Get Ready For Some Blowback

"Jesus was gay"

Not that this is that remarkable a story on its own merits. Elton John is entitled to whatever opinion he wants to form, and I'm OK with that. And it's not like he's demonstrably wrong. There's no real proof Jesus wasn't gay, just as there's no real proof that Jesus was straight or married, as others have postulated.

The simple fact is, Jesus was an adult Jew in a culture that taught men should be married by adulthood who publicly seemed to prefer the company of His Apostles to that of any woman except Mary Magdalene, to whom He first makes Himself known after His resurrection.

A case could be made that He was gay. A case could also be made that He was married to Mary (after all, who would you want to visit first if you resurrected?)

No, what's extraordinary about this comment by Sir Elton is the venue: Parade Magazine, a publication intended for rock ribbed Republicans to read after Sunday services!

Teabagger Terror

Man crashes plane into IRS office in Austin Texas

To periphrase Sarah Failin': "How's that Galt-y Teabaggy thing working out for ya?"

So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages

UPDATE: Original link to website has been severed. Here's a transcription

Washington Spins In His Grave

I seriously doubt the father of our country would cotton to the whining underpants crowd

[O]n the eve of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in Washington, more than 80 conservative leaders gathered on the grounds of George Washington's former Virginia estate to unveil a manifesto reaffirming the movement's beliefs.

The "Mount Vernon Statement," as they have dubbed the document, seeks to tether conservatism to constitutional principles at a time when Republicans and many independents have become outraged over what they view as governmental overreach. Its authors, a group of boldface names and Beltway veterans who have been among the movement's leaders for decades, have been working for months to hash out language that satisfies the party's often fractious factions. They cite the compact as a contemporary version of the Sharon Statement, a document named for William F. Buckley Jr.'s Connecticut hometown that helped shape the contours of conservatism for the past 50 years.

Bollocks, as they say. The "contours of conservatism" is what got us into this mess, and if you think one year of a moderate-to-right-centrist administration has undone the thirty years of greed embodied by the very corpse these asshats trot out anytime someone mentions how much nicer we can make this nation for its people, I got a bridge to sell ya.

Indeed, along with Geo. Wa­­ƒhington spinning in HIS grave, undoubtedly Adam Smith is likely spinning in his grave to see the rape of the average American that has been foisted upon this great nation in a bastardization of his economic principles.

To-wit:

The joint stock companies (ed note: corporations) which are established for the public-spirited purpose of promoting some particular manufacture, over and above managing their own affairs ill, to the dimunition of the general stock of the society, can in other respects scarce ever fail to do more harm than good. Notwithstanding the most upright intentions, the unavoidable partiality of their directors to particular branches of the manufacture of which the undertakers mislead and impose upon them is a real discouragement to the rest, and necessarily breaks, more or less, that natural proportion which would otherwise establish itself between judicious industry and profit, and which, to the general industry of the country, is of all encouragements the greatest and the most effectual.

Or:

In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.

Ahem.

Not exactly the unfettered free market that conservatives go crazy over.

Indeed, Adam Smith was quite leery of business combinations that took human beings off the hook for their actions (like corporations). He understood that people are greedy, vain, selfish, and vicious asocial bastards who would gladly sell their fellow men into slavery for a bowl of porridge a la Esau.

BREAKING NEWS!

Michelle Malkin: Sold Into Slavery

So let's see...that makes Michelle Malkin a sex slave, Cap'n Ed Morrisey becomes house nigra....who else?

FINALLY! The World Notices Us!

Posted without further comment:

Help Wanted -- 'Arrogant Americans' Need Not Apply

The Little Pop

It ain't quite the Big Bang, but...

While the Large Hadron Collider gets all the attention (it never hurts a physics experiment's street cred when rumors spread that it might create a mini black hole and swallow up the Earth), a lesser-known particle collider has been quietly making soup—quark soup. For the field of experimental particle physics, in which progress has been at a near-standstill since the glory days of the 1970s (yes, the top quark was discovered in an experiment at Fermilab in 1995, but really, everyone knew this last of the six quarks existed), this counts as the most notable achievement in years: a discovery that doesn't merely confirm what theory has long held, but points the way to new revelations about the creation and evolution of the universe.

The reason for that accolade is that quark soup was last seen when the universe was 1 microsecond old, physicists reported at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society. It was created at the 2.4-mile-around Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab on New York's Long Island, which smashes together gold ions traveling at nearly the speed of light. The result of the collisions is a tiny region of space so hot—4 trillion degrees Celsius—that protons and neutrons melt into a plasma of their constituent quarks and gluons, as Brookhaven describes here. The soup is 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, 40 times hotter than a typical supernova, and the hottest temperature in the universe today.

We note that nothing melted, no black holes were created and the air conditioning in the lab worked fine afterwards.

Interesting, things did not go according to prediction, thus proving that the universe is nowhere near the orderly, precisely designed place that so many people lackign imagination believe it to be.

Indeed, even at its most elemental level, the universe is chaotic and random.

Even more interesting developments, like a possible answer to why the universe even exists in the form it does, have been uncovered from this experiment (short answer: matter and anti-matter should theoretically exist in equal portions, but they obviously don't, since we're here.)

This is Big Science, the kind of science we used to do regularly but have now ceded to the European and Asian scientific community.

Because, you know, tax cuts!

Sure Beats Snorting A Bottle of Coke

Crack Pie

You Never Give Me Your Money

The Beatles For Sale

Scientologists, Move Over!

These guys are more certifiable than you!

They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.

That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. With his guidance, they explored the Federalist Papers, exposés on the Federal Reserve, the work of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Some went to constitutional seminars. Online, they discovered radical critiques of Washington on Web sites like ResistNet.com ("Home of the Patriotic Resistance") and Infowars.com ("Because there is a war on for your mind.").

Some have gone so far as to stock up on ammunition, gold and survival food in anticipation of the worst.

Listening to Glenn Beck expostulate on the Founding Fathers is a little like letting Pee Wee Herman persuade you to watch a porn flick with him: you'll get nothing but the blowback while he gets to enjoy warping your mind. Glenn Beck's knowledge of the Founding Fathers seems to have been derived from the back of a Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap bottle...while on acid.

 

Local Tea Party groups are often loosely affiliated with one of several competing national Tea Party organizations. In the background, offering advice and organizational muscle, is an array of conservative lobbying groups, most notably FreedomWorks. Further complicating matters, Tea Party events have become a magnet for other groups and causes — including gun-rights activists, anti-tax crusaders, libertarians, militia organizers, the "birthers" who doubt Obama's citizenship, Lyndon LaRouche supporters and proponents of the sovereign states movement.

It is a sprawling rebellion, but running through it is a narrative of impending tyranny. It is a prominent theme of their favored media outlets and commentators, and it connects the disparate issues that preoccupy many Tea Party supporters — from a concern that the community organization ACORN is stealing elections to a belief that Obama is trying to control the Internet and restrict gun ownership.

Listen, when the far right aligns itself with Lyndon Larouche, we are just a few steps away from insanity.

 

Not anarchy. Not even disruption. We are talking about mass psychoses.

 

Fortunately, they're pissed at both parties, which ought to give people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck some pause. After all, out of control is out of control and that works so long as you are not the target of the anger, but how long will it be before first Rush and then Beck are outted as corporatist tools working for the more egregious of the status quotidians??

 

Bottom-line, long term this is not a sector of the population we need to concern ourselves with: in-fighting among factions, disgruntlement with the movement in general, and the small grabs for power that reveal the corrupt nature of this astroturf movement will quickly melt the entire tea party away like a candle left on a stove.

 

 

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Chris Christie is an idiot. New Jersey has a rightly-deserved reputation for one of the finest public school systems in America, one of the finest public hospital systems in America (so good, that the Johnson & Johnson family has opened hospitals here...there's a reason House is set in Jersey!), and antagonizing the unions in a state that practically invented the concept is going to create nothing but trouble.

 

2) Chuck Schumer is grandstanding. Again. Not that I disagree with the sentiment, and not that he's wrong, but rather than tackle the problem, he wants to put a tourniquet on a gash, when all it needs is some stitches. Just overturn the SCOTUS decision and be done with it, dammit! This isn't brain surgery!

 

3) Hm. There seems to be a medical theme running here.

 

4) So how do the Democrats in the Senate "do" bipartisan? By turning Republican! Nut up or shut up, Harry!

 

5) Amen, and thank you, Lord.

 

6) My prediction: Wayne Gretzky carries in the torch, but Fox's mom lights it up.

 

7) Could healthcare reform finally receive the boost its been looking for? Stupid greedy capitalists.

 

8) H1N1 may have turned out to be a bust this season, possibly because so much work was done in the spring and summer to forestall it, but vigilance, folks! I got my flu jab, did you get yours?

 

9) OK, so how dumb are Americans? 70% of us said we support gays in the military, but only 59% of us support homosexuals in the military. It's true! Somewhere out there, one in ten people want to believe that Ellen Degeneres is gay, but not a queer.

 

10) How bad has the snow been this month? Well, after today's storm in the south, all 50 states could have some snow accumulation on the ground.

 

Happy Valentine's Day, Mrs Calabash, wherever you are!

Thoughts And Prayers

We're all praying for you, Mr President.

Has There Ever Been A More Appropriately Named Man In History?

British fashion designer Alexander McQueen had died

Earthshattering?

I don't think so...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said his country has produced its first batch of uranium enriched to 20%.

[...] Western powers fear Iran is heading towards enriching uranium to 90% - to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful.

Previously, Iran had enriched uranium to 3.5%, which is sufficient for power needs. 20% is necessary, they claim, for medical isotope purposes, which costs them the grand total of $1 million dollars a year.

 

Interesting, the facility most likely to have been used to create the enriched uranium was provided to Iran by the United States back in 1967 under the "Atoms For Peace" program.

 

Isn't it ironic, dontcha think?

 

Previously, Iran had promised a stunning "punch" to the West. This was more like a feint. Few take the claim very seriously, except of course the fainting-couch denizens.

 

Scroll down to the comments, if you'd like a good laugh. Or cry. Or laughiecry....

 

Meanwhile, the truly distressing development in Iran is the government response to the current wave of protests from dissidents. They have been lining the streets with militiamen, which has kept violence to a minimum.

 

But there has been violence.

 

Curious thing about Iran: for a dictatorial nation, they do seem to be fairly liberal in their policies with respect to dissent. Not as tolerant as the average Western nation, to be sure, but considering what Saddam Hussein used to do, it speaks volumes.

 

The Obama administration response has been measured, and if anything, has faulted to the side of caution.

 

 

Future GOP Vice President

Here's a man with a bright political future

Joshua Ryan Tabor, 27, was arrested on Jan. 31 and charged with assaulting a child after police in Yelm, Wash., responded to a call of a disturbance at Tabor's home and then later found the little girl hiding in a locked bathroom, according to Police Chief Todd Stancil.

I forsee him running as Sarah Palin's Veep candidate, after drowing Joe the Plumber.

Snowgasm

Apparently, Mother Nature is finally getting around to belting New York City this winter. We'd ducked plenty of bullets this season, primarily because Canadian high pressure has sat right over us, deflecting coastal storms when it's been really cold.

 

Last week was "Snowmageddon" in the DC area. You have to know it was named by some Republican because the name is overblown and totally ridiculous. Yes, there was amount of snow, some three feet, a depth that we reach in NYC once a decade or so. So what? It's not like DC has never had snow before, plus you have a President from a state that actually, you know, has real snow. This ought to have been a slam dunk. Don't come crying to us liberals in the northeaast about how hard you have it!

 

This week, New York City is getting an official blizzard. Three feet of snow closes us down maybe for a day (the schools will probably close until Monday, but that's a smart idea). A blizzard can really wreak havoc on an area.

 

Even so, this is a seven on a scale of one to ten in terms of snowstorms. We can't call a "snowmageddon" or "snowpocalypse" because a) it ain't and b) those names have already been wasted on that pantywaisted little storm last weekend.

 

So I've coined the following:

 

Snowgasm

 

Why? Well, it's taken forever to come along, and now that it's here, it's pumping furiously, faster, harder, deeper, trying to get it over as fast as possible, dumping plenty of moisture and leaving it up to us to deal with.

 

And then it will likely roll over and fall asleep.

 

So I count my lucky stars. Mother Nature may have some more surprises in store.

 

 

Why, I've Never Been Kindled Before!

Now, you can carry me around in your purse or briefcase!

Pick up a subscription to your favorite blog, Simply Left Behind on your Kindle device or your iPhone or iPad! $0.99 per month for the funniest, smartest, sassiest blog known to humanity.

Oh, and I'm worth it

Didja Want Humps Widdat?

Um, ewwwwwwwwwwwww?

 

I mean, I suppose there's something to be said about buffaloburgers and bisonburgers and ostrichburgers being kinda icky, but, well, camelburbgers?

No Surprises Here

Nate Silver reinforces what we have known for, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, decades...

In fact, a more objective and equivocal evaluation of public opinion on more than two dozen specific issues finds that the Republican Congress has far more often been on the wrong side of it. Attempting to be as comprehensive as possible, I've identified 25 issues that Obama and the Democrats have made an affirmative effort to push forward since taking office a year ago, and summarized public opinion on each of them. Most of the numbers that I've cited come from PollingReport.com.

"Heh, indeedy," to coin a phrase...

 

 

Start Spreading The News...

...it's up to you, New York, New York:

1) An embattled Gov. Paterson yesterday strongly denied rampant rumors of extramarital affairs and drug use as he blasted the media for printing "callous and sleazy" allegations. (ed. note Mind you, he came to office acknowledging he has an open marriage, with his wife standing at his side when he said that)

2) Capital rife with rumors of Paterson's political demise Because nothing says "leave" like a sex scandal. I'm not saying that Patterson isn't a lame duck, and certainly his political actions of late indicate he acknowledges only a slim chance of re-election, so he'll likely drop out of the race, but...

3) (State) Senator's bill calls for expulsion for "egregious misdemeanors" It's intriguing that Pedro Espada is authoring the bill under which Hiram Monserrate would be automatically ejected by the New York State Senate, as both were instrumental in the defection/re-affection to the Democratic party that caused Espada to be selected majority leader in the first place! The man knows dirty politics and plays it like a Mafia kingpin.

4) The political fate of State Senator Hiram Monserrate, a Queens Democrat convicted of assault in a dispute that left his companion with a gash on her face, grew uncertain on Thursday as a special committee recommended that the Senate vote soon on a motion to expel him. Yup. You got that right: an elected official permanently scars a woman's face and his political future is actually possible.

New York's political machinery is starting to resemble the Wild West, only more so.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

Man gets hit by car: blames President.