OK, I Don't Get This

A ROUGH DECADE FOR AMERICAN CONGREGATIONS

"By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor

(CNN) – A new decade-long survey of American congregations shows religious health and vitality are weaker than they were 10 years ago. While the survey showed that many congregations are adopting new technologies and innovative worship, there were steep drops in financial health and attendance at weekly worship services.
...
Overall, median weekend worship attendance of your typical congregation dropped from 130 to 108 during the decade, according to the FACT surveys."

So church attendance is down. Fewer and fewer Americans are identifying as being "religious". Yet in the Republican Party, religious fanatics like Prick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin are the rising stars of the GOP and represent the best the Republicans have to offer in 2012.

This tells me that the evangelical Christian core of the conservative Republican party is SO out of touch with the American mainstream population that they don't have a fucking snowball's chance in HELL of winning over independent swing voters in a General election.

The American people want, need, and deserve a President who relies on FACTS, not FAITH.

Prick Perry tried to pray the Texas drought away and his state caught ignited in flames (literally) and experienced the hottest summer ever recorded.

So that didn't work.

Michele Bachmann and her OVERWHELMINGLY CLOSETED GAY HUSBAND have a "Christian Counselling" service that promise to "pray the gay away".

That will NEVER work!

So this is what I don't understand.

If Christianity and church attendance is on the decline, where is this rising Republican religious fundamentalism finding it's base?

How can Republicans possibly think they can win a General election when their Core Base is a diminishing number of delusional people who believe in medieval mythological fantasies?

I don't get this. What the fuck are they thinking?

Obama Gets Four More Years, Easy!

Here is why I'm not at all worried about President Obama winning a 2nd term.

According to the most recent NBC/WSJ Poll, these are the "candidates" that the Republicans who responded think are better qualified than Obama to lead America.

Let's take a look at them 1 by 1.

MITT ROMNEY 21%


Not only is "Mitt" a stupid fucking name, it's not even his first name. His first name is "Willard".

But stupid name aside, he's a Mormon. Just like Glenn Beck. when it comes to completely whacked out bizzaro doctrines, Mormonism is is just barely one small step above Scientology. Do the majority of Americans really want a President who believes in crazy shit like this?

He's the best they have to offer and he can't even get the support of 25% his own party? How the fuck is he going to get 51% of the entire country? He can't and he won't.

NEXT!

DONALD TRUMP 17%


He may be 2nd in the overall GOP rankings, but he actually polls as the #1 choice of the Teabaggers. Mostly because of his recent sucking up to the batshit crazy and racist birthers.

Plus, in this economy, I don't think that the majority of American voters can punch a ballot for a filthy rich, greedy, self-promoting ego-whore who is most famous for telling people "YOU'RE FIRED!".

NEXT!

MIKE HUCKABEE 17%


He's an evangelical, Southern Baptist minister who worked as a staffer for televangelist James Robison.

"Huckabee has stated, "Politics are totally directed by worldview. That's why when people say, 'We ought to separate politics from religion,' I say to separate the two is absolutely impossible'."

The majority of Americans don't want this country to become a Theocracy with some twisted, fundamentalist Christian, Leviticus-based version of Sharia Law being imposed by the President.

NEXT!

GINGRICH 11%


We may be just over 24 hours away from a complete shut down of the government because Democrats and Republicans can't agree on a budget.

If that happens, the news stories will constantly remind people of the last person responsible for a government shut down. Newt Gingrich.

Not to mention the fact that he was a Vietnam Draft Dodger, served his 1st wife with divorce papers while she was dying of cancer in the hospital, and blamed his infidelity with a campaign staffer on his patriotism.

Oh yeah. That's a Role Model.

NEXT!

SARAH PALIN 10%

The Incoherent, Imbecilic, Rambling, Quitter!







The rest of these ignorant fucktards don't even warrant further comment.

PAWLENTY 6%

BACHMAN 5%

SANTORUM 3%

BARBOUR 1%

The entire Republican party is fragmented, in disarray, and is actively pandering to the most ignorant, fundamentalist, delusional, bigoted, lowest common denominator of America's NASCAR-loving, trailer-trash masses.

It is inconceivable that any of these fools could ever be put in charge of such a great country.

How Ulius Louis Amoss and the CIA Invented Terrorism & The Tea Party

"The concept of leaderless resistance was reportedly developed by Col. Ulius Louis Amoss, an alleged U.S. intelligence officer, in the early 1960s. An anti-communist, Amoss saw leaderless resistance as a backup for the possibility of a Communist seizure of the United States.

The concept was revived and popularized in an essay published by the anti-government Ku Klux Klan member Louis Beam in 1983 and again in 1992. Beam advocated leaderless resistance as a technique for white nationalists to continue the struggle against the U.S. government despite an overwhelming imbalance in power and resources. In the same year the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) was formed as an eco-resistance movement.

Beam argued that conventional hierarchical pyramidal organizations are extremely dangerous for their participants, when employed in a resistance movement against government, because of the ease of disclosing the chain of command. A more workable approach would be to convince the like-minded individuals to form independent cells, without close communication between each other, but generally operating in the same direction."

The "leaderless resistance" concept was central to The Turner Diaries.

"The Turner Diaries is a novel written in 1978 by William Luther Pierce (former leader of the white Nationalist organization National Alliance) under the pseudonym "Andrew Macdonald". The Turner Diaries depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the United States federal government, nuclear war, and, ultimately, to a race war leading to the extermination of all Jews and non-whites. The book was called "explicitly racist and anti-Semitic" by The New York Times and has been labeled the "bible of the racist right" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The novel has been associated with a number of real-life violent crimes. Most notably, some have suggested that a scene depicting preparation for the bombing of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI national headquarters, served as the inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 by Timothy McVeigh, who had promoted the book."

This book is directly responsible for many acts of domestic crime, domestic terrorism, international terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Tea Party movement.

"The diary section ends with the protagonist flying an airplane equipped with an atomic bomb on a suicide mission to destroy The Pentagon, in order to eliminate the leadership of the remaining military government before it orders an assault to retake California."

Sound familiar?

So this "leaderless resistance" concept formulated by an American OSS operative found homes in the KKK, the Patriot Movement, and ultimately in Al-Qaeda and the Tea Party.

A Leaderless Organizations can't be defeated by conventional means. You can't kill them all. There is no leader to remove. They will never sign a Peace Treaty.

It is a distributed, autonomous tactic of asymmetric warfare fueled by a fanatic ideology.

As more and more radical ideologies embrace this clearly successful strategy, the modern concept of a civilized society becomes increasingly endangered.

We seem to be headed for a New Dark Ages where radicalism, superstition, hatred, tribalism, religion, fear, paranoia and greed are the main drivers of human interaction.

Once again we find that the greatest enemy we face was one that we created and exported.

We are, and always have been, our own worst enemy.

When we fall, we will have ourselves to blame.

Haiti

As we all know by now, a powerful earthquake struck Haiti yesterday completely destroying the capitol city of Port-au-Prince.

Already the poorest nation on the planet with virtually no government, building codes or infrastructure, it is now a pile of rubble and casualty estimates range from 50,000 dead to 500,000 dead. In truth, we will probably never know how many died.

Assistance from the United States started pouring in immediately!

The Coast Guard, Navy, Marines, Army, Air Force all have units on the way. There are aircraft carriers, amphibious units, C-130 cargo planes, hospital ships all headed for Haiti as quickly as they can get there.

A local group of physicians, Heart to Heart have people on the way with medical supplies.

The University of Miami sent a chartered plane full of students to perform triage and evacuate as many critical patients as they could.

The American Red Cross is already in place and providing aid.

Bill Clinton, who was appointed the U.N. Ambassador to Haiti has been very active coordinating the response.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates canceled trips to Australia for annual security talks so they can continue overseeing relief efforts following the earthquake in Haiti.

The World Bank and Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation have both pledged millions of dollars in grants to Haiti to help with the rescue, recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Social Media nerds like me, donating just $10.00 by sending a text message donated hundreds of thousands of dollars within hours.

Oh, and then there were these responses.







This is why the Conservatives aren't in charge any more and never will be again.

Because they are simple-minded idiots.

They believe in supernatural forces and ridiculous Communist conspiracies.

They are totally detached from rationality and reality.

In some clinical arenas, that would be defined as insanity requiring hospitalization.

But here, we just laugh it off as crazy politics and Opinion Journalism.

They are doing NOTHING to help.

Power-Famished Republicans Eat Their Young!

Waiting For The Other Palin Boot To Drop

Nothing about Sarah Palin's resignation as Governor makes any sense. Something is very fishy here. Something else is coming.

The blogs in Alaska are abuzz with all sorts of rumors. Among the possible bombshells are:

An alleged affair with her husband's former business partner.

Another teen pregnancy.

One of the ethics investigations hit pay dirt.

Some possible shenanigans involving the sudden resignation of a couple of Dr.s from the health department.

Federal Indictment for embezzlement over the Wasilla sports complex / her house.

IRS indictment for failure to declare the Arctic Cat income.

I don't know if it will be any of the above or something else, but I absolutely guarantee you there is a BIG scandal coming.

None of the other reasons for her sudden resignation and rambling, incoherent announcement make any sense at all.

The most common explanation is that she is stepping down to focus on a 2012 presidential bid.

Bullshit.

One of the criticisms of her as McCain's VP pick was that she lacked experience! Why step away from being governor with a year and a half remaining in her 1st Term?! She didn't step down when and McCain were running for the White House. Why now. Makes no political sense.

Plus, how does it help her with a 2012 presidential campaign to prove to everyone she's a quitter and can't take the criticism and the pressure? It doesn't.

Look at the timing of the announcement too. The Friday before The 4th of July and on the heel of a string of celebrity deaths that have been chewing up the news cycles. That was no accident.

There is something else going on here. Something big enough to make walk away from being governor and walk away from any shot at the White House.

She even dropped some hints of a coming kerfuffle in her speech. Some of the things she said and the words she chose were borderline bizarre.

"Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports… basketball. I use it because you’re naïve if you don’t see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket… and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I’m doing that – keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities – smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it’s time to pass the ball – for victory."

Um, okay.

"In fact, this decision comes after much consideration, and finally polling the most important people in my life - my children (where the count was unanimous... well, in response to asking: "Want me to make a positive difference and fight for ALL our children's future from OUTSIDE the Governor's office?" It was four "yes's" and one "hell yeah!" The "hell yeah" sealed it - and someday I'll talk about the details of that... I think much of it had to do with the kids seeing their baby brother Trig mocked by some pretty mean-spirited adults recently.)"

This is clearly not something she wants to do.

"First things first: as Governor, I love my job and I love Alaska. It hurts to make this choice but I am doing what’s best for Alaska. I’ve explained why… though I think of the saying on my parents’ refrigerator that says “Don’t explain: your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe you anyway.”

"In the words of General MacArthur said, “We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”"

Something is coming folks. Something BIG. I can smell it and it stinks.

She's An Idiot

McCain * Palin - “Original Mavericks”

I love the fact that McCain and Palin are campaigning as two "mavericks" who buck the system, upset the apple carts, and chart their own course! The Republican party has never been so enthused and energized!

What The Fucking Fuck?

Question: Why was the Right Wing so dead set against McCain in the first place?

Answer: BECAUSE HE WAS A FUCKING MAVERICK!

They couldn't count on McCain to tow the party line, to loyally salute the GOP flag and blindly support whatever wrong-headed agenda they happened to be shoving down America's craw.

He had voted against the President too many times! He couldn't be trusted! Because he committed The Cardinal Republican Sin...sometimes, he actually made up his own fucking mind about issues and voted accordingly.

BLASPHEMER! APOSTATE!

Republicans aren't supposed to think! They aren't supposed to analyse data or question authority!

That's for those gay, Birkenstock-wearing, wine-sipping, cheese-nibbling, wife-swapping, tree-hugging, French-speaking, Volvo-driving, intellectual-elitist, terrorist-coddling, Liberal DEMOCRATS (spit)!

NO! Republicans are supposed to start their day with a download of Karl Rove Approved Talking Points and regurgitate as necessary. Ya know, the same way ya learned The Bible!



The Republican Establishment has HATED John McCain for years because they didn't think he was "one of them". He wasn't "on board". Wasn't following "the program".

And he wasn't. Until this election campaign.

He realized that being his own man, being a "maverick" didn't work for him in 2000 for all of the reasons I just mentioned. He couldn't win the support of his own party. They went with the incredibly intellectually stunted and easily manipulated Shrub instead.



But now, in the most incredible but completely unsurprising display of hypocrisy the world has ever seen, the Republican Establishment is enthusiastically whipping up a frenzy of support for their very own "John McCain! Maverick! Agent of Change!"

Horse.



Shit.

They swallowed John McCain's primary win with all the enthusiasm of a ruffied bimbo at a porn booth glory hole going down on some smelly wino cock.
[graphic ommitted in deference to your delicate sensabilities]

Now they are proclaiming it's the best thing they've ever tasted and everyone else should gobble it up too! YUM!

Watching the Republicans rally around McCain and Palin because they are "mavericks" is one of the most intellectually and historically laughable circus side shows I've ever seen.

What a bunch of buffoons.

It's embarrassing.

Palin's Pentecostal Past

From CNN.

"For decades, Sarah Palin went to church with people who spoke in tongues and believed in faith healing and the "end times." Her former pastor says the Pentecostal past of the GOP vice presidential nominee may now be being downplayed to avoid misunderstanding. But the pastor, Tim McGraw, says he's sure religion influences Palin's policy-making"

Yeah. I want someone with THAT world view to be a heartbeat away from the most powerful position on earth.

Don't speak Russian? Try speaking "tongues". I'm sure that the United States issuing a mandate that all of the translators at the United Nations learn "tongues" will boost our standing in the world.

While we're at it, "goon-babble" might be a good language skill for them to acquire.

Jesus Fucking Christ!

This bitch is crazier than a shit-house rat!

Timing Is Everything

The Vajayjay Vote

I stole this fair and square from Erin who stole it from Jon Stewart!

Because it's fucking funny!