Face meets palm: Teaparty Thanksgiving email

 

Below is the obligatory, paranoid chain letter I got from a buddy, painting a dark picture of Thanksgiving a few years from now. It’s dripping with the kind of Big Brother sentiment that we all know scatters like dry leaves in the wind as soon as a conservative gets in the wheelhouse. Here’s a clip — as I would never want to inflict the full weight of this maniacal masterpiece in willful ignorance on any normal person:

No Link Available — His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism, or any of a number of other calamities were “just around the corner”, but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn’t help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13.

The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to “spur economic growth.” This time, they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement.

At least, he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life “fair for everyone” realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn’t happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them. He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2012, when all the real nonsense began.

 

In reality of course, the current administration has overseen recovery from the Great Recession, closed down one ill-conceived trillion-dollar war and is working on ending another. Put together a coalition that ended Qadaffi’s reign in Libya, gave the order to whack bin Laden, and is well on the way to removing Syria’s chemical weapons stocks under international observation. All without a single US casualty.

Just in the last few weeks under this same “tyrannical bumbling yet-somehow-still-an evil-genius,” the Dow has hit 16000 for the first time in history having doubled in the last few years, the NASDAQ is at levels not seen since I was a well to do investment manager almost 15 years ago, and we are on the precipice of a deal with Iran to halt uranium enrichment that may bring that isolated land and people back into the community of nations, with fringe benefits that could spill over into everything from regional security to global energy prices. Beginning in 35 days millions of Americans like me will have access to affordable healthcare despite income, newtworth, and preexisting conditions.

That Kenyan bastard! Impeach!

 

The holiday season is upon us!

By the right of no power invested in me by anyone, I declare this holiday season officially open (And the EAC war on Christmas about to commence). It certainly feels festive: it’s so cold in Central Texas that even the Intertoobz are sluggish and few will venture outside unless and until they have to. It’s been a tough year, beginning with a freak heart attack, an elevator ride into healthcare poverty, a big complication from surgery, then the underlying blood disorder found in the midst of a cancer scare while being threatened with my job and health insurance by the usual corporate brutes. Then to add insult to injury, last night Family Guy killed off … we’ll I don’t want to spoil it but they need to bring that character back toot suite.

But thanks to you guys and gals at FTB, this blog has been a sorely needed bright spot for me without which I would be in even more dire shape. Thanks and happy holidays to friends, trolls, and frenemies alike!

Was he FOR rape before he was against it?

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Last day to beg until after the Big Feast, pleeeease chip in a few bucks so a certain hellbound atheist activist can get by. My PayPal email is DarkSydOtheMoon-at/aol.com. I wouldn’t ask if the situation wasn’t grim. Thanks for listening!

The Teaparty playbook is simple: it’s the same ugly bullshit that has sustained authoritarian creeps and their well paid henchmen since the dawn of civilization. It worked for post Civil War racists for more than a century, it worked for European fascists in the 1930s, and it works for the conservative wing of the Republican Party today. An important part of the playbook is to call your opponents the worst names you can think of, say for example, baby killer, pervert, wimp, traitor, or rapist, over and over and over. On the latter, take it away RushBo: [Read more…]

The moment of truth approaches for ISON

Thanks to some generous readers yesterday, this will be the last day before Thanksgiving Week I’ll have to bleg for money. The fact is blogging pays about a tenth what it did before the Great Recession and atheist activism isn’t exactly, as The Jerk would say, a profit deal. I’ll have a snail mail address soon for those of you who don’t use Paypal. For the rest, please send small dollar donations to DarkSydOtheMoon-at/aol-com. No amount is too small or too large. For an update on deep space visitors, go below. [Read more…]

New genetic analysis of archaic hominids binds us closely together

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An endogenous retrovirus or ERV is a genetic scar produced by a failed viral infection. Geneticists can tell its of viral origin because it will contain base pairs associated exclusively with viruses. If the ERV happens to insert in a portion of a cell genome that goes onto contribute to an egg or sperm that creates a new person, and if that same stretch of DNA containing the ERV is part if an allele that ultimately gets selected for widely, eventually the entire population will share it. If the population then splits over time, both descendant groups will have it in the same place. If you and a stranger have a unique ERV occupying the exact same segment in both your respective genomes, it is powerful evidence you are closely related.

Humans and chimps share a number of ERVs, which is more than just a smoking gun that we share a relatively recent common ancestor, it’s a video tape of evolution pulling the trigger. So it was with great interest that a new study comparing ERVs in anatomically modern humans to Neandertal DNA as well as poorly understood contemporary referred to as Denisovans has been released: [Read more…]

The filibuster is in jeopardy

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As luck would have it, one of my family members is in ICU and I have a series of comprehensive medical tests today myself, so I may be scarce for a day or two. In the meantime please consider a small donation to your humble atheist blogger this week. I really need it and no amount is too small. Thanks to those of you who pitched in already!

Back in the darkest days of the Bush administration and Tom DeLay’s house of horrors, Republicans threatened to nuke the Senate filibuster. I’m proud to say my colleagues at Daily Kos and I responded with, go for it. It’s a dumb arcane artifact of Senate rules that obstructs ledge and gives individual and small groups of senators the ability to legally shake down industries and star in their own dramatic CSPAN grandstand. Since 2008 the GOP has used it a record number of times to thwart progressive policies and block everything in sight. It appears Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has finally had enough: [Read more…]

George Zimmerman back in jail

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I’m begging for change in readers’ Paypal accounts and this clown is free to cash in on tragedy. I guess life isn’t fair and that’s saying it mildly.

I didn’t cover the Trayvon Martin story, much, because it was covered really well all over the place and there wasn’t much to add. Only one eyewitness survived. But since skating on those charges charges, the creep that killed Trayvon has been in all kinds of trouble involving guns and allaged threats. . This weekend George Zimmerman was arrested again in a pattern that’s become all too familiar: [Read more…]