Christians and Copyright Infringement

Christians love the Ten Commandments.  They want us to believe that American Jurisprudence is based on them.  They want their beloved Ten Commandments plastered in courthouses throughout the nation.  They want their Ten Commandments to be taught in public schools.  They have their slogans stating that "The Ten Commandments aren't suggestions."  They then pick and choose which ones to follow and try to create loopholes in order to avoid strict adherence. 

Momma Moonbat could bark for days about how Christians disregard that which they would inflict upon the rest of us, but today I'll be contented to just bark about the Eighth Commandment - Thou Shalt Not Steal.  Someone must have forgotten to tell the fundies that theft of intellectual and copyrighted property is nonetheless theft.  In fact, it's a specialized brand of theft that has it's own name - plagiarism, and also copyright infringement. 

I'm barking about the fundies and their obnoxious ripping off of corporate logos and slogans to fit their agenda.  Unless they have specific permission from the corporations in question, it looks like copyright infringement to me.  The one that most recently set me off was some douchebag on Facebook whose profile picture was a bastardized Autobot logo.  The logo had that wretched execution device right smooth square in the middle.  To add insult to injury, the name Transformers was also bastardized and turned into Transformed.  I was livid!  Just look at what they did.

The original Autobot logo

The Bastard

Optimus Prime is a god in his own right.  Just look at him.  He's a mack truck than can transform into a big sonuvabitch with a big gun - a genuine badass. This is not some control-freak, brain-washing smartass pussy.  This is an ass whoopin' looking for a place to happen.

I wasn't surprised.  It's par for the course for fundies.  They've been ripping off all of the other pantheons of the world since Abraham, so why shouldn't they continue to do it?  Well, for starters because if they truly practice what they preach, they won't steal.  I guess that not stealing business only applies when it's their stuff getting swiped and not them doing the lifting of the goods.  I've called a few of them out on this before.  The responses are dumbfounding.  It is amazing how childish adults become when it comes to their religion.  I believe there is some passage in their bible about becoming like a child, but really, the whole my god can beat up your god thing.  Ack...gag...hairball...  Where was I?  Oh, yes, the responses I get when I call them out for stealing copyrighted material.  "Everything belongs to gawd."  "It's not stealing if you take if for gawd."  "You just hate gawd.  I'll pray for you."  No, not everything belongs to your skydaddy.  If your skydaddy didn't work for it, didn't pay for it, and it wasn't willingly given to him, it's not his.  I don't care who you're taking it for, if it's not yours, you're stealing it.  I don't hate that which does not exist.  I only hate those who spend a lifetime trying to make me bow before that which does not exist.  Pray for me if it makes you feel better, but quit stealing copyrighted material. 

Aside from the fact that they're going against their own rules to take someone else's intellectual property, it cheapens their religion.  Putting your execution device on a cartoon character - really?  Is that the best you can do?  Can't you get your own PR people to come up with something ORIGINAL for a change?  I mean, after a few thousand years, I'd hope that one of you somewhere would have an original thought.  

Check out some of the other heisted logos:  

Holy Shit.  You can do it.  Ex Lax can help.  Oh, and I almost forgot...FUCK THE SPOOK!

Report Spam

I fear that if Sarahcuda ever sees the Oval Office, this actually will become the POTUS's seal.

This one just offends me.  As a blood donor who is married to a blood donor and who has raised her little moonbats to be blood donors, this is insulting.  I don't know what I find to be more offensive - the stealing of the Red Cross logo or the slight to those of us who give of ourselves and ask for nothing in return.  How's this, fundies - how about the next time you or one of your loved ones needs a blood transfusion or plasma or any blood product, go get you some of the above-illustrated donor blood?  Let's see how far that goes.  What's that?  You'll pray and he'll send you a donor?  Bullshit.  The challenge was to get the specific donor to give you some blood.  Let's see how many lives that REALLY saves.

And if you go under, let's see him water walk his ass on over and get you.

If an illustration of monkeys flying out my ass became the new popular logo, would they bastardize it to have jesus flying out my ass?  Never mind.  Don't answer that. 

  

Eulogy For My Sister-in-Law

My sister-in-law died this week.  I miss her, but for her sake, I'm glad it's over.  Life had nothing left to offer her but suffering.  She was a deeply religious person, even to her own detriment.  Faith in skydaddy to heal her caused her to walk around for years with cancer festering in her, convinced that skydaddy had removed it.  I could go on forever about that, but it only makes me mad and at this point, anger serves no useful purpose. 

I went to visit her one day recently while she was in the hospital.  Her bible was open on her bedside tray, and she had it arranged in a way that anyone who came into the room had to see it.  I make note of this because she had it open to the only passage in the whole book that I find worthwhile.  I knew what she was trying to tell everyone, and for once I didn't want to roll my eyes and thing "there she goes with that 'the bible says' business again."  She had it open to Ecclesiastes 3.  I do want to qualify my position that it's probably the only useful passage in the whole book - only the first eight verses are really of any benefit.  The rest is nattering about why we need skydaddy in our lives.  Here it is for anyone who hasn't read it.  

Ecclesiastes 3

 ¹To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

 ²A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

 ³A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

 ⁴A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

 ⁵A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

 ⁶A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

 ⁷A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

 ⁸A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

I guess I have always found this particular passage worthwhile because it holds true.  All of these things have their proper time and place.  I don't give skydaddy any credit at all for it, however.  It's just the natural order of things. When a loved one has his/her time to die, we have our time to weep.  In that time to weep, we tend to have a time to embrace and love our living loved ones.  We get through that and have our time to laugh and dance again, and somewhere inside all of us, a little part of the one we lost lives on through us - not through some hope of Disney in the Clouds, but through that part of us that the dearly departed touched.

Fundy Implosion

Notice how all but one of the biblical definitions are from Paul?  At least the dude on the card takes issue with the dictionary definition.  I take that to mean he recognizes that christians are NOT decent, civilized or presentable persons.  

Q.  What's more fun that aggravating fundies in debates?

A.  Watching the fundies implode when they can't agree on who is a "true Christian." 

In a recent discussion on a Facebook page, I had the pleasure of watching fundies implode in such a manner.  The original topic of the discussions was politics - liberals vs. conservatives.  The gist of it was that the conservatives were too busy calling the liberals "libtard", but I'll write more about that in another blog.  True to form, someone from the conservative side interjected religion into politics.  From there, it devolved quickly.  A whole lot of who is christian vs. who is not really christian, but the true gem was a christian trying to tell a Jewish guy what is or isn't Judaism.  In fact, he got outright beligerent and insulting about it, name calling and all that stuff. 

While I was very amused with the fundy implosion, particularly the christian telling the Jewish guy he doesn't know anything about Judaism, it brings home why the church and the state should always be separate entities.  Granted, I'd just as soon the church go away, but until it does, it needs to be separate from the state.  The assclown who wanted to argue with the Jewish guy had also argued with me about the "wall of separation" phrase.  Any of us who have argued on behalf of that wall have heard the good ol' "that's not part of the Constitution" or "that's not what the Founding Fathers intended" bullshit, and he was quick to fart out some of it himself.  I posed the question of which church should commingle with the state.  I pose this question everytime a fundy wants to commingle the church and state.  I generally get the "we're a Christian nation" response, or something related to it.  Ok, what branch of Christianity.  Christians cannot agree on who has it right.  Once you ask that question, sit back and watch the fireworks show.  They cannot agree on who has it right and they get downright militant about it.  They're all for the commingling, but they want their brand of christianity to be the one in charge.  Trying to get them to admit to that is like herding cats, though.  Instead of coming right out with it, they instead stick with the generic term christianity and just proclaim all others to not be true christians.  Then they get into the pissing match with what a true christian does and doesn't do.  They must not have read their own instruction manual.  According to their instruction manual, aka the bible, all one has to do is believe.  That's it.  And to think they actually want a hand in running the government. 

The fundies and their screaming about who is really a christian reminds me of the old "I know you are but what am I" bit that we did as children to deflect name-calling.  Only, in this situation, it's adults who should have outgrew it long ago sniping "I know I am but what are you."  Or, in the words of Marguerite Perrin:  THEY'RE NOT CHRISTIAN!

Redefining Marriage?

A right-winger recently advised me that Republicans and conservative christians are against gay marriage not to oppress gays and not for religious reasons, but...wait for it...get this...to keep the government from "redefining marriage." My response?  You gotta be shittin' me?!  So where does all of the "protect marriage" verbiage come from?  Oh, wait, I know.  They are protecting it from government redefinition. Gotcha.  Like a dog turd on my shoe.  You want the government to define marriage to keep the government from defining marriage.  

Arkansas, with all of our knuckle-draggers, amended the state Constitution to have an official government definition of marriage - one man, one woman.  I guess the polygamists are shit outta luck here, also.  The Arkansas legislature - under Hucklebee - enacted the Covenant Marriage.  Pretty much the only way you can get out of a Covenant Marriage is for your spouse to repeatedly beat you to near death.  I exaggerate a bit, but only a bit.  I think you can get out of it after the second beating or possibly the fifth adulterous affair - the spouse's, not yours; you can't fuck around and then claim adultery to get out of the marriage.  Not all marriages are Covenant Marriages.  Some are the good ol' regular get the license, get hitched, and if it doesn't work, get lost variety.  In fact, most are of that sort; but the county clerk is required to ask if you want a Covenant Marriage when you apply for the license.  I also wonder, but have no knowledge one way or the other, if preachers encourage/instruct/demand that their sheep get the Covenant license.  Seems like a bit of duress there to me.  What are you going to do, admit that the marriage might not work and you want an out, or do the whole newlywed la-la we'll be together forever head-in-the-sand and get the Covenant Marriage License only to find out that you married a jackass and now your stuck?  I guess that's one way to stop perpetual wedders - those folks who won't simply shack up for a bit, they have to get married.  Then, six months later when the sex isn't quite as good, they're ready to bail, so they get divorced, find someone else, and do it again.  Or already have your new squeeze lined up before you bail on this one, but I'm wondering off topic.  

Marriage and the definition thereof is a governmental thing.  It goes back to the hunter-gatherer civilizations, and became more so as furthered our civilizations.  The early marriages needed the approval of the tribal elders. Marriage has always been a way to define property rights.  Somewhere along the way, some asshole decided to interject religion into the equation and things haven't been right since.  

Yeah, buddy.  Let's enact laws defining marriage to keep the government from defining/redefining marriage.  I'll give the devil his due, though.  The son of a bitch found a creative way to try to make the argument without blathering skydaddy in the process. 

Think Before You Forward

We've probably all been on the receiving end of forwarded e-mails of things that we didn't find amusing, or might have even found annoying.  We're probably also all guilty of forwarding something to someone who was likewise annoyed with our sense of humor or importance.  I'm prone to sharing raunchy, bawdy, downright rude and crude humor.  I tend to be the recipient of a whole bunch of "if you love Jesus you'll send this to 1,000,000 people in the next 2 seconds.  If you don't that means you don't love Jesus and Jesus said 'whosoever is ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of him' and you're going to hell."  WTF-ever.  Watch how fast I can hit delete.  Oh, and I flipped the bird to the thumbs-up Jebus statue on my desk while I was hitting delete. 

Those yappy, sappy, be-a-good-little-puppet-and-prove-you-love-jebus e-mails aren't the ones that really bother me, though.  Granted, their purpose is to spread the brain infection known as religion, but they're otherwise harmless.  It's the ones that spread outright lies that bother me.  The people who started the e-mails are bad enough.  They knew they were spreading lies when they did it.  The people who don't bother to verify the contents before hitting forward - they're the ones that stick in my craw.  You don't have to research it like it's your thesis and dissertation to obtain your Ph.D.  Just a few simple clicks of the mouse, such as http://www.snopes.com/ or http://www.factcheck.org/ will confirm or deny the veracity of just about anything making the rounds.  The current one is some bullshit that Obama orchestrated the shut-down of Chrysler dealerships whose owners donated to Republican causes.  Pure bullshit.  While most of the ones that were shut down donated to the Repugs, so did most of the ones that stayed open.  The truth of the matter is that car dealers are more inclined to lean to the right.  Then there's the one calling for the boycott of Target for not supporting veterans.  The truth of that one is that some cat soliciting donations for a veterans' cause didn't want to follow the procedures to get the donation and instead decided to start the smear.  I'm sure a lot of people are wondering:  "So?  What's the harm?  If it's not true, ignore it."  Well, the harm is in the people that do believe it.  The Target e-mail, for example, called for the boycott of Target - allegedly to "teach them a lesson."  Think this through, brainiacs.  If Target's profits drop, the folks at the top aren't going to take a pay cut.  They're going to cut the labor force at the bottom.  That's right, genius.  The cashier who is barely making ends meet is going to get laid off because the store isn't making as much money.  All because some asshole didn't want to follow the procedures to get a donation and started a lie that none of the assholes on the receiving end bothered to investigate, and then sent on to more dipshits who didn't check it out.  Jesusfuckinchristonthecrapper, people!  Think things through!  Oh, and then there are the ones about the person who accepted jay-zuz ka-riiist as their lardass lord and savior just immediately prior to what would have been a certain, gruesome death.  My favorite, or should I say least favorite, is the one about the college competition diver who was preparing to do practice dives alone, in the inside pool, in the dark, and accepted Jeebus on the diving board.  About the time he finished "being saved," the janitor comes in, turns on the light, and lo and behold, the pool is empty.  Taking the time to be "saved" saved the lad.  Bullshit!  No, really.  Bullshit.  First of all, no competition diver is going to dive alone.  They have a spotter with them a) to critique and b) in case something goes wrong.  Nobody is going to dive in the dark, and certainly not a competition diver.  Finally, the pool isn't going to be drained during competition season.  Yet this bullshit gets sent around and around.  Nobody bothers to think this crap through.  It's all about Jebus saved another soul. 

I'd really like to start some "Frankie became an Atheist just before he was swindled by the First United Church of King Jesus into signing his home and bank account over to them.  If he hadn't become an Atheist, he'd be a homeless beggar at the mercy of FUCKJesus.  Praise science he came to his senses."  My brother, who forwards everything without discrimination, will be the first to receive such an e-mail. 

 

The Little Rock Nine

The Little Rock Nine Being Escorted to School by the 101st Airborne Division

Dig if you will the picture of being fifteen years old.  You're young, you're bright, and the adults around you tell you that you are going to make a difference.  You're about to start a new school.  This school is huge - your old school would fit on the first floor of one wing of your new school.  You have a friend or two joining you at the new school.  Some went to a school even older than your old school - yours was the "new school" by comparison.  This new school takes up two full city blocks for the building alone.  The stadium and recreation areas take up another two blocks.  The school has a north wing, a south wing, and the center.  It has three full floors, a basement that runs beneath the south wing and center section, and two top floors that sit atop the center section.  Everything at this school is state-of-the-art.  You will get an education here that isn't available anywhere else.  There's just one problem.  The governor of the state has decided that you and your friends cannot go to school here.  He's gone so far as to activate the National Guard to prevent your entrance.  

That's right.  The governor himself is taking heavy-duty measures to keep you and your friends out of this school.  You're not troublemakers, hoodlums, or slackers.  In fact, you're among the best and brightest of your peers.  You'd like to say you don't understand what the commotion is all about, but unfortunately, you do.  You've been on the receiving end of similar treatment before.  Not on this scale by any stretch of the imagination, but nonetheless, you've had a taste of this at some point in your life and more than once. 

Your crime...

...you are black.  Not only are you black, you are trying to attend school with white children. 

This is what greets you in the front lawn of the school as you try to enter the building.  You are turned away.  The President sends in the 101st Airborne Division to escort you into the building everyday.  Unfortunately, they can only do so much.  They can keep the unruly mobs of adults outside and they can keep those unruly ones from preventing you from entering the building, but once you're inside, you're on your own.  It's you and your eight friends and everyone else.  Some of the other kids try to be your friend, but they, too, become the object of name-calling, ridicule, scorn, and other such things.  You and your friends are spat on, tripped, pushed, your feet are stomped on, food is spilled on you, you are called names, and it is done if not right in front of the faculty, within their sight and earshot.  You dare not stand up for yourself lest you be thrown out of this school, as actually happened to one of your friends.  You now understand what your elders meant when they said you would be making a difference, but you're thinking that maybe this making a difference business isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Sometimes you think maybe someone else can make history and you can go back to your old school.  Maybe it's old and the equipment is outdated, but you wonder if you're actually getting an education here.  Then you realize that you have to keep going.  People have died to ensure your right - not privilege - RIGHT to be here.  What you might not realize at the time is that in a few short years, more will die to ensure that people who look like you are no longer deprived of their rights because of the color of their skin.  

You make it to the end of the school year.  Sadly, next year won't happen at this school for you or anyone else.  The school is closed.  In fact, every public school in town in closed because the white people would rather their children be uneducated than attend integrated schools.  You got the last laugh, though.  Your name and your eight friends' names are in the history books.  You and your friends are known as The Little Rock Nine. You are synonymous with Little Rock Central High School.  When people think of Central HIgh School, they think of you and your eight friends.  People worldwide make pilgrimages to Central High School in honor of your bravery and dignity.  Yearly ceremonies are held to commemorate your courage in the face of mob cowardice.  I, my husband, our children, and people like us owe you a debt of gratitude that we can never repay.  We met at Central.  Without your acts, he wouldn't have been at Central.  Without the acts of you and those who came after you, marriages like ours would still be illegal in the state of Arkansas.  

Of course, some of those in positions of power had less than kind words regarding President Eisenhower's use of the 101st Airborne Division to keep the mob in check and escort the nine children into the building.  You can read the opinion of one such Federal Judge here.  Unfortunately, this rhetoric is starting to reappear under the guise of "taking back our country", otherwise known as teabaggers.  They're spouting the same crap today that they did fifty-three years ago, and for the same reason.  A person of color has invaded what they considered to be theirs and theirs alone.  

I hope the people spouting this drivel will stop and think for a moment.  Little Rock Central High looked like this for the 1958-59 school year. 

This is Little Rock Central High today. 

This school is a scholarship factory.  It is a haven of tolerance.  I cannot fully quantify what it means to have been a student here, or what it means to know that two generations of our family are LRCHS alum.  Not only did we not go to hell in a handbasket after integration, we thrived and are so much better than we were. 

Today's blog is written in memory of Jefferson Thomas.

Welcome to America...or Maybe Not

I'm absolutely fed up with all of the people who scream about eee-legals this and eee-legals that.  For you followers north of the Mason-Dixon line, eee-legal is redneck for illegal. More to the point, eee-legals is dumbfuck for anyone who is or appears to be of Hispanic lineage.  It doesn't matter if the person in question is Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Panamanian, or any other nationality.  It also doesn't matter if the person immigrated legally or was born on US soil.  If they're Hispanic, they're eee-legals according to the dumbfucks.  


Momma Moonbat had to light into someone earlier today.  You see, gentle reader, the offending party sent me one of those bullshit e-mails making the rounds about why we Amurkins should support Arizona's racial-profiling law.  After all, those eee-legals not wanting to be racially profiled is like them wantin' some sorta special treatment or something.  Goddamned eee-legals.  One would think that said offending party would be a bit more opposed to laws that permit racial profiling, being as said offending party has been on the receiving end of that a time or two.  Check my reply. 

The law in Arizona goes beyond the simple production of ID.  It allows cops to pull over because they "look illegal".  This means anyone that looks remotely Mexican.  It's in the same vein as being pulled over for being black in a rich neighborhood.  They're getting harassed by the cops for having the wrong skin color.  It's bad enough when white people perpetuate this bullshit, but it's an outright disgrace when black people are so quick to put someone in a position of being racially profiled.  This law requires anyone who "looks illegal" to prove they're not, and the simple production of ID isn't sufficient.  

Do me a favor and don't forward anymore of this bullshit to me lest I put you on the KKK's mailing list or Mormon bomb you.  I'm sure you'll be about as amused with them as I am with this bullshit.  Until you speak Iroquois, Cherokee, Navajo or any of the other truly "native" tongues, you're in no position to raise too much hell about anyone else being here illegally.   Just curious, who's the racist fuck that sent this bullshit to you?

For those of you who don't know what Mormon bombing is, it's when you contact the local Mormon church, tell them you're so-and-so (the object of your wrath), that you're interested in becoming a Latter Day Saint, and could they please send some missionaries to talk to you about it.  Jehovah's Witness bombing is the same thing, only you're sending the JWs instead of the Mormons.  

We'll see what the response is, if any.  In the meantime, I'll close with this nifty Cherokee prayer that I found.  I don't believe in any great spirit, but forget all that.  It's the message - pay attention to that. 

Your Rights End Here

If he can't heal you with faith, he can always drink your blood.

Your right to freedom of religion ends where my right to freedom from religion begins.  When your practice of your religion encroaches upon my life, liberty or property, you no longer have the right to freely practice said religion.  Parking lot proseltyzers and door knockers are annoying enough, but that's all they really are - annoying.  I'm pretty quick to tell them to bugger off and go on my merry way.  Right now, I'm talking about those theists who practice faith healing as one of the tenants of their beliefs.


If a consenting adult wishes to forego modern medical treatment in lieu of so-called faith healing, that is his/her perogative.  Parents (or other allegedly responsible adults) who inflict these beliefs on children to the point that the child dies for want of medical attention are a whole different argument.  While I certainly think it is foolish at the very least to think that skydaddy, Jebus or the righteous spook will heal your ailments, if you are an adult and are doing so of your own free will (as opposed to being pressured to do so by a controlling spouse, clergy, etc.), then by all means do your thing.  A child, on the other hand, is not making that decision of his/her own free will.  A child is having an adult's delusions inflicted upon him/her.  A child does not have the capacity to knowingly reject medical care.  A child does not fully understand the consequences of rejecting medical care in favor of superstition.  Any adult who would deprive a child of medical care and then hide behind the First Amendment to do it should be horsewhipped. 


What has me in such a dither, you're wondering?  This.  A pre-term baby who probably would have survived with medical attention instead died the day he was born because his parents are members of the Followers of Christ congregation in Oregon.  The mother had no prenatal care, and the birth was not attended by anyone with any medical training.  I'm speculating now, but prenatal care could have prevented a preterm birth.  Maybe not, but both mother and child would be in a better position to survive.  This church has a rather high death rate among children. Haven't they figured out yet that skydaddy is going to say no to their requests.  Well, actually, he isn't saying no.  He's not there to say anything, and they're causing children to die because they refuse to accept that no holy being from the sky is going to swoop down and heal their child.  What is wrong with these people that the are so warped in their way of thinking that they would prefer to let a child die than seek medical care?  This furthers my thinking that believers are motivated by two things - fear and greed.  Apparently, they feared skydaddy's wrath to the point that they would prefer to allow their newborn to die believing it was skydaddy's will rather than risk pissing him off by seeking medical care, thus facing eternal damnation. 

I'm repeating myself, but it's worth saying until these people get it through their thick skulls.  If you want to decline medical care in favor of religious rituals for yourself, fine.  Knock yourself out.  When your practice of your religion involves denying others of medical treatment, you have stepped outside the sheilding cloak of the First Amendment and are now encroaching upon the life and liberty of others. 

The Million Moron March

Attendees of Glenn Beck's 

Restoring Honor

Rally

On the anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, Glenn Beck and those of a similar mindset decided to have a Klan "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, DC.  I'm not sure what he means by restore honor, as he and his ilk never had any to restore. 


Something I've noticed, being born and raised in the South and not always at the high end of the socio-economic scale, is that uneducated and undereducated white people frighten easily, and they're easy to manipulate.  Group the word restore with words such as honor, dignity, courage, Jesus, Momma and gun rights, and they are your sheep to lead to slaughter.  Grouping the afore listed words with "restore" implies that they no longer have these things.  If they don't have these things, it's because someone who is not like them took it from them.  For example, many beer-swilling, wife-beating, dunce of the trailer park rednecks believe that they're living in a raggedy 1968 model trailer/mobile home and driving a piece of shit 1981 Trans-Camaro* because a black person "took my job".  Alright, I exaggerate a little bit.  I've yet to hear true white trash ever call a Trans-Camaro of any year model a piece of shit, regardless of it's condition.  They always think they're the stud of the trailer park when they're driving their primer-splotched Trans-Camaro.  I'm wandering off topic a bit, but only to fully illustrate the mentality of people who think Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are "true A-mur-kins" or actually have brains.  Granted, Sarahcuda probably is intelligent compared to Becky Sue or Lolita down at the beer joint, but that does not mean she has good sense.   I'll give it to Glenn and Sarahcuda both - they're smart enough to know how to manipulate stupid people.  Back to this "restoring" business.  The dunces don't have the good sense to realize that they're probably in a better position than they were two years ago and they don't have the intellectual curiosity to do any research and find out anything.  They don't have the good sense to simply look at their own life and see that it's probably a bit better than it was two years ago.  Sarahcuda and Rush and Glenn told them their life sucks and it sucks because of Obama and the "un-American" liberals, so by gawd, that's the way it is. 


I note that Sarahcuda and her nasally screech had plenty to say about liberals don't love our soldiers.  What the fuck ever.  I have no desire to get into an "I love the troops more than you do" pissing match.  I'll just say that I believe the sooner we bring them home, the more of them we bring home alive.  I've noticed that people on the right seem to equate a desire for war with patriotism and with support for the men and women of the military.  I don't understand it, and they won't explain it.  They just tell me something to the effect that "yew libtards don't understand."      


Glenn and Sarahcuda also had plenty to say about the commingling of the church and state.  Of course, they didn't put it quite that way.  It had something to do with reclaiming A-murka for Jebus.  Yeah, right.  Can you just see it?  Glenn Beck's in charge and has mandated that we all must wear magic skivvies.   Can you just hear the screeches from the bible-thumpers?


*Trans-Camaro - A Trans-Am, Camaro, or any combination thereof.  The White Trash Mack Daddy ride of choice.

Of Mosques and Men

I'm not an absolutist on very many things.  I figure there's always the other edge of the sword.  The First Amendment has been one of the few things for which I've had an almost absolutist view.  Until now - and even now. 


The proposed Islamic Center to be located a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center bothers me.  It bothers me for many reasons.  I've always held the view that I care not what god or gods one worships, if any.  Do not encroach upon my life, liberty or property and do not commingle the church and the state and we'll get along fine.  The problem with Islam is that it demands that the church take control of the state.  It demands the death of all infidels.  Infidels are defined as one who does not practice another's particular brand of Islam.  For example, Sunnis consider Shi'ites to be infidels and vice versa.  The authority on what is proper Islam comes from the despot in charge today.  Give things a little time and a few suicide bombers and soon a new despot with a new set of Islamic laws will be in charge.  Sharia law, I believe it's called.  In all situations, women are chattel and are under the absolute rule of all men.  A woman can be beaten in the street for allowing her burka to rise up high enough for her ankle to show.  If a married woman is raped, she is executed for adultry unless there are a sufficient number of male witnesses to testify that it was indeed rape.  Nevermind asking why they sat and witnessed as opposed to stopping the rape.  It is only a religion of peace if you practice your neighbor's brand of Islam.  If you do not, you are an infidel and the only peace you will know through Islam is the peace of death.  Many in support of the Islamic Center will call the aforementioned "fear."  You're damned right I fear this.  Anyone with good sense ought to fear a religion that demands that it be in charge of all laws and all who do not adhere to the sitting clergy's rules should be first tortured and then killed.  I fear a religion that has devalued the here and now to the point that it's adherants WANT to die killing infidels so that their psychotic, bloodthirsty deity will reward them richly in the afterlife.  Before you waste too much time telling me that I don't understand Islam if I think this is what it's about, go tell that to the suicide bombers.  They need to hear that message more than I do. 


I really wish supporters of the Islamic Center would quit screaming racism.  Islam is NOT a race.  Islam is a religion.  One does not choose one's race.  One's religion, however, is a conscious choice unless one lives in a society wherein one must adhere to the state's religion or die.  Here in the United States, we are not required to adhere or die.  One consciously chooses his/her religion.  Such conscious choices are grist for the mill.  It is not a lack of understanding that causes people to shun Muslims.  It is the violence committed in the name of Islam that causes people to shun Muslims.  It is not racism for me to scorn Islam anymore than it is racism for me to scorn Christianity.  Being Arab and being Muslim are NOT one and the same. 

I would really like to know the motivation behind the proposed Islamic Center.  Those who were responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 committed the acts in the name of Islam.  They were convinced that they were doing the bidding of their batshit crazy deity and that he would reward them with 72 virgins in paradise.  I've often wondered - what does a faithful Muslim woman get upon death?  Not beat?  I guess in their society, not beat is a reward.  Back to my point - the Twin Towers are gone because a group of Muslims decided their religion dictated that they should plow jumbo jets into these landmarks.  Is this Islamic Center being built to further flip the bird to the American people?  Granted, the area is blighted with strip clubs and abandoned buildings polluted with graffiti.  The American people could have/should have done a better job of preserving such "sacred ground." 

I have to agree with the President - they have the Constitutional right to build the mosque/center.  Unlike the President, I'll weigh in on the wisdom of the decision.  It's a very bad idea.  They're going to do it in spite of what anyone has to say about it.  I believe it's time we rebuild the World Trade Center.  Maybe it could be rebuilt overlooking the proposed Mosque.  I'm rather partial to the design above.

Momma Moonbat Barks

This is my first blog post ever.  I've been promising myself forever that I would start a blog, and after kicking myself in the ass for a few years, I'm finally doing it.  I hope you'll find it to be interesting, entertaining, informative, or at least not a total waste of the time it took you to read it.  


First a little about myself.  As I noted in my profile, I'm a Viet Nam era baby.  For those of you who aren't quite sure what a Viet Nam era baby is, we're sandwiched between the baby boomers and the Gen-Xers.  We're either the first-born of the older boomers, or the menopause babies of the WWII generation.  President Obama could and probably should be considered on of us, although the boomers also claim him.  At least, some of them do.  Then you have those who want him to "keep the government out of our Medicare", but that's another post altogether.  For the most part my generation is one extreme or the other.  We're either really sharp or we have no sense at all.  Unfortunately, the ones with no sense at all are also mass breeders of another generation with no sense at all.  That's also fodder for another post.  


Politically, I am, as the title suggests, a barking moonbat.  The Dittoheads thought they were insulting those of us leaning to the left when they called us Barking Moonbats.  Most of us embrace the name and think it's pretty cool.  


My religious views are that there is no skydaddy, junior, or righteous spook in the sky there to reward or punish us for whatever it is.  In short, I'm an atheist.  I care not what god or gods anyone worships, so long as they do not encroach upon my life, liberty or property to do it and do not commingle the church and the state.  That's a big one for me - keep your church out of my state and I'll keep my state out of your church.  


Animals are a passion for me.  I love all of my animals, including my wild friends in the yard.  That would be the bunnies, squirrels (although we've had an ongoing squirrel war), chipmunks, and anything else that seeks shelter here.  


That's it for my introduction.  I hope I haven't scared you away yet.  I hope you'll stick around for more barkings from Momma Moonbat. :)