The Liberal Email Conspiracy

If you set your liberal Gmail filters to route (@Reagan.com) straight to the trash bin, you'll likely never hear from your conservative wingnut relatives again!

That's the bright side of a new scheme from conservative talk radio host Michael Reagan, son of former president Ronald Reagan. He's cashing in on his father's name by selling Reagan.com email addresses for a mere $34.95 a year because all those free email providers are, you know, liberal!

"People who believe in true Reagan Conservative Values are unwittingly supporting the Obama, Pelosi and Reid liberal agenda! What do I mean? Well, every time you use your email from companies like Google, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Apple and others, you are helping the liberals. These companies are, and will continue, to be huge supporters financially and with technology of those that are hurting our country."

"Is that where you want your money to go? I didn't so I changed things," he continues. "I came up with the very first conservative email service provider. You now can put your name next to the name of the Greatest Conservative of all, my father Ronald Reagan."

Whether this ridiculous venture succeeds or not boils down to frugality versus political ideology versus stupidity. Trade in your free email address for one with a $34.95 annual fee? Since you can't count on Republican voters to support what's in their own best interest, I think Reagan.com will be a smashing success.

In The Beginning Was The Word

"You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. " — Anne Lamott.

And you can safely assume conservative Christians don't even believe their own Bible when they endeavor to rewrite it. Apparently, the Bible, like reality, has a liberal bias. The dolts at Conservapedia aim to fix that with their "Conservative Bible Project." Yep. They're going to rewrite the holy book removing the liberal distortions that run amok.

One of the funniest project guidelines states "Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning." Personally, I can hardly wait to read the passages on Reagonomics. And the parts where Jesus defends the death penalty ought to be a hoot.

Despite all this so-called liberal bias, idiots have had no trouble quoting the bible to defend all kinds of atrocious things. And why not? The history of the bible is one of... forgive the pun... loose canons. Who's to say who wrote or translated what and why it was included or left out? Not to mention what it all means...

Oh hell. Why rewrite it when you can start from scratch? Remember kids, creating your own holy book can guarantee your entry ticket into heaven or whatever afterlife you create! Just ask Joseph Smith! Or this comedy duo:


(YouTube video)

Running on Empty

"Running on - running on empty
Running on - running blind
Running on - running into the sun
But I'm running behind" — Jackson Browne

What brilliant politician would use this song in his political campaign? Who would remind the country that "hey, I'm losing, don't know where I'm going, and my tank is empty"? I'll give you a hint. He's not president. He's John McCain. But not only was it an unwise song choice, it was used without permission from the artist! Now the Republican National Committee is apologizing to Jackson Browne as part of a legal settlement.

Of course, I can't help but remember way back when Ronald Reagan misappropriated Born in The USA...

Okay, that was just a lame segue into the wingnut "birther" conspiracy. Despite overwhelming evidence that President Obama was born in the USA, these crazies keep prattling on.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Born Identity
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii which is a US state. This is his birth certificate. It's authentic. Furthermore, Obama was 47 years old when he was elected, and he has lived more than 14 years in the United States. He meets the qualifications for office laid out in Article Two of the United States Constitution. What the fuck do these idiot birthers want?

If you don't like the president (probably because he's black), then can you at least come up with a better conspiracy theory? Not one that's easily disproved by public records!

If we can't agree on basic facts, I fear we're running towards a new dark ages where ignorance rules.

Greed is not Good

(YouTube video)

In his monologue tonight, Bill Maher linked the banking failure, health care crisis, obesity epidemic, prison population, global warming and war profiteering all to the common problem of greed. "Humans have always been greedy, but they never convinced themselves it was good." Well, I guess not until Reagan came along.

Rightwing Humor

Right-wing humor makes me sad (if video doesn't show, click here):



When did it become funny to support and encourage torture? When did it become funny to drown a person? When?

President Theodore Roosevelt in his 1906 State of the Union address declared, "No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered." I don't think he was joking.

After World War II, we convicted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war... and I don't think we were kidding.

And I don't think we were laughing at Ronald Reagan in 1988 when he referred to torture as "an abhorrent practice."

Wait... I think I have the answer to my own question. It never became funny. It has always been abhorrent. Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller are two desperate and unfunny pinheads.

But this leads me to another question. Why do TV conservatives only host lame bullying shows? I'm not aware of any neocons involved in the art, culture or lifestyle shows. Could it be that they fail to understand culture? City Desk has some ideas on Why Conservatives Suck at Culture Criticism. One possibility is that they always define their work as Conservative, and then discuss art only in terms of their own politics.

Ahh... yes. Nobody needed to tell me that actually. I've been observing my own father long enough. You can't even mention Barbara Streisand without him launching into a gasping rant. Our family can't even agree on a movie to watch on Christmas eve because every star has offended his ideologies...

But then O'Reilly and Miller offend my morals. Hey, if the two of them can put together a jolly Christmas special by next year, I'll watch it, but only if they promise not to yell and be stupid.

Nature or Nurture

I found this image at Something Awful. The photos were taken from a 1980's Farsi Alphabet book for children. The owner of the book received it at age 2 or 3 while visiting Iran toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War. You may remember that was when the US was on Saddam's side.

Anyway, though I've never seen a children's book quite like this, I'm not going to pretend to be shocked. I've seen the Palestinian kid's show with the impostor Mickey Mouse promoting jihad. I've seen the sing-along DVDs glorifying suicide bombing. I'm also aware that the CIA was behind the violent images in Afghani textbooks when the US wanted to indoctrinate Afghan children with their duty to fight the Soviets:

In 1986, under President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. put a rush order on its proxy war in Afghanistan. The CIA gave Mujahideen an overwhelming arsenal of guns and missiles. But a lesser-known fact is that the U.S. also gave the Mujahideen hundreds of millions of dollars in non-lethal aid; $43 million just for the school textbooks. The U.S. Agency for International Development, AID, coordinated its work with the CIA, which ran the weapons program.
...
"The U.S. government told the AID to let the Afghan war chiefs decide the school curriculum and the content of the textbooks," says CBC'S Carol Off. "What discussions did you have with the Mujahideen leaders? Was it any effort to say maybe this isn't the best for an eight-year-old's mind?"

"No, because we were told that that was not for negotiations and that the content was to be that which they decided," says Goutier.

So children learn to count with bullets, to color in pictures of guns, and to sing about suicide missions. Adults brainwash them to fight their dirty wars. We do it to American children too (for profit even!) with toys like GI Joe.

What better way to keep the continuum of violence except to nurture it?

Talking about Appeasement

Just about everybody has seen this video of Chris Matthews shredding neocon radio personality Kevin James, but it's so funny I must remark on it:



So what happened here? I mean besides Chris Matthews humiliating this Kevin James kid who I had never heard of before. My take on this video is that somebody handed Kevin a 3x5 index card of "key terms," and he arrogantly went up against people who know much, much more than he does. Kevin needs to learn that Google, Wikipedia, and history books are his friends. It would have taken 2 minutes to research why Neville Chamberlain is considered an appeaser. In fact, the Munich Agreement is mentioned in the second paragraph of Neville Chamberlain's Wikipedia entry.

While on Wikipedia, Kevin could have also researched the word "appeasement":

Most commonly, appeasement is used for the policy of accepting the imposed conditions of an aggressor in lieu of armed resistance, usually at the sacrifice of principles. Usually it means giving in to demands of an aggressor in order to avoid war. Since World War II, the term has gained a negative connotation in the British government, in politics and in general, of weakness, cowardice and self-deception.

And then Kevin, if capable, could have pondered a bit... does this describe Barack Obama? Who has Obama appeased? Obama wants to talk to Iran instead of starting another knee-jerk war. Talking does not mean appeasement.

Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of conservatives, was considered by some to be an appeaser. He met with Gorbachev to negotiate a reduction in nuclear weapons... a reduction in both countries' arsenals. And while Reagan was at these summits with Gorbachev, he also convinced him to allow a little more Democracy in the old USSR. I'm not sure what exactly Reagan said, but it must have been one of those "ingenious arguments" that George W. Bush can't fathom.

In the past few years, there has been quite a devolution in diplomacy. I can summarize Bush's idea of negotiations: first, the other country must pre-concede to all our demands. Then, maybe we'll sit down to talk. Upon meeting with the other leaders, we'll tell them exactly which of their demands we will compromise on or ignore. Then, quite possibly, we'll bomb them anyway.

At the heart of this mentality is a craving for war which I will never understand.