I normally don't cite the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, but this column is a good one.  

I am still having a hard time understanding how any relatively sane, normal, reasonable person could call themselves a Republican these days when you survey the current crop of Republicans.  

The GOP has gone deep into right-field.  They are so far right they're out in the parking lot. If that bothers you and you are an old-fashioned Republican in the mold of Barry Goldwater, maybe you should protest this lurch into lunacy by renouncing your membership in the GOP?  If they don't see their membership decline significantly, what impetus would they have to change?

You could always rejoin the Republican Party later, once they come to their senses.  But you really should not be encouraging the current crop of crackpots.  They are tainting the entire country with their stink. Do you want to associate with that?

Slaves to Prejudice

by Maureen Down - The New York Times

WASHINGTON — WHEN a cranky anarchist in a cowboy hat starts a sentence saying “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” you can be dang sure it’s going downhill from there.

The unsettling thing about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s ugly rant on the Virgin River on Saturday, The Times’s Adam Nagourney told me, was that there was no negative reaction from the semicircle of gun-toting and conspiracy-minded supporters who had gathered round to hear it. The oblivious 67-year-old Bundy, who has refused for 20 years to pay for his cattle to graze on our land, offered a nostalgic ode to slavery.

Recalling that he saw African-Americans sitting on the porch of a public-housing project in North Las Vegas who seemed to have “nothing to do,” Bundy declaimed: “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy?”

The man hailed as a “savior” and “folk hero” by Fox News doubled down Thursday, declaring: “Cliven Bundy’s a-wondering” if the black community was happier during slave days when “they was in the South in front of their homes with their chickens and their gardens and their children around them and their men having something to do.”

By Friday, he was saying that all Americans are slaves to the government and comparing himself to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Just another dark-ages bigot who goes nuts at the idea that whites are losing clout in an America run by a New Age black president. What’s the use of being white, after all, if you can’t be king of the hill — even if the hill really belongs to the government?

Conservatives saw no hypocrisy in rallying around Bundy for breaking the law, refusing to pay between $1 and $2 a month per cow to graze on federal land, while they refuse to consider amnesty for illegal immigrants committing Acts of Love.

Rand Paul, the libertarian senator from Kentucky who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee, took almost a day to distance himself from the self-immolating Bundy. Paul was so worried about alienating the segment of the party that will decide the nomination, he couldn’t even respond quickly to say the most simple thing on earth: Racism is bad.

As BuzzFeed reported, Chris McDaniel, a G.O.P. state senator mounting a strong challenge to Thad Cochran in the Mississippi Republican primary, has written blog posts blaming the “welfare dependent citizens of New Orleans” for not finding higher ground during Katrina, charging that “Mexicans” entering the country are hurting “our culture” and calling racial profiling of Muslims a “victory for common sense.”

From cockfighting rallies to online gun sweepstakes to cracks about “wetbacks” to waxing nostalgic about slavery, the Republican fringe has gone mainstream. When the younger stars of the G.O.P. race to embrace a racist anarchist lionized by Sean Hannity, it underscores the party’s lack of leadership or direction.

After making noise about reaching out to women (even as Senate Republicans unanimously blocked a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act and Republican legislatures around the country pass more abortion restrictions), the G.O.P. now has the delightful Det Bowers out there doing marital counseling. Politico reported that the wacky 62-year-old evangelical minister, who is challenging Lindsey Graham in the South Carolina G.O.P. Senate primary, once asserted that 95 percent of broken marriages are caused by women giving more attention to their children than to their husbands. “He did run off with some other woman, and you packed his bags,” Bowers said, adding: “You just ran him off. You paid more attention to your children than you did to him. ‘Oh, he doesn’t need me?’ He needs you more than they do. He chose you, they didn’t.  An abominable idolatry.”

It’s a measure of how hallucinogenic conservatives are that they are trying to re-litigate slavery during the second term of the first African-American president.

Earlier this month, Jim DeMint, Tea-Party godfather and president of the Heritage Foundation, bizarrely told a Christian radio station that it was not “big government” that freed the slaves, but “the conscience of the American people” and Abraham Lincoln, a Republican. (Umm, wasn’t he big government along with his hundreds of thousands of troops?)

In another case of inexplicable foot-dragging, Rand Paul was reluctant to cut loose Jack Hunter, his social media director and co-author on a Tea Party book, after the media wrote about his past life as a shock jock named the Southern Avenger who advocated secession, wore a Confederate flag mask, toasted John Wilkes Booth, and complained that whites are “not afforded the same right to celebrate their own cultural identity” because anything “that is considered ‘too white’ is immediately suspect.”

At Harvard’s Institute of Politics on Friday, Paul said that “The Republican Party will adapt, evolve or die.”

He might want to listen to his own advice.

Original.

Koch-suckers

No surprise here.  Another explosion at a plant owned by the Koch brothers.  They spend so much time and effort on perverting politics, who has time or money for safety at their plants? After all, they are all about deregulation:  the right to pollute, kill and maim your workers and the surrounding community.  Free enterprise!!

Major Explosion At Texas Based Koch Industries Plant

ADDICTING INFO

On April 26, 2014 a major explosion occurred at a Koch Industries owned, Georgia Pacific pulp and paper plant, located in Corrigan, Texas. The explosion severely injured at least seven people. NBC affiliate KETK reported at least four life flight helicopters on the scene, on Saturday evening, following the explosion. Others were taken by ambulance to a hospital in Luftkin, Tx.

According to Khou, 11 news, the explosion happened at around 6:30 pm. Initial reports from firefighters on the scene suggest that the explosion was the result of faulty equipment at the plant. The Corrigan fire chief stated that the injuries appeared ‘very bad.’

Georgia Pacific was acquired by Koch Industries in 2005. It should come as no surprise that Georgia Pacific, owned by the anti-government, anti-inspection, anti-regulation, libertarian Koch brothers has a history of injuring and killing workers.

Less than a week before the explosion, on April 15 2014, WTOK in Alabama reported that an employee of a Georgia Pacific paper mill was killed, following a ‘workplace accident.’

In October of 2013, another worker was killed after “a vacuum-pressure relief device discharged steam and paper stock” causing a watchman to fall 30 feet, to his death. That incident occurred at a Georgia Pacific plant in Cedar Springs, GA. Following that death, OSHA cited Georgia Pacific for several serious workplace safety violations,

“Investigators found that a rusted, loose and improperly anchored catwalk guardrail system gave way when steam pushed the worker against it. OSHA also issued citations for inadequately written procedures for assuring that equipment was rendered inoperable while employees performed welding operations; failure to locate pressure-relief devices, so they vented away from employees; and failure to assure that input valves were closed and locked before welding began.”

Georgia Pacific employee deaths occur regularly; for instance, deaths were reported in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and so on.

Residents of Crossett, Arkansas, where a Georgia Pacific paper mill is located, are experiencing far higher than normal rates of lung cancer, which have been linked to the Koch owned plant.

It’s no surprise, either, that these incidents have taken place in Republican states like Georgia, Texas and Arkansas. Red state governments send out open invitations for companies that are looking to skirt safety regulations, avoid inspections, dodge taxes and exploit workers.

Last year Texas governor Rick Perry released a series of ads that were meant to attract businesses to his state. In the ads, Perry bragged about the lone star state’s lax regulations and oversight of businesses. Shortly after he released the ads, a massive explosion at a West Texas fertilizer plant went off ‘like a nuclear bomb,” nearly wiping an entire town off the map. Hundreds of people were injured or killed and clean up costs following the devastating explosion are likely to exceed $100 million dollars.

The truth is those ‘job killing regulations’ that republicans like Rick Perry, and tea party libertarians like Charles and David Koch, are always railing against, are actually vital, life saving oversight programs. Regulations protect workers from being blown up on the job. They keep corporations from destroying the water supply or sending poisons into the air we breathe. They protect ordinary people from exploitation.

Charles and David Koch have poured billions of dollars into the political process, in an effort to decimate regulatory policies and eliminate the agencies that enforce them. How many people would be alive today if the poured that money into ensuring that the companies they own meet all state and federal workplace safety standards instead?

Original.

spider bite foot

You wanna see some gross, scary shit?  Just put those three words in the Post Title into a search engine and look at the pictures.  Yeow!

A friend of mine recently got bitten by what he believed was a brown recluse spider.  

brown recluse spider

They are pretty common in the southern parts of North America and love to hide out in boxes. How many boxes do you have around you?!?! Yikes!  I have a ton since we just moved!!

FUMIGATE!!

His bite required a trip to the hospital and surgery, resulting in a nasty gash in his foot. He wouldn't send any pictures, on purpose.  He's going to be OK, minus part of his foot.

He told me he thinks he got bit while he was sleeping.  Brrrr.  Naturally I had to remind him how lucky he was that the bastard didn't go for his gonads.  Yeah!! 

If you have a strong stomach, click here.

How about those 10 Deadliest Spiders?  

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Or Spiderz Rule!

JaclynG

We need more attractive, articulate atheists like Jaclyn!!  I know they are out there, still hiding in the atheist closet.

What...is...that?

Too funny.  (Will this work?)

Post by Tom Beaulieu.

anti-Christ

So many Republicans wear their religion on their sleeve and accuse Obama of being the anti-Christ.  They need to change their focus, to their own mirrors.

THE ANTI-CHRIST (FOR DUMMIES)

BY NANCEGREGGS

Anti: Opposed to; against. 
Christ: Central figure of the Christian faith and originator of its teachings. 

Christ told his followers to feed the hungry. 

If you are an elected representative who votes to cut off food stamp recipients, you are anti-Christ. You are also a despicable human being. 

Christ admonished true believers to treat others as they themselves wished to be treated. 

If you are a politician who supports laws that treat women, gays/lesbians, those of another faith, race or ethnicity as unequal, you are anti-Christ. You are also a dumbass bigot. 

Christ told his flock that they are their brother’s keeper. 

If you fail to “keep” your brother by refusing to extend his unemployment benefits in his time of dire need, you are anti-Christ. You are also a selfish prick. 

Christ bade those who truly loved Him to give up their worldly possessions, and come follow Him. 

If you are a mega-church minister living in luxury thanks to church members donating money they can ill afford to do without, you are anti-Christ. You are also the lowest form of scum imaginable.

Christ said that as we do to the least among us, so we do unto Him.

If you vilify those whose very survival depends on government assistance by calling them lazy parasites who are sucking the nation’s coffers dry, you are anti-Christ.  You are also a lying little fuck.

Christ clearly stated that we should care for the sick and dying.

If you are a governor who refuses to expand Medicaid because your standing among fellow Party members might be negatively affected if you do so, you are anti-Christ.  You are also an arrogant asshole for thinking that your political aspirations are more important than those you condemn to sickness and death.

Christ said, “Blessed are the Peacemakers”.

If you are a politician who promotes war over diplomacy, you are anti-Christ.  You are also a coward who would see others die rather than be labelled a bleeding heart liberal by your warmongering political colleagues.

If you fill your campaign coffers or your collection plate by doing any or all of the above while holding yourself out as a Christian, you are anti-Christ.  You are also a self-serving,  hypocrite whose actions are beneath contempt.

By these signs, you will know him:

The anti-Christ is the pastor who tells his congregation that homosexuals are to blame for floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and medical conditions that afflict their children.

The anti-Christ is the office-holder who tells his constituents that the poor, the sick and the homeless who depend on financial assistance are to blame for the country’s economic woes.

The anti-Christ is the politician who refuses to support gun-control legislation because the violent deaths of school children are less important than the votes of gun-obsessed NRA adherents.

The anti-Christ is the juror who acquits a murderer because his guilt is mitigated by the fact that his victim was black.

The anti-Christ is the judge who sentences a poor woman to prison for stealing in order to feed her children; it is the judge who waives jail time for a wealthy man who steals a child’s innocence in order to feed his sexual appetites.

The anti-Christ is the priest who refuses Communion to the pro-choice advocate, while denying the sexual abuse of children within his own church.

The anti-Christ is the self-proclaimed pro-life advocate who turns a blind eye to the health and welfare of the already born.

The anti-Christ is the office-holder who tries to keep his fellow citizens from accessing affordable healthcare and earning a living wage,

The anti-Christ is the pastor who claims separation of Church and State when it comes to his tax-exempt status, and then uses the pulpit to persuade his congregation not to vote for certain politicians and/or their party.

Anti: Opposed to; against.
Christ: Central figure of the Christian faith and originator of its teachings.

It’s really quite simple, when you think about it.  It’s unfortunate that so many people never do.

Original.

To me, this is just more evidence that there is no such supernatural being as God or Christ.