COMING SOON: Jesus Christ! Now THAT'S Entertainment!

It's Blasphemous! It's Christofascist! iT'S Sooo American!

America Has Made a Religion Out of Entertainment...
And An Entertainment Out of Religion

This next week, we'll be looking at what really counts as entertainment in this country: religion! More specifically, American Christian religion - what it has shown us this past century and what we can expect. No, this is no Religulous. I don't have the money nor the wit of Bill Maher. Religulous, quite frankly, didn't tell us anything we already know. I'm proposing a kind of montage of what America has done to religion and with religion - and what religion has done to America.

The Federal Budget: WTF Numbers

Again: The following graphs prove why the letters "W" "T" and "F" were invented. These may be the comparisons Republicans don't want you to read:

The DOUBLING of our national debt was in 2008. And it obviously took a lot of effort to get it to the trillion-dollar mark. When Bush took office in 2001, he inherited billions in windfall. By the end of his tenure, our deficit was $450 billion and our debt was above $1 trillion. In 2007 our interest payments (still due and mounting) were $243 billion. OUR INTEREST!!

Who was borrowing all of that money? Who had wars to pay for? Who gave only 3% of the budget to education: the real insult being the kick in the rear to kids - "No Child Left Behind" wound up to be "No Child's Behind Left!"

In fact, the government, OUR government looked exactly like some homeowners the Republicans have been railing about: borrowing well above their means. And what did our government borrow the money for?

War. A preemptive war. A preemptive war based on ... nothing (or at best, wishful thinking). A preemptive war based on nothing and lasting longer than any other wars in American history.

The Republicans (and Rush Limbaugh) want to destroy President Obama and send him back to Chicago in humiliation.

But for what he has done in such little time, what he has already gone through and what he has to face, he should be awarded a medal.

Redoubt Ash Is Falling On Homer!!

Homer - the little Alaskan town with a sense of humor - is now covered by Mt. Redoubt's volcanic ash. Gov. Sarah Palin has no plans to investigate any damage or side effects, even though, at over 5,000 residents, it about as big as Wasilla.

(from Alaska Daily News):

Ash began falling in Homer shortly before 2 p.m. The city sent workers home early, said City Manager Walt Wrede, before a purplish plume blocked the view across Cook Inlet and the smell of sulfur wafted into town. Businesses closed up, he said. By 4:45, skies had cleared and a small sprinkling of ash covered the snow.

(From Wikipedia):

Homer is a city located in Kenai Peninsula Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the population was 5,364. One of Homer's nicknames is "the cosmic hamlet by the sea"; another is "the end of the road". A popular local bumper sticker characterizes the town as "Homer - A quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem."

And to add from our cornucopia of useless knowledge: "It Takes A Village."

The Republican Budget Was Drawn Up By Sarah Palin!

It's The Budget To Nowhere!
Or...
It's the "Thanks But No Thanks" Budget!

Either way, no Republican was thinking clearly when they "unveiled" their "budget." (Yeah, I'm using quotation marks as liberally as Tony Perkins!). However, the blue folder that was held up had twenty pages of polemic rhetoric and NO NUMBERS! None at all! It was a slap in the face of the present administration saying "You chided us for not having a plan! Here's what we think of your plan!" ("Oh, a we'll roll out the numbers in, a week or so"). The Party of No now includes The Party of No Budget as well as the Party of No Ideas.

It's also a slight to President Obama: a guy who's been working day and night, not merely "outlining" a budget, but presenting concrete dollars and cents. Forcing him to "work with us" on a mere outline is insulting to Obama as well as the American people. Obama's budget would be $3.55 trillion. Sounds like an unfathomable amount of money, but the chart below (our last post) shows how much the budget was for 2007: $2.7 trillion, with a big chunk going to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. AND $243 billion in DEBT INTEREST.

Fox To The Right Pt 1: VP Shine's "We Hate Obama!"

And It All Started With A Lapel Pin!

Fox News Declares itself the Voice of Opposition to Obama
Submitted by jmeasley on Mon, 03/23/2009 - 23:27.
Jason EasleyPolitics & TV

During an interview with NPR today the senior vice president for programming at Fox News, Bill Shine called his network the voice of opposition to the Obama administration. So much for the fair and balanced slogan, but at least FNC is now being honest about its intentions.

...NPR’s David Folkenflik points out that FNC’s ratings are up since the election of Obama. In terms of ratings, Fox is way ahead of CNN and MSNBC.

A Pew Research survey done last year found that MSNBC and CNN split the Democratic viewership. Fifty one percent of CNN’s viewers are Democrats, and 45% of MSNBC viewers are Democrats. Only 18% of viewers on each of these two networks are Republicans.

As a business strategy, declaring themselves the voice of opposition to Obama is smart. If anything it will push their ratings even higher among Republicans. At least maybe FNC will stop pretending that are an objective network.

Fox News has never pretended that they were "fair and balanced" as far as their "News" was concerned. Reporting on the wearing of a lapel pin as the campaign set off, liberal Alan Colmes (who gave up his stint on "Hannity and Colmes" presumably because he couldn't stand Hannity or Fox's tilt far to the right) points out how ridiculous and hypocritical it is for anti-Obama people even to be discussing something like the lack of a flag lapel pin. (Watch it below).

Now Shine did say "Obama administration policies", but we all know that the emnity will be towards Obama himself, his staff, his advisors, his Cabinet and, yes, even his family. Fox will interview Ann Coulter(geist) countless times about her takes on Michelle Obama's style, charisma, etc. Bill O'Reilly will now be able to call out Obama with slightly racist undertones because he knows he won't be fired. No matter what success the Obama administration meets with, it will be "Nobama" all the way with Fox. There will not be one positive thing mentioned about the President.

As I've said before, Fox "News" is not journalism. It is Hearst "You-provide-the-pictures-I'll-provide-the-war" journalism. The problem with that kind of power, as Hearst himself proved, becomes toxic and, eventually, irrelevent.

Now, the problem is, how long will the American public be subjected to "Faux News"? And what will it take to make us all sick of "Obamattacks"? Malia and Natasha better be shipped off to an "undisclosed location" for at least four years.

Just a thought.

Jindal and The Ideology of Preemptive Strikes

Well, Republicans Really DO Believe In
PREEMPTIVE STRIKES!

As someone much wiser than I once said: "This is why the letters "W" "T" and "F" were invented:

La. Gov. Jindal urges GOP to stand up to Obama

(Associated Press)

WASHINGTON – Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal again found himself carrying the Republican mantle opposite a primetime appearance from President Barack Obama on Tuesday, saying Republicans must be ready to defy the president when they disagree with his policies. He also joked about his widely panned response to Obama's address to Congress last month.

"We are now in the position of being the loyal opposition," Jindal said at a Republican congressional fundraising dinner that only by coincidence fell on the same night as Obama's news conference. "The right question to ask is not if we want the president to fail or succeed, but whether we want America to succeed."

But NOT if we want Republicans to succeed, evidently. Just who's idea was it to have Jindal make his "preemptive" speech anyway? Is the Republican party so bent on destroying Obama that they will lose all reason at picking a spokesperson? Couldn't they have waited a little while (like a year or two).

Right now, all the Republicans seem to have is VENGEANCE; no economic crisis plan, no plans for foreign policy (unless "shoot everything that moves" is a plan), no plan for distressed homeowners, no plan for the unemployed or the uninsured.

Just pure vengeance.

And right now, all the Republicans are actually offering is:

OR WORSE YET:

Just a thought.

Republicans Want THE SNEER To Go Away!

Look At It! Wouldn't YOU?!!

(From ThinkProgress)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to stay out of the political spotlight since leaving office, giving high-profile interviews to CNN and Politico. Last night, The Hill reported that congressional Republicans are telling him “to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input”:

Rep. John Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) said, “He became so unpopular while he was in the White House that it would probably be better for us politically if he wouldn’t be so public…But he has the right to speak out since he’s a private citizen.”

Oh, for an Amendment to the Constitution!

Ask yourself: Why the hell is Dick Cheney still "dickin' around" in politics and governmental affairs? Why hasn't he just asked for a desert island to retreat to? Dan "No-brain" Quayle at least had the decency to fade into the past and write books nobody would read (simply because nobody believed he could write!). Al Gore took up a cause fiercely and won a Nobel for it. What the hell is Nobel going to give Cheney a prize for?

"The Nobel Prize for Pure, Unmitigated World Contempt" goes to Richard 'The Sneer' Cheney."

Do we have to applaud?

Democrats have wanted him to go away for the last 8 years. Now Republicans want him to go. Next: the trusted NRA will take him to the Mexican border - at gunpoint.

Just a (delightful) thought.