Jon Stewart on those Racist Bastards in Arizona.

I am taking the rare chance of posting this with out watching the vid first.

Hey. Rare, but not dangerous.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Law & Border
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Tea Baggers Proven to be Friggen Idiots.

GM Repays Govt. Loans
By: Zacks Equity Research
April 22, 2010 Comments: 0
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General Motors revealed that it has repaid $8.1 billion in loans to the governments of U.S. and Canada ahead of the scheduled maturity date of July 2015. The repaid amount constituted $6.7 billion in U.S. Treasury (“UST”) loans as well as $1.4 billion in Export Development Canada (“EDC”) loans that it had received while going through the bankruptcy protection last year.

The $6.7 billion UST loan is equivalent to 13% of the $52 billion that the U.S. taxpayers have invested in the company, mainly for a 61% ownership stake. The EDC loans come up to 15% of the $9.5 billion in loans from the governments of Canada and Ontario.

GM has vowed to repay the remaining $45.3 billion to the U.S. government and $8.1 billion to the governments Canada and Ontario through a public stock offering, perhaps later this year.
GM Bailout a Smashing Success, so Tea Baggers are Idiots.

I love the fact they paid off the loan, and early. And I particularly enjoy the added benefit that the policy was proven to be a good one, and that means those who were against it, are proven to be friggen idiots.

Is Mrs. Palin Illiterate, That Stupid, or That Much of a Bitchy, Partisan Hack-Snark . . .

or some or all of the above?

First the remark from POTUS Obama:

Obama said earlier this week that the United States must do its best to resolve conflicts around the world before they grow too serious.

"It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them," Obama said. "And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure."

{Emphasis added to highlight the obvious.}

Then, her idiotic remark:


"I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower," the former Alaska governor said. "I don't understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful."


At least, I believe she actually is that stupid.


ETA:

(and I have two posts re Sister Sarah back to back here so I am not going to go for a "Trip.")

Best new tongue in cheek label for Mrs. Palin:

"Carpool-mother-with-Tourettes-syndrome."

Happy Patriot Day.

Or maybe I should call it, don't whine, ya bunch of losers, pay your damn taxes, day?

Anyway, here is my low rent joy of the day. The advance reviews of half term and ex governor Palin's show are in and it is a turkey!

(I am in mind of that famous turkey slaughter vid from a while back.)

Anyway, here is the story:


Last week Discovery had its annual sales conference for ad buyers for all of its 13 networks. The presentation showcases all of their new shows across the different networks. That night the presentation was on Sarah Palin's Alaska.

Our source says "the whole thing [was] comical." Apparently the ad buyers were not impressed. This Discovery insider said, "When the promo was over, people (employees and buyers) were rolling their eyes, snickering, and even laughing. People were laughing and it's not even a comedy. No one took it seriously."

This person was concerned that given the lack of interest from ad buyers that Discovery would have to dump the show to "a crappy time slot" to cut its losses. They added, "Bottom line everyone thought it was a new all time low for Discovery. My guess is the show is going to tank big time."

I am not surprised. Woman can remember her lines well enough, but she sucks on cam. She is as interesting on cam as a walnut.

I'll Telegraph the Hysterically Funny Part. Union Victory Appreciation Month.

The Daily Show. Union Victory Appreciation Month.

The Genius of Frank Herbert -- "God Emperor of Dune."

I have been rereading this fantastic book. Generally I say the reading Herbert is like taking an advanced course in political and social theory. The bit I am going to post here not only reminds me of the Teabaggers, but the GOP/Right Wing in general. Not an original observation by me (nor the first time I have said it myself), but there is so much overlap between the Old Tyme Religion of the Religious Right and their politics, that they can't tell where one ends and the other begins. It is like a seamless creature of ideology. And they like it that way.

Anyway, on to the example:



“Religion always leads to rhetorical despotism,” Leto said. “Before the Bene Gesserit, the Jesuits were the best at it…. You learn enough about rhetorical despotism from a study of the Bene Gesserit. Of course, they do not begin by deluding themselves with it…. It leads to self-fulfilling prophecy and justifications for all manner of obscenities.”

“This… rhetorical despotism, Lord?”

“Yes! It shields evil behind walls of self-righteousness which are proof against all arguments against the evil…. It feeds on deliberately twisted meanings to discredit opposition,” Leto said.


Some people don't get why I consider someone like Sarah Palin dangerous if not evil. The preceding seems to describe her to a "T." Seems to me.


Oh I almost forgot. Here is another sagacious observation from the book:

"Religion suppresses curiosity."


Ya. That's one of the reasons I am not a fan of religion.

Quote of the Day.

"The last thing I need is a lecture on the constitutional law from Rand Raul or Sarah Palin."



Jack Conway, Attorney General of Kentucky, re those lawsuits against the Fed. Govt. over Health Care Reform.

Kentucky AG on frivolous Health Care Reform Suits.

She Still is a Barking Loon, Even if She is Not Literally Barking. As So Many Teabaggers Do.

That teabagger gammy that was on Letterman, a couple nights ago? Well, so far I have seen only the one segment posted at Crooks and Liars.com

But I am (personally for the moment) not all that impressed. She is still out there. Her positions are inconsistent. She starts off with that old straw man about how there needs to be a stop to 'demonizing business." That's where the jobs come from. But a couple two three minutes later she is saying that a tea(bagger) president would have let those car companies fail. The jobs would (magically?) come back.

To that I say, gammy. You might sit and talk nicely. But you are at least irrational with your politics and ideology. And you likely are to some real degree delusional, particularly if you are 66 years old, an American, and believe that jobs are just going to come back after a major sector of the ever shrinking US Industrial Base goes down in flames.

Like that commercial where the one person tells the other one,"There is no Credit Fairy." Gammy . . . . there ain't no Job Fairy, either.

Moving on, Crooks and Liars gives a good bit of the commentary from another A-List Blogger; Digby:

"Her politics aren't grounded in real life but in abstract concepts. She certainly doesn't seem defensive or even aware that her political heroes are considered radical extremists."



He provides some other good insight. But to my mind this is where he nails it, particularly.

Fucking delusional, these people; even when not foaming at the mouth, or otherwise having psychotic fits.

Picking up Where We Left Off. Teabagging Wingnuts, and the Apocalypse-for-fun-and-profit, Angle. Courtesy of Frank Schaeffer.

I am well sure I have posted his stuff before. Frank Schaeffer is a fugee from the Religious Right, who is a Born Again member of the rational world. And yes, Virginia, there are Rational Christians.

Anyway . . . he deconstructs the link between the militiamen (fucking terrorists) picked up this past week, and the evangelical christian cult of victimology and Armageddon. Not Rep. Beohner's metaphoric Armageddon. These crazy bastids (and I don't just mean the militiamen) take that shit literally.

Here is a good description of the shit I speak of (and Schaeffer is kind about it):

Given that Revelation is now being hyped as the literal -- even desired -- road map to Armageddon, it's worth pausing to note that it's nothing more than a bizarre pastoral letter that was addressed to seven specific churches in Asia at the end of the first century by someone (maybe John or maybe not) who appears to have been far from well when he wrote it. In any case, the letter was not intended for use outside of its liturgical context, not to mention that it reads like Jesus on acid.

I just call that the impossibility that some alleged prophet received true prophesy, on account of it reading like a really shitty screenplay written by a crack addict during a particularly violent withdrawal. Perhaps that really is not that much harsher (or less accurate.) Anyway . . . .

One last good bit from the essay and then the link.

The words left behind are ironically what the books are about, but not in the way their authors intended. The evangelical/fundamentalists, from their crudest egocentric celebrities to their "intellectuals" touring college campuses trying to make evangelicalism respectable, have been left behind by modernity. They won't change their literalistic, anti-science, anti-education, anti-everything superstitions, so now they nurse a deep grievance against "the world." This has led to a profound fear of the "other."

Jenkins and LaHaye provide the ultimate revenge fantasy for the culturally left behind against the "elite." They do theologically what Sarah Palin does politically: divide the world and America into "Them" and Us."

The Left Behind franchise holds out hope for the self-disenfranchised that at last everyone will know "we" were right and "they" were wrong. They'll know because Spaceship Jesus will come back and whisk us away, leaving everyone else to ponder just how very lost they are because they refused to say the words, "I accept Jesus as my personal savior" and join our side while there was still time! Even better: Jesus will kill all those smart-ass, Democrat-voting, over educated people who have been mocking us!

All the folks in Michigan did was decide to start the killing a little early.

Knowingly or unknowingly, Jenkins and LaHaye cashed in on years of evangelical/fundamentalists' imagined victim-hood -- something that is now key to understanding the Tea Party movement.

Frank Schaeffer on the Evangelical Death Cult Milita and the Teabaggers.


Ya. As much as I would like to simply pigeonhole the teabagging crazies, there are a lot of ingredients that go into that Psycho Gumbo recipe that makes them the strange brew they are.

Ok. I'll stop there.