GOP Hysterical Over Muslim Holiday Stamp

I just received one of those hysterical conservative e-mails that come out with such annoying regularity, and this one takes the cake! It illustrates exactly what’s wrong with the GOP today.

The message tells you that Obama has DIRECTED the US Postal Service issue a MUSLIM STAMP! The stamp celebrates a Muslim holiday, part of a holiday series representing various holiday observances: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, etc. You are reminded of all of the attacks on America and American personnel by Muslims. You are urged to ADAMANTLY and VOCALLY boycott this stamp when purchasing your holiday stamps.

It goes on and on in typical GOP histrionics, with lots of CAPITAL LETTERS and large, heavy, BLACK print. It SCREAMS at you in its urgency! This is a horrible disaster, right up there with killing grandma, and Obama’s forged birth certificates! I’m sure Rush Limbaugh is having to take extra medication to calm himself down! OMG, we’ve GOT TO SPREAD THE WORD!!

But, in their hurry to get the word out to the GOP base, the originators of this vital news forgot just one thing – the one thing investigators learn in the very beginning: Check your facts! It’s a common GOP mistake. HERE’S THE FACTS: This stamp does indeed celebrate a Muslim holiday and it was indeed issued by the US Postal Service as part of a holiday package. However, the stamp IS NOT NEW! It was first issued in 2001, under the watchful eye of President George W. Bush! A mistake?  No, I don’t think so. See, it was reissued in 2002, 2006, and 2007.

If, as the Gasping Old Party likes to insinuate, President Obama is a member of a terrorist cell, then does the creation and issuance of this stamp mean that since it originated under President Bush, that Bush is Obama’s cell leader? His secret Muslim co-conspirator??? Or is this the usual pap created by some friendless 16-year old boy with no car, who has to pass his time in some way – you know, the one who accidentally discovered the feeding frenzy he can cause the conservative base by sending out messages of mass hysteria? Keep it in mind next time one of those emails comes along.

Women defeat GOP spokesman

Yesterday I happened upon Bill O’Reilly’s show. He was commenting about some people’s concerns that Obama does not have  enough women in his inner circle. Bill seemed to think there were more than enough women in influential places. He stated the Democrats are always crying ‘Good Ol’ Boys Club” and that they feel that there should be more women in government. Bill said that the Good Ol’ Boys theme was outdated and not true. He went on to snidely address comments that Obama did not include a woman in his most recent basketball game.  On the air with him were two Republican strategists, both women.

One would think that Bill would check with his guests to see if they agree with him before he puts his foot in his mouth, but this time he apparently didn’t. He must have figured that they were conservative women, and therefore subservient. He threw his usual vitriol around, and then asked the women for their comments.

One began speaking, and immediately said that yes, the good old boys club was still alive and well in Washington. She said that Obama was bringing in more women than President’s have in the past, but that he still could do more. She expressed the hope that he would do so as his term went on. As she began to elaborate about the lack of women in key roles, Bill looked uncomfortable, and cut her off, as he always does when people don’t agree with him.

He turned to the other strategist, and asked how she felt about the basketball game. She smiled and said that those who thought there should be a woman out there playing ball with the guys were being a little silly. But then she too went on to say that there was a lack of women in high places. She commented that women could certainly handle the jobs and the pressure, and gave Hillary Clinton as an example. She stated that Hillary had proven to be a very strong, bright, accomplished woman during the campaign, and that she was continuing to show that strength in her current position.

It was painful to watch. Here was Bill, a dyed-in-the-wool insecure conservative male, who follows the line that women are the inferior sex and belong one step behind their man, doing his bidding with smiling faces, and leaving the thinking to the man of the house. And his very own Republican strategists were supporting the view that women were more than qualified and there should be more women filling positions of importance in Washington.

Just another example of how out of touch the Gasping Old Party is.

Are The Terrorists Here?

I wish to apologize for the state of Arizona. For it’s existence in the United States, and in the world for that matter. Any state where a minister can get up in his church and pray for the death of a President of the United States – well that state ought to join Texas and secede!

When I watched the men with sidearms and rifles attending a presidential speaking engagement in Arizona, I thought of how they resemble the terrorists this country is fighting in the middle-east. A lot of similarity there! And yes, they were members of the church where the minister prays for the President’s death. How are these men any different from the terrorists in the middle-east?

We’ve all seen the shots on TV of militia men strolling through third-world towns and cities fully armed, shouting their threats to the United States and hanging our presidents in effigy. Well, here they are – right in Arizona. Macho men strutting around with their assault weapons and sidearms in public. I went to lunch the other day in a nice upscale restaurant at a shopping mall, and in walked a young man with his rather large semi-automatic pistol riding on his hip. He made sure to take a different route each time he went to the salad bar so all of us would see him. I guess we were supposed to be impressed. He certainly was.

The news reports that membership in militia’s here in this country is growing. All these men spending their weekends dressed in fatigues, fully armed, out playing very deadly war games in the woods – it boggles the mind. In their view, they’re preparing to defend the principles that they believe in. Just like the terrorists overseas. One wonders why they don’t join the army and go off and fight for this country??? But then, I’m sure they have a well rehearsed answer for that.

As for religion – what has happened to religious beliefs when the pastor of a church can call for the death of our President? The truly frightening part of all this is that I’m not at all sure this is just a local Arizona thing. Yes, Arizona is the state getting the publicity right now, but I have a feeling that the mindset behind it all is spreading sickeningly through our country.

Texas Out?? Sounds OK to me.

I hear that once again Texas is threatening to secede from the United States, and go it alone. It’s a threat that they make whenever things aren’t going their way. This time they’re sounding a little more serious. I’m not taking it as a threat – I’m taking it  as a promise!

They never were a good fit. Somewhere along the line they got the idea that they were better than any of the other states. It has something to do with being the biggest state. You know, it’s a guy thing. Size matters to them, right along with Friday night High School football. They’re the state where parents have their boys intentionally flunk Jr. High, so that when they get to High School they’ll be bigger, and therefore make the football team. As if that’s something to aspire to! And all their daughters are raised to be cheerleaders. It teaches the girls to support their guys – which will be their job in life. You know, Stand By Your Man!

So now they’re threatening (promising, please??) to leave the rest of us and form their own – what? I guess it would be the “Sacred Republic of Texas.” You know how fond they are of their religion in Texas. Protestant. Mostly Baptist. But it wouldn’t be a democracy because they wouldn’t give the vote to anyone but white protestant males. In fact, all others would be asked to leave, except the women, who would remain for obvious reasons. White protestant women, that is.

Yes sir, they’d be on their own and the first thing they’d celebrate would be ridding themselves of U.S. government controls!! No more pesky intervention from the government AT ALL! Freedom at last from US tyranny. No more of those socialist programs like Medicare or Income Tax or Welfare or Public Broadcasting or Funding For The Arts! Not in Texas!! No more schools where you have to teach things like science. In fact, why not do away with schools altogether. For the boys – football camp, classes in Intelligent Design, Conservatism, firearms and History of the John Birch Society. For the girls – cheerleading classes, cooking classes, Intelligent Design, and Prom Queen.

The possibilities are endless. And the best part of all is that they’d take George Bush with them. I love it.

Campaign 2010 – Fox has the scoop!

This morning the news crawler announced that Fox was going to show a new two-hour documentary on Octomom. Two hours is a lot of air time to devote to anyone. It can only mean one thing: Octomom is going to be Sarah Palin’s running-mate in 2010!!!!!!!! A real live poster girl for Family Values. Rush Limbaugh will be almost beside himself with joy.

Little Sarah, at it again!

Sarah Palin sounds just plain ignorant to me.

We all know she didn’t actually READ the Health Care Reform proposals. She probably heard some of this verbiage (euthanasia, Death Panel, etc.) on Rush Limbaugh, and not comprehending the real meaning of the words, she just spouted off. After all, if you’re going to run for President, you have to voice your opinions on the issues. We all know she has foreign policy experience, what with seeing Russia out her kitchen window. Now she’s out to show that she “gets it” on the other stuff. (wink-wink)

The more this woman says, the worse it is for the Republicans. Meanwhile, it’s a crack up until someone muzzles her.

New Tactic for an Old Party

So, the new tactic of the Gasping Old Party (GOP) is to have dedicated conservatives (is there any other kind?) call their congressmen/women and request a Town Hall meeting on Health Care. Democratic congressional offices around the country are being deluged by calls. Once the meeting is set up, they get busy planning what they will shout, who they will shout down, and they start making their signs. At the designated time they show up in huge numbers and pack the hall as best they can. Those who cannot get in start a near riot outside the door.

When the questions and answers begin, the conservatives have been well-coached and begin shouting. No one can quiet them down, and no one can be heard – total chaos in the hall. Outside the conservative group begins shouting and pushing, “outraged” that they can’t get in. Their goal is to totally disrupt any chance at a normal meeting where ideas are expressed FREELY and differences of opinion are welcome. And of course, it’s all spontaneous!!

These meetings have been carefully planned to appear like a grass-roots movement. For example, all the signs are hand made, so as not to appear orchestrated.  But many of them follow a theme – that the administration is either Nazi or Socialist. And that’s one of their mistakes. You can be a Nazi or you can be a Socialist, but it’s kinda hard to be both. One is extreme right-wing and the other is extreme left-wing. (Now, I did learn in college that everything goes in circles, and if you go left far enough, you’ll end up to the right. But the Gasping Old Party has never understood that.)

Of course, this is the party that wraps itself in the flag and lapel pins and professes to be the only party that truly loves this country. They stand for FREEDOM – freedom to follow their beliefs exclusively, and to carry guns, mostly. Certainly not free speech or free thinking. And while on the outside they are trying so hard to convince us that they are people who are God-loving, faithful, family values types who support our troops – on the inside they sound more like  hateful, racist, controlling, sexist bigots. Awhile back one of them told me that because I do not follow their religious beliefs, I cannot possibly be a patriotic American. Our founding fathers would love that, but that’s a topic for another blog.

So, when you see these “spontaneous, grass-roots” demonstrations at the Town Hall meetings, know that they are orchestrated down to the last rant. And I’m sure the follow-up will be to criticize the democrats for failing to face their constituants and answer their questions.

Like I’ve said before, if the Gasping Old Party would spend 1/4th of it’s energy on helping actually SOLVE problems, it would make a lot more sense.

Sarah Palin Looks Forward . . . or Somewhere

In case you missed hearing or reading Sarah Palin’s last speech as governor of Alaska, here it is!

“It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future.”

No wonder the conservatives love her so – they loved Bush, and he couldn’t speak English either!

“get on down, get on down the road, girl!

Let’s Kill the Seniors!

So now the Gasping Old Party says the President wants to kill off all the seniors. And these gasping old politicians are busy turning  that thought into another Urban Legend. Right up there with the lady with the black widows in her hair, and the hook found on the car door! Remember how we believed those Urban Legends when we were teenagers? Well, the new “deathers” are a lot older than that, and should know better, but they are believing it with glee. Just like the “birthers” are drooling over the “found real birth certificates” that prove Obama wasn’t born here. Like the Flat Earthers, you cannot convince them with reason or concrete evidence.

I saw the two new birth certificates. The first one “proved” that Obama was born in Canada. It was a real contender until someone realized that it was signed by Dudley Do-Right. So someone came up with the next new certificate, showing he was born in Kenya. It showed a 13 minute time difference from the Hawaiian birth record, so I guess that’s how long it took his mother to get out of her hospital bed and race to the USA and file a statement – you know, so he could run for President all those years into the future. But they got things wrong again. The “certificate” gives the wrong  location for the hospital, which is hard to believe when the hospital issued the birth record. And Obama was born in 1961, but Kenya did not become fully independent until 1963. Until then, it was Kenya Colony, a British East African Protectorate, not the Republic of Kenya. There are more errors, but who cares about details????

Meanwhile, the administration is planning to kill off all of the seniors in the USA, to keep costs down and balance the budget. And if you folks believe that one, I’d love to sell you shares in the Brooklyn Bridge!

If the Gasping Old Party would put half of it’s energy into helping actually SOLVE some of our country’s problems, we might make a lot more progress getting back on our feet. They seem to have forgotten that the GOP helped create this mess we’re in, and instead all their energy goes into Urban Legends and the blame game. Doesn’t that party have ANY statesmen left?

Liddy Speaks Out for The Birther’s.

G. Gordon Liddy, one of the old faces of the Gasping Old Party, is speaking somewhat loudly, if not a little haltingly, on the matter of President Obama’s birth. Liddy, one of the masterminds of the failed Watergate affair, says that the official birth record is only a “Record of Live Birth” and therefore not enough to prove that Obama was born in the United States – leaving his citizenship in doubt. Never mind that a Record of Live Birth is what the state of Hawaii calls their birth certificates (as do other places), and that the Republican governor states that the document is official. Evidence be damned!

Liddy, who served time in prison for his participation in Watergate, is now one of the gasping old stars of the GOP and has his own radio talk show, where (like Rush Limbaugh) he is free to espouse whatever wanders through his head. He promised Chris Matthews that this birth record issue will be THE KEY issue when Obama runs for re-election in 2012! (Is nothing else important?)

Before you put too much stake in Liddy’s ramblings, you might want to consider some of his other famous espousals, courtesy of Wikipedia:

As a child, listening to Hitler’s speeches “made me feel a strength inside I had never known before.”

And of the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayer to the Supreme Court, Liddy said: “Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.”

I would think that the Republicans would be ashamed to have this man speaking out for them. But then, it seems that nothing shames them! Sort of shows you where they’re coming from . . .