If Texas Secedes, It DESERVES Chuck Norris For President!

"Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer. Too bad he never cries. Ever."

And For Vice President...Pat Robertson!

Today we've got TWO super-duper right wingnnut stories to chew on (of course there's more, but these are the most ridiculous, so we couldn't resist!): Tea partying is old news, but the new stuff about what RESULTED from the parties is still on top; and now that the Obama administration has released DHS memos about what everyone already knew - that we stand as much chance being attacked by right wing extremists as from outside terrorists - every right wingnut is crawling out of the wood work to say "How DARE he!" That, of course, includes Pat Robertson (see video below!).

The first story shows just how desperate Republicans are getting these days. Granted, some Texans (especially the ones with roots in Crawford, Midland and even Dallas) are indelibly stupid. It may be something in the water. In the past (before Alaska) all Americans outside of Texas knew about the state was that it had bragging rights brought on by its size and its oil. Since then, it's been eclipsed by Alaska in size and by Saudi Arabia in oil production. So what does it have to brag about now? Education? (nah, it's 26th in the nation with lower than average reading scores - figures!*). The fact that Texans consume the most energy in the nation per capita? How about the fact that Texas leads the nation in executions (400 for the last 27 years)? Or possibly the most interesting fact: that Texas emits the most greenhouse gases in the US? Now Texas, it seems, is considering secession:

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) was one of the dozens of Republican lawmakers who are addressing the anti-Obama tea parties today. He told the crowd he didn’t believe they were all “right-wing extremists,” as others had sought to portray them. “But if you are, I’m with you!” he shouted. After, he told reporters that Texas might have to secede from the union: Perry told reporters following his speech that Texans might get so frustrated with the government they would want to secede from the union.

And a pronouncement from "the poor man's Arnold Schwarzeneger" Chuck Norris:

On Glenn Beck's radio show last week, I quipped in response to our wayward federal government, "I may run for president of Texas."

That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.

Story #2 involves the DHS memos released stating what we already knew: radical right-wing terrorists are a threat to the country just as much as Al Qaeda.

This, from U.S. News & World Report in Bush's 2005:

By Danielle Knight

Posted 7/12/05

In the 10 years since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people, roughly 60 right-wing terrorist plots have been uncovered in the United States, according to an upcoming report by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. The plots, all foiled by law enforcement, reportedly included violent plans by antigovernment militia groups, racist skinhead organizations, and Ku Klux Klan members to use various types of chemical bombs and other weapons.

Interestingly enough, Texas has a very high per capita hate group ranking. Washington D.C., has the highest: must be all the Republican lobbyists.

There are over 965 hate groups in the country. One of them is Pat Robertson.

From Crooks and Liars:

For the past few days, the right wing has been going after a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report warning that “rightwing extremists…may be gaining new recruits” because of Barack Obama’s election and the “economic downtown.”

ROBERTSON: It shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question.

But it’s that kind of thing, somebody who doesn’t think that we should have abortion on demand, is labeled a terrorist! It’s outrageous!

Crooks and Liars also points out that Robertson urged his viewers to “jam up” the homeland security phone lines by calling in to complain.

Telling people to purposely obstruct the operations of DHS might be considered treason, right?

Just a thought.

Texas ranked 26 in the American Legislative Exchange Council's Report Card on American Education. Texas students ranked higher than average in mathematics, but lower in reading. Between 2005–2006, Texas spent $7,584 per pupil ranking it below the national average of $9,295. The pupil/teacher ratio was 15.0, slightly below average. Texas paid instructors $38,130, below the national average. The state provided 89.22% of the funding for education, the federal government 10.8%.

A Call For Obama's Waterboarding: Tea Party or Palin Rally?

Bashobama At It's Best! (Or Worst?)!

From Think Progress.com:

Tea party organizers and participants have repeatedly insisted that their nationwide protests today are completely non-partisan and not meant to be anti-Obama. However, there didn’t seem to be any anti-Republican or anti-Bush signs at the protests. Instead, not only were there signs/clothing protest Obama’s policies, but some had violent or racist rhetoric. One participant even asked Joe the Plumber about waterboarding Obama!

Watch it (below)

One participant had a deprecatory sign "Homey don't do dat!" Showing how low Fox News has gone with it, Media Matters counted the ne'er-do-well's coverage of the tea parties:

From Think Progress:

...between April 6 and April 13; it aired at least 73 in-show and commercial promotions for the parties as well. Of all the Fox programs, Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” dedicated the most time to the tea parties.

Second runner-up was Sean Hannity with 2 segments, 10 in-show promotions and 3 commercials. Way to go Sean! Bet you got a kick out of the waterboarding comment too!

"Tea parties" have shown us the poor, poorer and poorest of our society in terms of open-mindedness. Fox News has shown us that they'll cater to those bigoted minds as much as possible.

Dobson, Hagee, Parsley, Warren and Perkins Go Back Into Their Cages

...For Now.

The First World War was supposed to be "The War to end all wars." Pity no one told the Germans, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Serbs, the Iraqis, most of the countries in Africa or George Bush. After WWI, an enormous sigh of relief gave way to an explosion of joy and good times, even decadence. Then in a period of little more than twenty years, we found out that our WORST enemy had to be faced: complacency.

The same kind of complacency that engulfed gays who came out in the late seventies and some feminists who rejoiced at Roe vs Wade. It was the kind of complacency that gave us a sense of invulnerability, a false hubris. And this lull in vigilance was what Christofascists in our country were waiting for: the Moral Majority had room to grow. Thus started the "culture war."

Steve Benen, Political Animal, Washington Monthly, April 14, 2009:

Anti-gay animus is not only waning, four states now allow gay marriage. Abortion is still legal and a majority of Americans are still pro-choice. School prayer isn't even on the political world's radar screen anymore. Pornography is not only a multi-billion industry; it's more accessible than ever. The single fastest growing segment of the American spiritual landscape is non-believers and those with no religious identification.

That's fine, but what we've still got on our hands is: Prop 8, DOMA, Don't Ask Don't Tell, state constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage, Focus on the Family, Rush Limbaugh, Family Research Council, the Mormon Church, the Vatican, Michelle Malkin, The Creation Museum, Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, Ann Coulter(geist), the NRA and hate groups breeding hate crimes in growing numbers.

When James Dobson delivered his parting speech to Focus On The Family, he wasn't abdicating nor was he waving a white flag of surrender. Not by a long shot.

"Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles, but God is in control and we are not going to give up now, right? ... I have been assured by the board and by many of you that we're not going to cow, we're not going to be discouraged."

Christofascists may have lost some battles for America's souls, but still have the rest of the world's non-Christians to deal with. And they're making inroads in Africa, China and the Middle East. All Christian groups have to do is to scream "persecution" and money rolls in along with a particular kind of politics - religious politics. "AIDS in Africa? We'll help, just don't distribute condoms, and preach abstinence only." They're making inroads where Jerry Falwell failed.*

Yes, today's Christofascists are very much like caged animals. And they will do, as Rick Warren so often proscribes: "Whatever it takes."

*Along with food and clothing, during the Asian Tsunami catastrophe, Falwell tried to distribute 600,000 Christian tracts of scripture. The Muslims and Hindus pulled a Sarah Palin: "Thanks, but no thanks."

MORE TARNISH THAN VARNISH: Even Rick Warren's Pulpit Thinks He's A Liar!

MORE TARNISH THAN VARNISH?

Were the fumes from a freshly varnished pulpit to blame for Rick Warren's sudden no-show on George Stephanopoulos' This Week? Better yet, who came up with that lame idea for an excuse?

Maybe the pulpit got tired of hearing the totally erroneous "one man, one woman for 5,000 years..." bit. Maybe the pulpit realized what a front it's been for lies and half-truths.

Or maybe, just maybe, the pulpit finally saw that the real Rick Warren was covered over in particle board, "real wood veneer" and... varnish.

A persona is not necessarily truthful.

The Irony of Rick Warren: "It's Not About You!"

Irony has a habit of presenting itself when you least expect it. I came across this diatribe (justified) by a South Carolina state representative who is himself a "Rev." He invokes Rick Warren in taking Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina to task about refusing the Stimulus money offered to the state. He does it in a very well-written and powerful way:

Rev. Joseph Neal, The State:

Author and pastor Rick Warren begins his transformative book, The Purpose Driven Life, with a simple statement: “It’s not about you.”

As Gov. Mark Sanford engages the General Assembly in political gamesmanship over accepting federal stimulus dollars, his actions should prove to South Carolinians that despite his words to the contrary, it’s not about you.

Don’t be confused. Whether or not the governor accepts the money has nothing to do with the potential impact on you, your family or your quality of life.

So, to the more than 4 million residents of our state, it’s not about you.

To the 1,000 to 6,000 public school teachers facing layoffs if the money is rejected, it’s not about you.

To the hundreds of thousands of school children facing larger class sizes, fewer gifted and talented course offerings and fewer textbooks and supplies, it’s not about you.

To the business owners who rely on state government or the workers it employs to survive, it’s not about you.

To the 241,000 residents currently unemployed, it’s not about you.

Even to the 601,868 of you who voted for Sanford in the 2006 general election, it’s not about you.

And especially to the 170 members of the General Assembly, it’s not about you.

The rest is HERE.

Ironic? Yes. A pastor quoting Rick Warren to chastise a Republican governor. Yes, it is a twist of fate. But it brings out another aspect of the Warren story.

Rick Warren: It's not about you.

This man has been all lover the place trying to cast himself in a better light after Proposition 8 and the Presidential Inauguration. "I'm not anti-gay."

But, Rick, it's not about you.

Warren's Big Excuse: "THE DOG ATE IT!"

Or the equivalent thereof!

Rick Warren couldn't give a believable excuse for late homework!

You can read the whole aide-written excuse HERE. Besides giving a hole-ridden excuse, the email received by the producers of This Week show that he also has a staff of complete idiots.

“Easter weekend is like the Super Bowl for a megachurch like Saddleback; this year they were expecting upwards of 43,000 to attend 43 service venues and locations offered at 13 separate service times, requiring an intense several weeks of preparation by the pastor and his team."

Comparing church services to football is one helluva stupid way to start a letter like this. What it really says: "43,000 people were expected to see our oh-so-popular pastor perform!" And who was so stupid to get him so tightly booked that it would have been amazing if he HADN'T come down with something!

"My understanding was that Dr. Warren’s condition was related to fatigue and exhaustion — which affected his voice — exacerbated by inhalation of fumes from the newly refurbished (but still drying) pulpit used in the televised services the previous night."

Even the pulpit thinks he's a liar! And what's with the "I'm-covering-my-ass-by-saying-'my-understanding-was'" bit? Either Warren was sick or he wasn't.

"After initially informing George Stephanopoulos of his inability to pre-tape on Saturday, I put him directly in touch with his chief-of-staff after doctor consultation to pursue the remote possibility of an early [Sunday] AM pre-tape. That turned out to not be a possibility as he had to cancel half of his sermons today, though he was able to preach several of the six services at which he was scheduled to preach.

Hmmm. Let's see. He couldn't pre-tape on Saturday, couldn't pre-tape on Sunday, but Stephanopoulos' producers screwed up and scheduled him LIVE on Sunday anyway? The ABC team didn't just pick the "moments before" comment out of thin air, did they? Or is Warren's staff calling ABC's staff liars? That's rich! Did he cancel out on the show or the pre-tape? Cancellation of a pre-tape is not "moments before."

I was looking forward to the opportunity for him to clarify his position with Messrs. Stephanopoulos and Huckabee (the latter with whom he was to interview live at 2:45 PM EDT on Saturday) to reframe the picture for television viewers the way we had been trying to do on a per-inquiry basis with print outlets by sending out the statement below:

Then comes the ubiquitous one-man-one-woman 5000 years, blah, blah, blah. "...reframe the picture..." A rather nice turn of phrase meaning: damage control.

Doesn't wash. None of it.

Rick Warren on Easter Sunday: Playing Games

Something's Up - Besides Me!

Today I was up early to catch Rick Warren's Easter Sunday appearance on George Stephanopolis' program, This Week on ABC. I wanted to see how Warren would sidestep Stephanopoulos' questions about Prop 8, lies, etc. If it had been Chris Wallace on Fox, I wouldn't have gotten up so early. If it had with anyone on Fox, I wouldn't have programed my alarm/TV to wake me up at 8 AM on Easter Sunday morning simply because we all know that absolutely NO probing questions would have been asked. That's what Fox is famous for: generic questions lobbed gently to conservative guests. Conservative guests ONLY.

Minutes before the show, I signed on to my email and, in a Google Alert, read this:

Pastor Rick Warren, after making apparently contradictory statements about his stance on a gay-marriage measure, canceled an Easter Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week” just “moments before the scheduled interview,” host George Stephanopoulos told viewers.

Stephanopoulos said Warren’s representatives said the best-selling evangelical author was “sick with exhaustion.” The host told viewers that he wished the pastor a speedy recovery.

Warren’s appearance would have given him the chance to clear up his claim last week on CNN’s “Larry King Live” that he “never once … gave an endorsement” to California’s Proposition 8, a successful November ballot measure that banned gay marriage in the nation’s largest state.

Pissed. Both of us: me and George Stephanoupolos. GS did the right thing, the cool thing: he wished Warren well, then immediately slid into a hostage situation on the news.

Just about everyone in the media has a code of ethics and consideration which is: "Don't EVER cancel at the last minute." It's just as bad as being a "no show." Scrambling to cobble together a program at the last minute is a nerve-wracking affair. GS was probably clenching his fists underneath his desk while he wished Warren a speedy recovery.

Recovery from...what? Sorry, but "sick with exhaustion" is rather lame. Warren and his staff knew he had a hectic schedule and surely Warren knows his limitations. Then again, the bad dye job cold have affected his brain.

Just a thought.