saved by a boat.

Also feel free to hold seminars in the affected areas and remind folks who are taking shelter in churches that the ‘Church, I think, will stand. They will need it’ as Franciso D Anconia so eloquently reminded the folks in South America.

And if they decide they don’t like your message and want to hurt you, save yourselves with your god given right to carry guns.

Just don’t expect the Government funded cops to come to your help.

Oh, and one more thing: if you lost your home to the floods but you also are a follower of Boortz, Beck et al, do the right thing and decline all federal and state aid - like you urged your governor to decline stimulus funds.

Thank you for your kind attention.

this morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US department of energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the national aeronautics and space administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US department of agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the food and drug administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the national institute of standards and technology and the US naval observatory, I get into my national highway traffic safety administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the environmental protection agency, using legal tender issed by the federal reserve bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US postal service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the department of labor and the occupational safety and health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it’s valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the defense advanced research projects administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

source

Very interesting post from craigslist that details some facts about America. Most go without saying but the discussion of each item is thought provoking.

MYTH 1: The US was founded on Christian principles.

TRUTH:

This is incorrect.
The Constitution never once mentions a deity, because the Founding Fathers wanted to keep their new country “religion-neutral.” Our Founding Fathers were an eclectic collection of Atheists, Deists, Christians, Freemasons and Agnostics.

George Washington, the Father of our country, and John Adams (Second President of the USA) CLEARLY stated in the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli: “The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion.”

G.W. rarely attended church and instead followed a popular 18th century philosophy called Deism—a Star Wars-esque philosophy that believed in a cosmic energy or big-ass universal “Force.” The dictionary says that Deism is “a system of thought advocating natural religion based on human reason rather than revelation,” that had nothing to do with Christian principles.

James Madison, original mastermind of our Constitution, was an Atheist to the core who loved skewering Christianity. In 1785 he wrote, “What have been [Christianity’s] fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

Thomas Jefferson, who sat down and authored The Declaration of Independence, rarely missed an opportunity to laugh at Christianity. In a letter to John Adams in 1823, he wrote: “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus…will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

More ammo: In 1814, Tommy J. wrote about the Bible’s Old and New Testaments, “The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful — evidence that parts have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds.”

In fact, it was President Jefferson himself who first wrote (to a Baptist church group in 1802), “The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between Church and State.” Therefore, when Jefferson talked about “Nature’s God,” the “Creator” and “divine Providence ” in the Declaration that he wrote, he was being a hippie and referring to a general cosmic energy– not the Christian God.

America is not a Christian nation. Period. Our Constitution derived from the post-Christian Enlightenment values of reason and truth…never from the paranoid yammerings of that otherwise compassionate cult leader who fucking died in the Middle Eastern desert 3000 years ago.

MYTH 2: US Conservatives tend to be patriotic, ethical Americans; liberals tend to hate America and are immoral.

TRUTH:

Liberals aren’t the traitors to America. In fact, conservatives who insist on sending American troops into the Iraqi slaughterhouse to watch some blood-n’-guts “towelhead” ass-kickin’ are the traitors. Most of them could care less about our troops, no more than Mao or Stalin cared about the safety of their own soldiers. In the neocons’ view, these young boys and girls are expendable test dummies. They’re dying for virtually nothing, so that the hicks in the Bush Admin can make good on their campaign promises to their buddies from the petroleum and infrastructure-rebuilding industries. By revving up the Arab threat, these MFs can scream “national security” and “freedom” as smokescreens, while getting their hands on a diminishing resource: Middle Eastern fossil fuels, which power everything from your lightbulbs and computer that you leave on all night, to your stupid gas-guzzler pickup truck.

Pro-war conservatives are the traitors to America. With only 29% of the public approving of Bush’s policies now, it took a full 5 years for America to finally wake up in bed next to this disgusting fact.

Do liberals hate America? No, in fact they care so much about the USA that they fight so aggressively to make it better. They’re not anti-American; they’re just anti-stupidity. Do liberals hate American policies? Sometimes, but only the self-destructive ones that threaten human rights, liberty, democracy, justice, inquiry, excellence and reason– the values that our country was founded upon.

As for conservative moral superiority? Frauds. Think of the child-molesting priests, money-scamming televangelist preachers, Jack Abramoff’s friends in the Bush Admin, gay-hating Jesus lovers, the Christians who beat up the professor who opposed intelligent design, human rights violators like Lynndie England and her Abu Ghraib hick officer pals, Tommy “Scandal-icious” Delay, Scooter “Leaky” Libby, the entire K Street Project meant to hire only Republicans, FEMA’s Michael “Yer doin’ a heckuva job” Brownie, and so on.

Oh and by the way, conservative Red states have a divorce rate 27% higher than the liberal Blue states, the per capita rate of violent crime in Red states is 49 per 100,000 higher than in Blue states, the top 5 states with the highest rates of alcohol abuse are Red states, and the per capita rate of gonorrhea in Red states was 41 per 100,000 higher than in the Blue states. Time to unshelf the antibiotics for our “ethical,” “God-fearing” conservative friends with their “traditional family values.”

MYTH 3. The US has a liberal media.

TRUTH:

This is a paranoid Republican myth.
Reality check: the US media is a mix of liberal, centrist and conservative voices. Also, the US media is largely owned by 10 corporations who frequently push pro-conservative agendas to the American public. Evidence:

1. Even Republican Pat Buchanan confessed, “For heaven sakes, we kid about the liberal media, but every Republican on earth does that.” Neo-conservative pundit Bill Kristol also said, “I admit it: the liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.”

2. A 2005 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that “coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media.” Why? Partly because only four major corporate networks control American TV news– up to 75% of the audience share. The “Big 10″ media conglomerates who control the bulk of the entire US media are: AOL Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann, AT&T and Liberty Media. Yes, we have National Public Radio, but compare its public reach to that of Canada’s CBC and the United Kingdom’s BBC.

3. Eighty percent of all US newspapers are owned by corporate chains.

4. Liberals are virtually non-existent on talk radio stations nationwide. Rush and Dr. Laura, eat your hearts out.

5. Conservatives are very well accomodated for across FOX News, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the New York Post, the American Spectator, the Weekly Standard, the Drudge Report, the National Review, etc. Even so-called “bastions of liberalism,” e.g. the NY Times, MSNBC, WashPost and NPR make a concerted effort to be “fair and balanced” by bringing in right-wing views like those of David Brooks, Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson, Charles Krauthammer and Cokie Roberts to have their say in these forums, respectively. This is in stark contrast to FOX News’ claims to unbiased objectivity, which were easily demolished by Robert Greenwald in 2004.

6. Contrary to what some paranoid Republicans claim, most journalists are centrists, not liberals. A representative sample of 141 US journalists and bureau chiefs were asked in 1998, “On social issues, how would you characterize your political orientation?” Answers: Left 30%, Center 57%, Right 9%, Other 5% . Next question, same sample: “On economic issues, how would you characterize your political orientation? ” Answers: Left 11%, Center 64%, Right 19%, Other 5%. Also, look at the total number of think tank citations in major newspapers, radio and TV transcripts: Conservative TTs: 7792, Centrist TTs: 6361, Liberal TTs: 1152.

7. Eric Alterman summarizes a 1999 research study from the academic journal Communications Research: “Four scholars examined the use of the ‘liberal media’ argument and discovered a fourfold increase in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in their news. But a review of the media’s actual ideological content, collected and coded over a twelve-year period, offered no corroboration whatever for this view.”

MYTH 4. The US doesn’t need improvement compared to other countries; it is the greatest country in the world.

TRUTH:
Wrong again. I’ll only cite the statistics here.

USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: #9
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- OECD

USA Ranking on Healthcare Quality Index: #37
(#1 France and #2 Italy)- World Health Organization 2003

USA Ranking of Student Reading Ability: #12
(#1 Finland and #2 South Korea)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking of Student Problem Solving Ability: #26
(#1 South Korea and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking on Student Mathematics Ability: # 24
(#1 Hong Kong and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking of Student Science Ability: #19
(#1 Finland and #2 Japan)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking on Women’s Rights Scale: #17
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- World Economic Forum Report

USA Position on Timeline of Gay Rights Progress: # 6 (1997)
(#1 Sweden 1987 and #2 Norway 1993)- Vexen

USA Ranking on Life Expectancy: #29
(#1 Japan and #2 Hong Kong)- UN Human Development Report 2005

USA Ranking on Journalistic Press Freedom Index: #32
(#1 Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands tied)- Reporters Without Borders 2005

USA Ranking on Political Corruption Index: #17
(#1 Iceland and #2 Finland)- Transparency International 2005

USA Ranking on Quality of Life Survey: #13
(#1 Ireland and #2 Switzerland)- The Economist Magazine …Wikipedia “Celtic Tiger” if you still have your doubts.

USA Ranking on Environmental Sustainability Index: #45
(#1 Finland and #2 Norway)- Yale University ESI 2005

USA Ranking on Overall Currency Strength: #3 (US Dollar)
(#1 UK pound sterling and #2 European Union euro)- FTSE 2006….the dollar is now a liability, so many banks worldwide have planned to switch to euro

USA Ranking on Infant Mortality Rate: #32
(#1 Sweden and #2 Finland)- Save the Children Report 2006

USA Ranking on Human Development Index (GDP, education, etc.): #10
(#1 Norway and #2 Iceland)- UN Human Development Report 2005

So much for those “socialist” Europeans and those “backward” Asians, hm?
We can do better than this.

Miscellany:
*Only 18% of Americans own passports and bother to travel outside of the US.
* 85% of US soldiers in Iraq believe that they are there to get revenge for 9/11.
* New international student enrollment in US grad schools has decreased by 6%, because of xenophobic post-9/11 US visa restrictions, jacked-up tuition fees and better educational opportunities in the EU and Asia. So no, not everyone wants to come here anymore, because it’s become a land of incredibly limited opportunity, and we’ve lowered our educational standards.

MYTH 5: The US government loves to help other countries.

TRUTH:
This is a myth. The US government tends to be motivated by interests, not humanitarian principles.

Denmark gives the most amount of its GDP (1.01%) to developing countries; Norway gives 0.91%; the Netherlands give 0.79% and so on until the end of list, where the USA sits. Yes, America ranks DEAD LAST in foreign aid at a pathetic 0.1% of its GDP, compared to the other 21 nations listed as developed nations. The idea that the US government is a heroic bunch that runs around the world helping the poor and the disempowered is not backed up by the evidence. We have one of the stingiest governments on earth.

Most Americans believe the US spends 24% of its budget on aid to poor countries; the actual amount is well under a quarter of 1%. Our country also ranks #5 on asylum-seeker acceptance rates (#1 is Denmark and #2 is Canada).

For you self-congratulatory, redneck-inspired conservative fuckwads who will start to say, “B-b-b-but you’re anti-American! M-m-m-moonbat! G-g-g-god bless the USA!” I answer, “Go fuck yourself. We can do better.” Stop blindly believing everything your president tells you. Come back to us only when you start realizing that the $400 billion your president has allocated to his Roman Empire-style military overstretch could be better spent on correcting the sociopolitical and economic problems in the arenas that I’ve listed above.

For you liberal shit-heels who will start to say, “Yeah! Right on!” I answer, “Grow some fucking balls.” That goes for women and the LGBT community too, and don’t call me a sexist either: I’m more than comfortable with being a female, but I believe balls can be useful in situations like these. Instead, stop apologizing for being the “liberal elite,” and start championing un-abashed excellence in everything, not mediocrity. Help your reps and senators take back Congress, and stop dithering while the political tides are turning in your favor right now. The conservatives are terrified now; TAKE advantage of that. And don’t waste time trying to explain rational things to any homophobic Christians, or hyper-patriotic losers who wave and cheapen our American flag only for a self-esteem buzz, or those testosterone-filled, gullible, culturally-ignorant military recruiter robots who lack even a basic intelligence. THEY CANNOT BE REASONED WITH. They don’t understand statistics, elaborate charts, legislative proposals or complicated scientific explanations. Just let them go. Let them go.

In the meantime, stop being SHEEP and get up and do something before some bright and ambitious Chinese, Indian and the European students grow up to be international leaders and make your lazy, self-absorbed kids irrelevant on the world stage.

source: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/163437715.html

Drudge is leading with the Secret Service / Obama story I commented on yesterday. Other news outlets have picked it up as well.

Let me make sure I have this straight, k? The TSA won’t allow people to carry bottled water, pool cues, or snow globes (huh?) through an airport security checkpoint. But yet, the Secret Service orders police to not screen people for weapons at an event held by the presumptive Democratic nominee for president?

All together now.

Wtf?

How can this possibly happen in this day and age in America? The government has spent the last 6 years telling us that terrorists are going get us unless we surrender our civil liberties for greater security. And by and large, we have stood by passively and watched as they took them from us, one by one. But when it comes to protecting a very high profile member of the opposition party, they are suddenly lax and carefree with security?

This evokes memories of the Bhutto assassination. How could it not? She was a popular member of the opposition party, who was assassinated because of lax security due to meddling by the ruling party.

Consider this story, which details how police abandoned their posts and did not screen everyone for weapons and implicates the ISI, Pakastan’s version of the Secret Service.

Perhaps more shockingly, an attendee at the rally where Bhutto was killed says police charged with protecting her “abandoned their posts,” leaving just a handful of Bhutto’s own bodyguards protecting her.

“Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday’s rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts,” wrote Saeed Shah in an essay published by McClatchy News Service. “As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: ‘Willing to die for Benazir.’”

While some intelligence officials, especially within the US, were quick to finger al Qaeda militants as responsible for Bhutto’s death, it remains unclear precisely who was responsible and some speculation has centered on Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, its military or even forces loyal to the current president Pervez Musharraf.

Sound familiar?

According to this UPI article, the Secret Service told Dallas police to stop screening people for weapons at an Obama rally because the crowd “seemed friendly.”

A huge WTF is in order here.

I’m sure republican leaders have seen the polls that show Obama beats McCain by over 5 points in a general election. I’m sure the republican establishment knows that they are getting outdrawn in the primaries by 7 million voters. Some simple math shows 13.4 million total voters in all republican primaries vs. 20.4 million voters in all democratic primaries. I’m sure the Bush administration knows that polls show McCain easily beats Clinton in a general election.

Maybe the Secret Service was honestly convinced there was no threat. Maybe it was just poor judgment and there was no sinister intent.

Sorta reminds me of the Eddie Murphy routine about the first black president. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwITXrXkdG8 and fast forward to 3:50. NSFW.

Legislatures May Act on Columbia — Silver Warns of Impact on State Aid

In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said lawmakers, outraged over Columbia’s insistence on allowing the Iranian president to speak at its World Leaders Forum, would consider reducing capital aid and other financial assistance to the school.

In other words, these republican assholes are upset because the president of Columbia university didn’t bow to public pressure and prevent the speech. So now they’re going to attempt to withhold funds in retaliation.

What a bunch of fucking idiots.

Noam Chomsky had this observation about controlling public opinion by limiting the scope of debate:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum– even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limited put on the range of debate.

With that in mind, check out this recent headline regarding Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent speech at Columbia University.

Michelle Malkin: Ahmadinejad Shouldn’t Even Be Allowed on US Soil

Granted, it is from the Bush administration’s right-wing propaganda machine Fox News, so take it with a grain of salt.

But this one does come as a shock. Republican congressman Duncan Hunter from California has threatened to introduce legislation to cut off federal funding to Columbia for allowing the speech to go forward. WTF?