I’m not quite sure if I am scared or glad that this is happening. Is this a successful appeal to the base or a desperate grab for power from a dying religion.
Maybe, this will numb the public to the attacks from religious wanna bees and open the door for an out atheist to run for president.
Here is what you get from Santorum….
Post by Phil Ferguson
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In the US government, he IS! Our human laws have been above church law for over 200 years. That is a big part of the success of America.
Post by Phil Ferguson
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From Jon Stewart
Feb 15th, 2012
Part 2….
Post by Phil Ferguson
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Like Lewis Sinclair said…
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
Then….
Via Wikipedia….
Barry Goldwater – Republican Party’s nominee for President in the 1964 election
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.
Now…..
“There are no Palestinians. All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis. There are no Palestinians. This is Israeli land.”
“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.”
“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical.”
It took a couple of days for me to see Paul Krugman’s post on Mitt Romney catching the flu, uhh, I mean severe conservatism.
“Mitt Romney has a gift for words — self-destructive words. On Friday he did it again, telling the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was a “severely conservative governor.”
“As Molly Ball of The Atlantic pointed out, Mr. Romney “described conservatism as if it were a disease.” Indeed. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, provided a list of words that most commonly follow the adverb “severely”; the top five, in frequency of use, are disabled, depressed, ill, limited and injured.
Let’s see… I’m liking this:
Willard Mitt Romney is severely disabled.
Willard Mitt Romney is severely depressed.
Willard Mitt Romney is severely ill.
Willard Mitt Romney is severely limited.
Willard Mitt Romney is severely injured.
Goodness gracious he’s got severe conservatism, the metabolic syndrome of politics! Most people only need two or three symptoms but he’s got them all.
Conservatism has become a disease. Especially in this election, it is a terrible virus provoking a high fever, unrelieved by aspirin and bed rest.
“That’s clearly not what Mr. Romney meant to convey. Yet if you look at the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, you have to wonder whether it was a Freudian slip. For something has clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism.
Darn right something has gone wrong. Those pubcon bastards are terrified an uppity nigger is gonna get reelected in spite of four years of stalemating and blind hatred. The only way to beat an intelligent black man that speaks to the people is to encourage prejudice; quick seal off the doors and windows, build up a wall, stop information, create a few jingos, hire some thugs outside.
Who would have ever thought this furriner would actually get somewhere when he’s been blocked from, from, going to the bathroom—”I am sorry boy but there’s no budget for that, and it’s your fault—we were just standing up for ourselves, and that’s agin you.”
“Start with Rick Santorum, who, according to Public Policy Polling, is the clear current favorite among usual Republican primary voters, running 15 points ahead of Mr. Romney. Anyone with an Internet connection is aware that Mr. Santorum is best known for 2003 remarks about homosexuality, incest and bestiality. But his strangeness runs deeper than that.
I have got to interject. Isn’t Santorum the crazy bastard that brought his dead baby home for closure? Further that he proudly proclaims a hatred for science and asserts he knew global warming was a hoax from the beginning; even now when deniers are acquiescing, unless paid to write otherwise?
“For example, last year Mr. Santorum made a point of defending the medieval Crusades against the “American left who hates Christendom.” Historical issues aside (hey, what are a few massacres of infidels and Jews among friends?), what was this doing in a 21st-century campaign?
You know if Christians hadn’t killed all of those Muslims back then we’d probably be Muslim now. Besides all of that trade brought more spices, technology, and books from the East. The only Christian thing wrong with the crusades was Saladin, the Sunni, won; Richard the Lionheart was joking when he complimented him as chivalrous and brave. Otherwise, Jerusalem would be Catholic now. There’d be no reformation, no enlightenment, and we could have extended the dark ages, uhh medieval ages, on forever, and have a Christian king for a leader.
“Nor is this only about sex and religion: he has also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a “beautifully concocted scheme” on the part of “the left” to provide “an excuse for more government control of your life.” You may say that such conspiracy-theorizing is hardly unique to Mr. Santorum, but that’s the point: tinfoil hats have become a common, if not mandatory, G.O.P. fashion accessory.
Liberals like to think of themselves as just seeking like minded people because they think it’s rude to carry assault rifles to Town Hall meetings. Many liberals vote for gun control because they just want to have them for themselves and because they are willing to risk revelation by licensing, certification, tracking. Silly liberals. That’s discrimination; you should be as dumb as that bent nail and be able to get a gun. Regulation is always big government.
As to making money on climate change, wasn’t it Reagan who said a warmer climate wasn’t a problem, we could just sell more hats and suntan lotion? Liberals concur. Hey, it’s an opportunity for anticorporate solar power—uhh, wait solar power has gone corporate as have hat and suntan lotion companies.
It’s true though. Liberals, especially farmers, laborers, libertarians, anarchists have all been very successful getting together and promoting their agenda. That’s why hippies were always out there voting and being part of society—remember? And yippies—they all mainstreamed, became yuppies, retired, bought land in Montana, and now want global warming so they can sell their ranches as beach front. Quick, buy now before the water rises!
Just like Disney World In Florida. See Walt was really a liberal, his parents were socialists you know, and he knew that some day all that land could be sold as beach front, with the Magic Kingdom as high ground. Centennial, EPCOT, would be the new capital. He was planning a new Cooney Island but bigger, bigger, bigger. Music everywhere. Kids playing. People smiling. Bwahhaahhaa.
“Then there’s Ron Paul, who came in a strong second in Maine’s caucuses despite widespread publicity over such matters as the racist (and conspiracy-minded) newsletters published under his name in the 1990s and his declarations that both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act were mistakes. Clearly, a large segment of his party’s base is comfortable with views one might have thought were on the extreme fringe.
Come on Krugman. As a Southerner even I know the civil war was a mistake. If the Northerners had bought our slaves, invested in our farms, and been willing to pay more for cotton than England, the South wouldn’t have seceded. If we had won there wouldn’t be any questions about state’s rights now, either.
As to civil rights. My ancestors (family) had (has) no problem with people of color around as long as they knew (know) their place. Besides integration doesn’t work; it just stalls the problem. My kids can still tell skin color when close or far. Those riots would never have happened if MLK hadn’t stirred up people to anger. They were on an upward mobility path–all until then, and now they’re getting just what they deserve, what the North gave them. We also wouldn’t have this immigration problem if we hadn’t run out of happy slaves, uhh servants.
If Mr Krugman would visit Virginia or Kentucky or the South he’d know we’re still pissed about the War of Yankee Aggression. We’re mainstream and he’s the extreme weirdo.
Finally, there’s Mr. Romney, who will probably get the nomination despite his evident failure to make an emotional connection with, well, anyone. The truth, of course, is that he was not a “severely conservative” governor. His signature achievement was a health reform identical in all important respects to the national reform signed into law by President Obama four years later. And in a rational political world, his campaign would be centered on that achievement.
…
I just can’t go on. I don’t know whether to lampoon pubcons fighting Krugman or to support Krugman with more supportive facts. All of it is irrelevant… A stick of dynamite couldn’t open this log jam. We can have a recession. We can talk biases. We could go to war. Whatever! This virus is so firmly entrenched…
Every day we see Syria being blasted to bits by a tyrant and here we piss and moan over birth control and gay marriage, and whine not to hear negative news.
Current politics is like a pornographic display of human weaknesses. They don’t just have them, they’re pumped up beyond imagination. You can’t even anime this shit. There isn’t enough color on the pallatte.
Instead, you all can finish reading Krugman, and reflect on the cure for severe conservatism. I’ll try to work on a post about the social cell and why this shit happens. I’m just too nauseous for this now.
I know, I know, good writing ends on a jazzy statement or something positive. See You at the Rally for Reason!! PS Leave your assault rifle at home.
Jim Newman, weak and feverish
www.brightpride.com and www.frontiersofreason.com
But Mr. Romney is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, and whatever his personal beliefs may really be — if, indeed, he believes anything other than that he should be president — he needs to win over primary voters who really are severely conservative in both his intended and unintended senses.
So he can’t run on his record in office. Nor was he trying very hard to run on his business career even before people began asking hard (and appropriate) questions about the nature of that career.
Instead, his stump speeches rely almost entirely on fantasies and fabrications designed to appeal to the delusions of the conservative base. No, President Obama isn’t someone who “began his presidency by apologizing for America,” as Mr. Romney declared, yet again, a week ago. But this “Four-Pinocchio Falsehood,” as the Washington Post Fact Checker puts it, is at the heart of the Romney campaign.
How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. After all, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprint originally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!
My short answer is that the long-running con game of economic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad. For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America’s defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.
Over time, however, this strategy created a base that really believed in all the hokum — and now the party elite has lost control.
The point is that today’s dismal G.O.P. field — is there anyone who doesn’t consider it dismal? — is no accident. Economic conservatives played a cynical game, and now they’re facing the blowback, a party that suffers from “severe” conservatism in the worst way. And the malady may take many years to cure.
Post by Phil Ferguson
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Feb. 13 2012
Post by Phil Ferguson
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GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum targeted primary rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich on Tuesday for allegedly buying into the “bogus” science of man-made climate change, while proudly declaring that he himself had never believed in the “hoax of global warming.”
Keep your fingers crossed. This guy may get the nomination and provide many months of great laughs.
Post by Phil Ferguson
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I have mixed emotions about an Atheist Party but I do like the idea of bringing up atheists when politicians speak. They need to know that we are out there and that we vote. Tammy Duckworth’s (D – District 
response is far better than the one that Joe Walsh (same Illinois district) gave a two weeks ago.
She has one parent that is baptist and one that is buddhist and says that she is a deist!
What do you think of the question – and what do you think of the answer?
Rick Santorum awoke to a new reality Wednesday after sweeping all three Republican presidential contests a day earlier, reshaping the contest that will decide who runs against President Barack Obama in November.
Santorum won caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado, as well as a nonbinding primary in Missouri to energize his campaign and raise questions about front-runner Mitt Romney’s ability to attract broad conservative support.
I guess I better go get my passport. I may have to go to Canada soon.
