The Terrorist Attack That Never Was

No, I don't mean 9/11, but I've been following a story at TPM concerning one Tedd J Petruna who claims to have thwarted Muslim terrorists on a flight he wasn't even on. The FAA investigated and found no violations ever took place. The story goes like this: Muslims, in full attire create a ruckus and refuse to turn off their electronic equipment before take-off. When a flight attendant asked them to turn it off, one of them yelled "Shut up, infidel dog."

This is where I had had enough! I got up and started to the back where I heard a voice behind me from another Texan twice my size say "I got your back." I grabbed the man who had been on the phone by the arm and said "you WILL go sit down or you Will be thrown from this plane!" As I "led" him around me to take his seat, the fellow Texan grabbed him by the back of his neck and his waist and headed out with him. I then grabbed the 2nd man and said, "You WILL do the same!"

And how did he know he was a fellow Texan? He wore cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, a bolo tie, and had a giant belt buckle in the shape of Texas as he held his pistols in the air, like this fellow:
Mr. Petruna told his story in an email that was sent to friends and family members, including one Gene Hackemack, who passed it along with this introduction:
"the muslims are all getting very brave now, since they have one of their own in the white house." The story then was picked up by right wing blogs like this one where the misspellings in the comments section illustrate the average intelligence of those on the right.
This clearly illustrates how the right wing paranoia has taken over their party. Not only are "Muslims in full attire" taking over our airplanes, but our White House as well. Even though the alleged hijackers/terrorists violated many laws, they were allowed back on the plane. Probably by the Muslim in the White House. It's evident Mr. Petruna has a Rambo complex (he was able to overpower 11 men with the aid of a Texan saying those mighty words "I Got Your Back") And, like a Rambo movie, all the characters were stereotypes.

And They Wonder Why No One Trusts Their Judgement

Outside a small circle of Americans, Fox News, and far right whack jobs, no one really takes the Tea Party Movement seriously. And, honestly, how can you? Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, and Sarah Palin, their de facto leaders have proven themselves to be a couple sandwiches short of a picnic. They claim to be Christian while displaying utter contempt for their fellow human who does not believe as they do.
And the name these conservatives chose for themselves? Well, now that they know it's other definition, Teabaggers don't like the label they have been given. By themselves. No body gave it to them, they chose it for themselves, and now, they don't like to be called it.
I can understand them not using the Urban Dictionary, after all, these people are suburbanites. And urban connotes something more akin to President Obama than they care to be at any given time. How out of the loop did they have to had been to not know what popular usage of the phrase meant? I'm sure they think that a hot karl has something to do with Karl Rove.
Conservatives like to play the victim when they're not in charge. But in this case, they're victims of nothing but their own ignorance.

President Obama Wants To Make Me Gay!

Of all the powers afforded the president by the Constitution, I didn't realize this was in there but apparently according to the Family Research Council, President Obama will impose homosexuality and silence Christianity. I realize he had the power to impose martial law, but homosexuality?
While the upside to this is I might get laid more often, or find a life partner I can share a wardrobe with, the downside is YOU CAN'T MAKE SOMEONE BE SOMETHING THEY ARE NOT!!!!
I have always found the Religious Right's homophobia to be a leetle bit suspect. Why fear queers when you can just say no? Unless you can't resist.

'Untrammeled homosexuality can take over and destroy a social system. If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one's own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get - and that is what homosexuality seems to be - then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm .... It's pure sexuality. It's almost like pure heroin. It's such a rush. . . . Marital sex tends toward the boring end. Generally, it doesn't deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does.'" [Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, Chaos, Law, and God: The Religious Meanings of Homosexuality, 2008]

Now, if the 'anointed one' has this kind of power, I just wish he'd use it to make me slimmer, but if he can make you gay, well, then you'd better bow down to him now, because it looks like he's already started.

Redefining Patriot

I've been hearing on the radio and seeing on the teevee a lot about a government supported program called Safelink, that provides free cell phones and minutes to the economically disadvantaged. Which is a good idea, I guess, that in an emergency people are able to contact help. Why a cellular over a land line? I don't know, perhaps so the homeless can use them as well.
But hearing and reading about this program started me to wondering: how did this program get started with out the Tea Baggers protesting against it? I mean, if they going to get their knickers in a twist over health care reform, a basic necessity, then why haven't they taken to the Capitol steps over this?
Well, they soon will be. A Google search about this program's origins led me to this website, where the blogger suddenly finds they have problems with the government running deficits. A person who had no problem with spending billions monthly in Iraq and Afghanistan to no end, spending millions more on unconstitutional spying on American citizens because they are a patriot, now has a problem with assisting those people being crushed under the weight of the economy run into the ground by these "patriotic" programs.
I think we really need to redefine "patriot".

The New Downing Street Memos

In 1 May 2005, official British governments documents were leaked to the press, heretofore known as The Downing Street Memos (or, as they were known in England, the Downing Street Minutes). Nothing more than writings on a piece of paper, notes taken at a meting, they stated clearly that the US (under the Bush administration) was intent on invading Iraq and "the intelligence and facts were being fixed [by the U.S.] around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein. For many people in the anti-war(or pro-peace, if you like)movement, it was the smoking gun that proved that the war in Iraq was not a necessity, rather an undertaking of choice, by an administration eager to enrich political donors and cabinet members enough to deliberately falsify documents. It was roundly ignored by the right as well as the corporate media as everyone was making a buck from the Iraq war.
Now, years later, an equally damning leak has made it's way into the press. Called ClimateGate, it shows through emails and documents leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit that scientists were conspiring to falsify data to support an already arrived at conclusion, global warming climate change.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think we should be dumping more pollutants into the atmosphere, but this seems less about protecting the environment and more about a select few becoming billionaires in the cap and trade carbon market (which shifts cost from polluters on to the consumer, and doesn't do much to end pollution)who seem to have a double standard about reducing one's carbon footprint. It's like selling low energy fluorescent bulbs on the premise of saving a few dollars to people too stupid to care about disposing of them properly.
The leaked emails, touted by the right as evidence that global warming climate change is all hype, will not even be published by the "liberal" New York Times, the same "liberal" paper that committed treason and aided Judith Miller in leaking the name of a CIA operative handed to them by a Bush administration official bent on punishing said operative's husband for declaring forged documents used to justify an attack against Iraq to be forgeries.
So I don't expect these leaked emails to be reported on by the corporate media anymore than they applied to Downing Street Memos. The agenda has been set, and not having fully drank from the global warming climate change Kool-Aid, I can see how they've been slowly selling people 'green' in much the same manner as they sold us the war in Iraq. Hopefully, the end result will not be the same.

The Annual Unbrainwashed Anti-Holiday Rant

I really have come to loathe this time of year. Of course, I mean the holiday season, which starts officially tomorrow, although some radio stations have been playing Christmas music since Halloween, which means that millions of innocent people have had to endure that one person who insists on listening to Christmas music until you're ready to vomit anytime you hear "Holly Jolly Christmas", "Jingle Bell Rock", and "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree", which seem to get played every hour and a half on these stations. And although 'officially' the 'shopping season' doesn't start until four o'clock tomorrow morning, some retailers, in an effort to prop up a dismal year, are letting you know they'll be open today, so that when Dad, Brother and Uncle Pete are relaxing post-meal on the couch watching the football game, Mom, Grandma, and Aunt Shirley can sneak off to KMart to buy more presents that will get lost in the post Christmas morning overkill, that is, after they've finished all the dishes.
And by this time tomorrow, we'll be inundated with stories of that one shopper who falls victim to the spirit of the season and is trampled to death by salivating shoppers pushing each other out of the way to have first dibs on some item they don't really need but couldn't pass up, because it was such a bargain.
This is also the time of year where advertising takes it's toll on me, and I can hardly stand to see another commercial with kids in their jammies waiting for Santa, elves, or dogs with 'reindeer' antlers on their heads. And it's also the time of year when Christ-centric fuckwads refuse to acknowledge that their might be other religions celebrating their various holidays as well, and threaten to boycott advertisers who do acknowledge it in the same breath as they do Christmas.
It's also the time of year when, despite warnings of anthropegenic global warning climate change, not to mention dire predictions of the arrival of peak oil, people cover their yards with displays consisting of so many lights they could be seen from space. Many communities erect Nativity displays, or allow them to be erected on public property.
Not any more in Chambersburg, PA, where every year the local garden club was allowed to erect an Nativity Scene on the ground surrounding the town fountain. That is, until the local Pennsylvania Non-Believers, an atheist group, stepped in. It seems they wanted to put up a sign for the solstice honoring Atheist war veterans. I mean, after the birth of Jesus, what could be more sacred than our soldiers?
Oh. wait a minute, this is a sign honoring our veterans, not our, troops, a difference indicated by where they are now, either over in Iraq and Afghanistan, making sure that the Good Ol' US of A gets first crack at what little oil there is left, or, over here displaying the symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome, reminding those who gleefully sent them over there, that, yes indeed, war is Hell.
Anyway, the town council, sensing a political hot potato decided that, rather than allow a religious-free message be posted, decided to remove the Nativity. Score a point for the War On Christmas!

You're Still Here?

With all the attention being lavished on Sarah Palin now due to her recent book and tour, it's time ask ourselves: what about that other right wing nut-job from last year's campaign? No, I'm not talking about Joe Lieberman, I mean that other Joe, Joe the Plumber?
He popped up recently at a rally for Cherilyn Eagar, who's looking to unseat longtime Senator Bob Bennett and was interviewed by Editor & Publisher. In it, he hoped that Sarah Palin did not run for president in 2012, but praised her for writing nice things about him in her book. That's very nice of him since Palin is drawing large crowds to her book signings as Joe, not so much. Also, while Palin's book is sure to be on best sellers lists, Joe's book is in remainder bins.
Sam/Joe took used the interview as an opportunity to slam media coverage of himself, noting that the tax lien filed against him was sitting at the Ohio State Capitol in Columbus two months prior to his well-documented exchange with then-candidate Barack Obama over tax policy. He also criticized the media attempts to paint him as a wife beater and racist, but offered up no evidence to dispute these claims. He slammed journalists in general for making accusations at the same time he accused President Obama's policies as "unAmerican". Joe knows a lot about being a journalist following his ten days as a 'war correspondent" for the conservative Web site pjtv.com, where he failed to notice any of any of Israel's war crimes during Operation:Cast Lead.
Sam/Joe also criticized those who say Wurzelbacher is capitalizing on his fifteen minutes of fame. I mean, everybody gets book deals, record deals, journalism gigs, and appearance fees, right?