It’s been a challenging few days, fortunately this guys talent is like a tonic. Hope you enjoy.
Now that you’ve all recovered from the Labor Day festivities and feeling fairly human again, we here at Slickster, ok, it’s just me, are going to drop a metric fuckton of stupid on you from noted GOP bullshit spigot Sarah Palin. It seems the former half-term governor had a Labor Day message for the worker bees throughout the country. I’ll embed the video at the bottom because, even at 2:48 if one were to listen to her word salad and return here for more words from me I couldn’t write in simplistic enough fashion to account for the level of cognitive impairment you’ll be suffering from. (I watched the clip yesterday and only now am I able to use complete sentences again.)
Anyway, Palin insists the GOP loves unions, which is clear if one assess’ the efforts of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, to support public unions, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the love he has shown for the labor movement, and finally the 2012 Republican Party Platform. Yep, nothing says love like serial domestic abuse.
Now, remove all sharp objects, get comfortable, and watch the video, oh, good luck with the brain bleed.
It’s almost Labor day weekend so it’s time to stock up on your favorite adult beverages and grill supplies. For those among you whose self-control isn’t what it could be you may want to remember the morning-after pain relievers as well. Anyway, today we are going to look at some maps, so lots of pictures (yea), and see what story they might tell.
I’ve always loved maps as they provide tons of information in a static and objective fashion. So, earlier this week, my friend Mike sent me a couple maps without comment. I found them very informative, enough so that I was compelled to visit Google, which Sam frequently reminds me is my friend, to satisfy my curiosity on a few things. After a quick trip through the Google wormhole here is what I found.
*click on the pictures for clarity*
A snapshot of the demographics of political control across the nation. I know it’s kind of dry but stay with me.
Up next we have a map illustrating which states have “Right to be poor work” laws, and one must admit it looks very similar to our first map. That prompted a couple of questions to which my friend Google quickly provided the graphic answers.
So, here we have a map of the states which saw fit to decline free federal money to help ensure the residents therein wouldn’t need to die because they lacked health care coverage.
The thinking behind this bit of political calculus was — ah — well. OK, I have no fucking idea. Maybe compassionate conservatism, as in, we have no compassion for the victims of our policies. You figure that one out leave a comment.
Finally, we step back in time and see that, curiously enough, quite a few of the states that object to higher wages for middle income earners, and see no need to provide free federal assistance to the most vulnerable of their citizens. Had a taste for ownership of fellow human beings. So much so, that in defense of their inhumanity heritage over 500,000 people perished.
Taken individually these maps are merely informative. However, when one steps back and views them together, well, the matter speaks for itself.
“There are many youngsters who only three days after they’ve been deported are killed, shot by a firearm,” said Hector Hernandez, who runs the morgue in San Pedro Sula. “They return just to die.”
At least five, perhaps as many as 10, of the 42 children slain here since February had been recently deported from the U.S., Hernandez said.
Immigrant aid groups and human rights organizers say the Honduran government is ill-equipped to assist children at high risk after they have been returned.
This is a very bad idea.Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who at one point was said to be writing his own immigration overhaul legislation and this week is at the Texas border visiting detention centers, has sent President Barack Obama a letter calling for an end to the 2012 executive order granting stays of deportation to children brought into the country illegally by their parents.Reversing the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order, known as DACA, would “send a clear signal to all individuals that our immigration laws will be enforced,” the California Republican and thirty-two House GOP cosigners wrote.Remember, the deferred-action policy doesn’t actually relate to the ongoing humanitarian crisis along the Southern border – none of these unattended children who crossed the border illegally recently will be able to stay under DACA.But Issa, who found 32 other House Republicans to sign onto his letter, believes more deportations will send a “signal” to families in countries like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.In other words, nearly three dozen House Republican lawmakers have a message for Dream Act kids: “Sorry, but if some Central American families have been misled by unscrupulous smuggling groups, the appropriate solution is to deport young people from the only home they’ve ever known.”
It is now the stated position of most of the Republican party in this country, and of Republican politicians like Steve King and most of the prospective 2016 presidential field, that more children must be sent home to die this way. People should remember that.
I will goddamn remember, you should too.
VOTE
This will be a quick post today mostly because the subject matter so thoroughly speaks for itself. You will need to watch this video, it’s only 40 seconds, to get a glimpse of the vast wasteland that is the mind of Sarah Palin. Need I remind anyone, this was a candidate for the office of vice president of the United States. Ok, go ahead and unpack this clusterfuck, and enjoy a serving of bullshit souffle.
Greetings Slickster fans, all four of you, it’s been a while. I’ve been away doing a little mental house cleaning and shirking my writing duties, because well, I’m lazy like that, it certainly isn’t because of any lack of material.
So, where are we going today you ask? Well, let’s dip our toes in the soothing and gentle waters of evangelical Christianity and a few of it’s practitioners in the news recently. Before we start, spoiler alert, I will mention that I unencumbered myself of all religious beliefs a number of years ago and since then have no qualms pointing out the cruelties, absurdities, and breathtaking hypocrisies paraded before me by those claiming to represent the best interests of our “eternal souls” (for fun and profit).
Today we have a three-pack of human carcinomas coming at us with a brand of Christian compassion that would make the Christ they worship do a full face palm while asking WTF!
Up first, Mr. Byran Fisher. Fisher is a long time performer on the right wing pay-to-pray circuit and it seems he has taken exception to the president’s decision to prevent genocide from being visited upon the practitioners of one iron age cult, by the practitioners of a different iron age cult. Lets see what Mr. Fisher has to say.
From The Raw Story,
“President Obama [is] bringing the full weight of the American military into Iraq now, after months and months and months of begging from the Iraqi government,” Fischer complained. “Now he’s going in there because devil worshipers are under attack.”
“As you do unto the least of them so you do unto me.” I’m not sure he’s read that part recently.
Coming up next, Mr. Rick Wiles Christian radio grifter host. In an example of getting lemons and making lemonade, Mr. Wiles has some interesting ideas concerning the current Ebola outbreak. Lets explore the bright side, as he sees it, in that putrid cesspool of a mind.
From The Raw Story,
A Christian radio host who enthusiastically looks for signs the world will end welcomed the Ebola virus as a cleansing force.
“This Ebola epidemic could become a global pandemic and that’s another name for plague,” said broadcaster Rick Wiles on his “Trunews” program.
“It may be the great attitude adjustment that I believe is coming,” Wiles continued. “Ebola could solve America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography, and abortion.”
Just how liberals, in general, and the Democratic party, in particular, failed to make his list shows that he hasn’t thought this out completely, maybe that’s a later broadcast.
Finally, and just to show I’m not picking on radio hosts, here is one Mr. Victor Sadet, apparently an otherwise average Joe with “religious principles” and no fear of using them to spread the word. Lets dig into this shitpile and check those principles.
Once again from The Raw Story,
A video recorded by a gay man in Delta Township, Mich., shows one man’s violent, anti-gay rant, and reveals the kind of religiously motivated harassment many LGBT people face every day of their lives.
WILX.com reported that on Tuesday evening, Isaiah Tweedie and his friends were leaving a restaurant when fellow patron Victor Sadet followed them outside and launched a fusillade of taunts and verbal abuse at the group and at Tweedie in particular.
The New Civil Rights Movement blog transcribed Sadet’s remarks, in which he said that Tweedie should be murdered for his orientation as per the Christian Bible.
“You’re a fucking faggot,” Sadet said. “God’s law — Leviticus, Leviticus — you should be put to death!”
WILX contacted Sadet, who said his “religious principles” compelled him to confront Tweedie and his friends.
That’s a nice set of principles you’ve got there asshole, I’m sure Jesus would be proud.
So ends this round up of Christian compassion and love for their fellow man. The losers presented here represent the dregs of humanity, by wrapping themselves in the cloak of religion, and claiming to minister to their fellow man. They present souls so dark that if they didn’t exist could scarcely be imagined.
It’s time for another snark filled dispatch from beyond the edge of sanity, in that realm of stupidity currently occupied by the monkey house that is the GOP.
It was my intention to have some fun at the expense of human shitstain Ted Nugent because, well, why not, there’s no shortage of material where the right wing’s favorite gun humping, draft dodger is concerned, even though Slappy accused me of going for the low hanging fruit. I couldn’t really argue because some days you just don’t want to work that hard.
Anyway, imagine my surprise when I came across someone clearly playing at a higher level of batshit crazy than even old jailbait Ted.
With thanks to The Raw Story, and Right Wing Watch, let me introduce Michael Peroutla, Maryland Republican nominee for the Anne Arundel County council, and noted bible thumping, god-bothering secessionist.
From the Raw Story,
“You need to secede and then you need to have the biblical understanding of law and government, and make the applications,” Peroutka told the League of the South in 2012. “So we need to take the biblical understand of law and government into account no matter what the outcome is with respect to the crumbling of the current regime.”
I’ve noted in the past the kind of mischief caused by low voter turnout, and here is a perfect example folks. This bit of unreconstructed human flotsam emerged from a Republican primary that included four other candidates, I haven’t the courage to research the losers. On a further distressing note, the area of Maryland he’s seeking to represent isn’t some hick outpost in the sticks, Anne Arundel county, has more than 500,000 residents, and includes Annapolis which is the county seat.
Before I close, let’s crack the asylum door for another peek at his style of governance, and note that he’s a practicing lawyer.
Once again from Right Wing Watch:
He recently presented his theory that the Maryland General Assembly is “no longer a valid legislative body” because it passed laws that he deems to be violations of “God’s law,” including a marriage equality bill and a stormwater tax. Last year, he said that state and local prosecutors should just ignore Roe v. Wade and prosecute women who have abortions or their providers for murder.
Peroutka’s spokesman told the Capital Gazette yesterday that the candidate “would evaluate each piece of legislation to be sure it was authorized by God in the Bible, the U.S. Constitution and the Anne Arundel County Charter” and would look into privatizing road repairs and the fire department.
There may not be all that much we can do, about the fact, that folks like this are free to walk among us. But when our fellow citizens start electing them to public office we are all one step closer to awakening one morning and finding ourselves citizens of the Christian Republic of Dumbfuckistan.
Oh, and by the way, that 2012 League of the South meeting? His closing remarks were a request for the audience to join him in singing the national anthem, wherein they rose and sang Dixie. I shit you not.
[Snark off]
Recently at Esquire’s Politics blog, frequent guest contributor, Lt. Col. Robert Bateman posted a story of the name behind a star in the CIA headquarters.
For clarification, the stars, which adorn a wall inside the lobby, represent a fallen individual, in the service of the organization. Normally, I would read this story without comment, however, having a great deal of knowledge about the man this star represents, Maj. Douglas A. Zembiec, USMC (KIA), and having watched former V.P. Dick Cheney be interviewed three times in the past three weeks, on TV, I am, by my temperment, bound to comment.
Lt. Col. Bateman provides an anecdote from an enlisted combat veteran who served under Maj. Zembiec. It is as poignant as it is telling of Zembiec’s leadership.
“He was the sort of guy who, when a Marine met his father sometime after the battle (and after that Marine had been posted to another unit) asked, him if he was (then) Capt. Zembiec’s father. When told that he was, the Marine responded, “I was with him in Fallujah, and if we had to go back in there, I’d follow him in with a spoon.”
Major Zembiec’s actions during the Battle of Fallujah, in 2004, earned him the moniker, “The Lion of Fallujah”, as well as the Silver Star, Bronze Star w/ Combat V and two Purple Hearts. His actions are detailed in Bing West’s book, No True Glory: A Front-Line Account of the Battle of Fallujah, as well as a Wall Street Journal article following Maj. Zembiec’s death.
Major Zemiec was one to the highest caliber citizen-soldiers this country can produce and a tragic example of the price our country paid, in blood, for having been lied into an illegal war.
It is here at the confluence of lies, dead warriors, and the continuing parade of unindicted war criminals, put forward by the media, that compel me to comment, or, if you like, vent.
To start, I will give what limited credit, where such credit is due, and note that former President G.W. Bush has remained silent on matters of foreign wars during his post-presidential years, (I would like to think, under the advise of legal counsel). However, former VP Dick Cheney and former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld have chosen a different course.
Cheney has been provided a venue, afforded by the major media outlets, to regale the viewing public with his total lack of irony, and self-reflection as he blames the current president for the state of affairs in Iraq. All the while deflecting any attempts to hold him accountable for his roll in the folly and tragedy that became the Iraq War. That he is not in shackles making these statements from a cell in the Hague, is a question that I would like to see addressed in his lifetime.
Rumsfeld, featured in Errol Morris’ 2013 documentary, “Uncovered: The War in Iraq,” continues to display such towering arrogance and unrepentant smugness as to beggar the imagination.
With the blood of more than 4,000 U.S. troops killed and 100,000 plus Iraqis dead on his hands, how Rumsfeld remains free to move among us, in open society, is a question well deserving an answer.
As Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire.com is wont to muse ”…at the very least, he should spend the rest of his days cleaning the bed pans of the permanently disabled veterans in Walter Reed.”
Were it only so. There are, of course, others whom I have not addressed, whose culpability is no less egregious. I’m looking at you Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Marc Thiessen, et al., ad nauseam.
That the misadventure in Iraq was predicated on a bed of lies and misinformation is widely accepted by most objective consumers of information as fact.
The perpetrators of the misadventure have not, and in all likelihood, will never be held accountable for the damage done to our military forces, international reputation, and treasury, is fairly well accepted.
Our national media, whose role should have been to find the truth and drag it kicking and screaming to light, chose to be cheerleaders for the plan to boost Haliburtions profit/loss ratios, as well as, generating a sharp decline in available plots in Arlington National Cemetery and others across the country, stands as their crowning disgrace.
In all, a sad tale, one not worthy of the sacrifice endured by Maj. Zembiec’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Don Zembiec, his brother, and his wife and daughter, Pamela and Fallyn.
Maj. Zembiec would likely disagree on the grounds that the mission and the welfare of his men overrode all other considerations, that anything else was “noise on the net.”
By all accounts, especially those of his men, Maj. Zembiec was a warrior in the spirit of which all Marines are trained to perform, and so few excel beyond their time and place, as he did.
I am unsure we, as a country, deserve such people.
So tell us dude in the red shirt, tea party mo fo from the Peoples’ Republic of Arizona — what were you going to do with that stick?
The stick you were holding with your right hand on a bright sunny day while apparently pointing at something — maybe a bus — carrying kids to the Y?
Yeah, the Y.
What’s crazy about the photo is that you’re apparently trying to explain to your main man and fellow tea sipper state Rep. Adam Kwasman, how you were only going to use your stick to beat the hell out of Central American kids, or Mexican kids, or kids from down there, or over there, or somewhere.
See, that Kwasman guy sent out a message on the super secret tea party message system — Twitter — to make sure you’d be there to stop the bus and teach a lesson to them little shit heads who’d traveled thousands, hundreds, tens of miles through mine fields, property owned by drug lords and a smelly-assed river, to cut your grass or serve you a marguerite.
They’re unwelcome, of course, unless they were really good at picking cotton.
(Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land …)
No matter how Kwasman’s message was received, it read:
“Bus coming in. This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law.”
It didn’t quite say Annie get your gun, but if you had saved enough stamps to spend on the decoder ring, you would have figured out that a red shirt and stick were part of the uniform of the day.
By the way, what kind of name is Kwasman? Does it sound Murican enough to you guy in the red shirt with a stick in your right hand ready to beat the liven’ jesus out of some kid from somewhere south of the People’s Republic of Arizona?
Kwasman sounds like a lot of other Murican names such as Gehrig, Garcia, Sandberg, Jimenez, Smith, Musial, Cronkite, Eisenhower, Cruz, Palin, McCain, Jeter, Johnson, Nimitz, Sullenberger or Boehner.
Guy in the red shirt — you know where you can stick that stick. The sun ain’t shinin’ there.