Wednesday, September 01, 2010

This isn’t nearly as funny as Betty’s video...but, man, is it fucked-up.

I’m still not sure what you win at the end of the 40 days…but I get the impression that if you don’t do what Glenn says, God will kill you.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 09/01/10 at 09:56 AM
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Monday, August 30, 2010

I’ve seen a number of critiques of the Beck-Palin phenomenon lately that attribute The Rise of the Silver Slurpers to a simple longing for leadership in these tumultuous times. There was this NYT op-ed over the weekend by Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister, lefty feminists pining for “A Palin of Our Own.”

Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics.

The left’s failure to nurture and celebrate female politicians has had a significant effect on its policies. In recent years, Democratic majorities and progressive legislation seem to have been built on steady trade-offs of reproductive rights, culminating this year when the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to push through health care reform with a compromise on abortion financing.

An older generation of female Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Pelosi, are about as eager to mount a Palin-style girl-powered campaign as they are to wear a miniskirt on the House floor. For them, proudly or aggressively touting one’s feminist credentials (if you’re actually a feminist, that is) is taboo. It’s considered too, well, female.

I call bullshit on this. First of all, let’s look at the examples they cited:  Clinton, Pelosi and Palin. Hillary Clinton is arguably the most powerful woman on the planet, busily running the foreign policy apparatus of the world’s only super power. Nancy Pelosi is the only female Speaker of the House—ever—and a highly effective legislator in that role by any objective measure. And Sarah Palin is…an occasional Fox News contributor, a former second-fiddle on a losing presidential ticket and a half-term governor who quit every important job she ever held.

Sorry, ladies, but I’ll match our record up with the GOP’s on women’s leadership any day of the week. Sure, Palin has a creepily devoted fan base and scads of Facebook friends. So does Lady Gaga. And Lady Gaga has more progressive policy chops.

read the whole post »

Posted by Betty Cracker on 08/30/10 at 07:09 PM
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It was a sunny day in DC in August, and there were geese over the only large body of water. Miracles, I tells ya.

I can’t wait till these people discover entrails and pyromancy.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 08/30/10 at 03:05 PM
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August 28th was a day like any other, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our lives—as long as you weren’t at some tentless chafing-dishless revival in Washington DC!

For instance,  there I was that afternoon, checking out my friendly neighborhood Burlington Coat Mosque, and could it be? Were my eyes lying? No, there IT was: PICKLE! 

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 08/30/10 at 07:12 AM
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Saturday, August 28, 2010

I don’t know about the poor attendees who paid money they don’t have to travel to DC and listen to Glenn’s manic-depressive radio shtick live, but I feel personally cheated when some guy talks me to sleep for three hours and I still crave cigarettes when I wake up. 

At least Geraldo had the decency to perform a Tap Dance of Shame when he finally opened the vault and discovered it was the place where Al Capone stored his fill dirt.

I’ll be posting links to other media reactions as I find them. Me, I’m calling it the Million-Man Fart-in-a-Bathtub.

BBC has a slidehow here, with Special Guest Appearance by popular flag-drag Transpatriotite Cap’n Crunch.

CBS says 87,000 attended. Not surprisingly, Palin claims it was more than 100,000, ABC says “hundreds of thousands,” NBC says “closer to 300,000” and Carl Sagan says “100 billion.”

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 08/28/10 at 12:51 PM
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Eat Pray Swim: Jabir heard about Park 51, or the Mosque, or the Cordoba Center, or Jihadi’s Playhouse, from the news stories about it, and he’s looking forward to the cooking school.

Another in a series of interviews I did at the rally against the (non) Ground Zero (not really) Mosque, in patented PollyWobbleVision®, although the camera doesn’t shake nearly as much as when I was interviewing those two biker guys. Odd, that.

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 08/25/10 at 09:24 AM
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No birth control. No straight divorce. No gay marriage. No justice for abused children. And now no vuvuzelas. Will this be the arbitrary rule that finally brings down the papacy?

Posted by Betty Cracker on 08/25/10 at 07:44 AM
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Another interview from the rally against the Not The Ground Zero Mosque.

When asked about Salman Hamdani, the Muslim police cadet/ EMT who died at Ground Zero trying to save lives, and whether his mother deserved a place near Ground Zero to pray for her son, the answer to the guy on the left is plain: NO!

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 08/24/10 at 04:45 PM
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Monday, August 23, 2010

Manning the barricades at the (not)Ground Zero Rally, was an Indian gentleman wearing a Gandhi T-shirt. I found him arguing heatedly with a couple of young men, also from the great subcontinent, who, after this encounter, turned to me and said, “I hope you’re putting this up on YouTube.” Your servant, guys!

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 08/23/10 at 11:46 AM
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Bottom line: This was your Joe-Basic Tea Party rally, minus most of the Gadsden flags and plus EXTRA anger and different costumery.  It was, shall we say, intimate; there were fewer people, it seemed, than the last Tea Party rally in Manhattan, and that one didn’t fill up the space allotted it, either.  The rain was only sporadic until after Pamela Gellar’s Mosquetastic Hyster-0-Rama exploitation fantasy concluded, so the unimpressive crowd can’t be blamed on that.

read the whole post »

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 08/23/10 at 03:04 AM
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Friday, August 20, 2010

via TPM

I mean, when will they stop trying to top each other in stupid claims about the not-mosque to not-be-built-at Ground Zero?  Jon Stewart is at his best in this piece as he turns Morris’ ludicrous path of *logic* to make his claim into a counter-argument that Fox News is a terrorist command center too:

More like this please!

Posted by marindenver on 08/20/10 at 02:29 PM
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

David Harsanyi, a syndicated columnist who writes for the Denver Post, starts his column today by asking the question “Is it bigoted to criticize religion?” and then proceeds to miss the point entirely.

There are those who continue to make the facile claim that any protest over Park51 is a display in un-American intolerance and contempt for the Constitution. This position treats criticism of faith — religious institutions and symbols included — as tantamount to “bigotry.”

Given that there remains overwhelming opposition to the ground zero mosque, this viewpoint would mean that 70 percent of Americans are impulsively hostile to freedom of religion and irrationally narrow-minded.

Do you see what you did there, David?  First you set up the straw men by labeling criticism of the proposed Islamic community center “bigotry”, then you blithely referred to it as the “ground zero mosque” thus accepting the false premise that the argument is over a mosque being built on top of ground zero!  Which it, um, isn’t and isn’t.  But we’re now all ready to condemn the mean spiritedness that proclaims 70 percent of Americans are impulsively hostile to freedom of religion, irrationally narrow-minded and bigots to boot!

You then go on to compare the apple of the ginned up outrage over something that’s not what it’s being reported to be as *equivalent* to the oranges of community protests against Wal-Mart stores and a protest march by gays against the passing of Prop 8 that originated at a Mormon Temple in Westwood, CA.

And applying public pressure in an effort to shut down a project is as American as protesting the arrival of a new Wal-Mart. Religious institutions, as far as I can tell, are not exempted from these disputes.

In 2008, thousands of gay-rights activists protested the Mormon temple in Westwood, Calif., for its role in passing Proposition 8 — the ban on same-sex marriage. This grew into a national protest to undermine the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — even though not every Mormon was involved.

Let’s start with the simple one.  Wal-Mart, regardless of what its management may or may not believe, is not a church or a religion.  Freedom to worship Wal-Mart is optional but not constitutionally protected.  As a business enterprise it is subject to boycott by consumers who disagree with its labor policies and tendency to bulldoze existing small businesses into extinction.  So far the company’s still around and still making profits.  More power to it.

read the whole post »

Posted by marindenver on 08/18/10 at 06:06 PM
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We will never forget—what sells!

At the end of Part One, we were trembling at the brink of a discovery: down a side street, but a mere two shabbily picturesque city blocks away from the northern perimeter of the future 16 acre complex of memorials, waterfalls, museums, office buildings, retail shops, and restaurants currently still known as “Ground Zero.”

Look! There in the crepuscularity of this avenue of sorrow, the perfidious zealots have already declared their devotion to the One True Way by putting up a sign!!

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Posted by Mrs. Polly on 08/18/10 at 09:37 AM
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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

No, not prayer mats, not the hand-knotted prayer mats! Don’t you know that a prayer mat makes any building, no matter how large and filled with other things, a, a, a…..Victory Mosque?

World Nut Daily soberly reports on one bright light who doesn’t even like the idea of a room at Quantico being repainted (“at taxpayer expense!”) for Muslim Marines to pray in, lest it lead to Other Things:

...Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer said he wonders why the Marines do not seem concerned such facilities might to used to generate anti-American sympathies.

Yes, all those people who hate us for our freedom would be just hopping mad. How much better that we hate us for our freedom.
         

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 08/17/10 at 10:13 AM
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Monday, August 16, 2010

Aiieee! What’s that at Ground Zero? A MINARET? ALREADY??

No, no, the Mooslins haven’t moved in yet.  But now that the Tundra Torquemadam has got her polar panties in a knot over the groundless rumor of the Ground! Zero! Mosque! I thought it time to actually show the hopelessly daft Grand Inquisitrix some irrefudiable features of my ‘hood, which she and her followers are honoring by trying to turn a generous swath of lower Manhattan into Joseph McCarthy’s Tribute Morgue.

Here we are, starting directly across from Ground Zero, praying without ceasing, as it is said that each time somebody licks all the way around a bonnet cone, an angel gets a brain-freeze.

read the whole post »

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 08/16/10 at 10:09 AM
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