The Civil War was ENTIRELY about slavery

I haven't been watching a lot of news lately. MSNBC's terrible reporting makes me gag, CNN is too busy trying to show how cool they are since they're on the Twitters and the YouTubes, and Fox News is well, Fox News. So maybe I missed something, but I haven't heard a lot of talk about the American Civil War. You would think on the 150th anniversary of the darkest chapter in our nation's history would be something worth discussing. 9/11, significant as it was, can't go by without a 24-hour terror porn replay of the newscasts from the days events, yet the anniversary American Civil War, which left over 365,000 people dead, has gone by without much of a peep.

You know that cliché, "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it"? Well, in an political climate where elected officials, not just tinfoil hat buffoons and charlatans like Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, are telling Americans that they may need to take up arms against their government, the Civil War might be something we want to talk about. Michele Bachmann (R-Toon Town) wants her constituents "armed & dangerous," Sharon Angle talked about "Second Amendment remedies" if she lost the election against Harry Reid (she did... barely) and Texas Governor, Rick Perry, has been stoking the flames of secession for years now.

On top of all this, we have people who actually claim that the Civil War wasn't really about slavery. Google "Civil War not about slavery" and you'll find millions upon millions of results. Oh really, the Civil War wasn't about slavery? This guy begs to differ:

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Who said something so awful? The fucking Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens. Yeah, slavery had NOTHING to do with it. Excuse me while I LOL.

So the next time some asshole tries to tell you otherwise, or even worse, if you have some lunatic teacher shoving some bullshit about "states' rights" (yeah, states' rights to own black people), read them that quote from Alexander Stephens. My ultra right-wing 9th grade history teacher tried to push that nonsense on us... and yes right-wingers, it's not just liberal indoctrination in schools, I wish I paid more attention when I was 14 to call him out on his bullshit.

The Civil War was ENTIRELY about slavery and as our population gets increasingly dumber, these kind of climates can reemerge. Not that I think Michele Bachmann is going to bring back the slave trade, but it contributes to this society of nimrods that think the Civil War wasn't about race and if we just get violent, the government will actually listen to them. That's dangerous and that's where America is right now.

10 Shocking Attacks in the GOP War on Women

Saw this over at the Corrupt Politics blog, who got it from MoveOn.org, and since we all know any mention of MoveOn will automatically be dismissed by right-wingers, I added my own links to cite each item.

Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP War on Women

1) Republicans not only want to reduce women’s access to abortion care, they’re actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven’t.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to “accuser.” But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain “victims.”

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids. 

5) In Congress, Republicans have proposed a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids’ preschool program. Why? No need, they said. Women should really be home with the kids, not out working. 

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool. 

8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress will vote any day now on a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.

10) And if that wasn’t enough, Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can’t make this stuff up).


How can anyone defend these politicians? The Republican Party has done a lot of really awful things in the last few decades, but have they ever just outright governed out of spite like this? These measures are pure cruelty.

Here America, have a trophy!

You're on the internet, surely you've gotten an email forward, or saw someone post on Facebook, some forward that talks about how America needs to get "tough." Whether it's complaining about welfare, taxes, or kids, there's no shortage of this stuff making the rounds online. One in particular sticks out to me, I even saw it posted on the wall of a sandwich shop when I was eating lunch last week. I'm not going to post the full thing, because it's preachy nonsense that makes me wretch, but you've probably seen it, it's usually falsely attributed to Bill Gates and is usually titled as "Rules Kids Won't Learn in School." It's actually from a book written in 1996 by a guy named Charles Sykes, but it's all about how "kids today" suck because they have healthy self-esteem.

Now I'm not going to rant in defense of the precious little snowflakes, I just bring it up so you know what I'm talking about. You've seen the forwards: "life isn't fair, get used to it," "I can't believe kids get trophies for everything nowadays," "life doesn't have summer break," blah blah blah. And of course, this shit gets passed around like the plague, usually it comes to your inbox as "Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: AMEN!!!!!!!1"

Yeah! Kids have it too easy, they need to learn life isn't fair! Games have winners and losers and only winners get trophies! Time to get tough, America.

Except it's not. People love to cheerlead this kind of stuff, but the minute you try to talk tough to an American adult, you get run out of town. Jimmy Carter told us to put on a sweater, don't be wasteful and don't be driven by consumerism. Of course, America responded to this by electing Mr. Sunny, Ronald Reagan... who drove the country further into the ditch and created the blueprint for the modern day Republican party... who drove the country off a cliff. How dare anyone in power tell us to be responsible and act like an adult? Screw you, I'm buying a Hummer!

Barack Obama came under similar criticism for his views on American exceptionalism. When asked, he replied, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." A perfectly reasonable, logical and mature explanation, of course idiots like Newt Gingrich took this as the opportunity to label Obama a "Kenyan, socialist, anti-colonial, secularist, (insert buzzword here)," etc. He might even be an Orc too, Newt's not sure. But that's the attitude of the right, if you don't believe America is the greatest country on the planet, if you don't believe that God himself drew lines on a map, pointed to America and said "that one's my favorite," then you're a dirty pinko socialist Nazi.

But yes, children who get trophies just for playing, that's the problem. In reality, the trophy thing isn't that big of a deal, because if they stick with the sport (or any other activity), many of them will soon be forced to sacrifice their childhoods in favor of meaningless structure and pressuring parents who want to make up for their own failures vicariously through the scholastic and athletic achievements of their children.

But that's another rant for another day. Point is, kids will soon learn the harsh realities of winning and losing through a variety of channels, but Americans in general who need a never-ending stream of smoke blown up their ass from their elected leaders? We're the people who need a trophy for everything. We rank 36th in the world in life expectancy (below Costa Rica and Cuba, slightly above Kuwait), we rank 37th in overall health care coverage, we rank 21st in literacy rates, 34th in math and science education, 33rd in infant mortality, and the middle class has evaporated... but hey, WE'RE #1!

If an American politician, someone with the ability to actually improve these statistics, pointed out those facts, they wouldn't even be elected Mayor of Wasilla. "How dare you?! America is the greatest country in the world!" usually said by someone who's never even left the county, let alone the country. "Love it or leave it, man!" usually said by someone with no counterpoint.

American exceptionalism of the Newt Gingrich variety is what got us into this mess. We were too arrogant, too naive and too distracted to notice the country crumbling all around us. It's the point people try to make with the non-issue of kids getting participation trophies, that it'll give them over-inflated self-esteem and they'll be in for a real shock when it's time to enter the real world and everything isn't handed to them. Well America, it's time to enter the real world.

There are other homeless people.

By now, you've surely heard about Ted Williams, the homeless man with an amazing radio voice who fell on hard times and was left homeless. While I'm thrilled to see this guy get a second chance and hope he makes millions of dollars, this story still pisses me off.

There's a shameful amount of homeless veterans out there, where are their viral videos? The Cleveland Cavaliers sure as hell ain't offering them any jobs and the media doesn't like to talk about it because it makes us sad. These are true American heroes, they put their lives on the line for their country and we welcome them back with a nice spot under the bridge for them to sleep. It's disgusting.

And not just veterans either, there are a lot of homeless people, period. What about the homeless factory workers? The homeless plumbers? The homeless truck drivers? People see these guys standing on a street corner with a cardboard sign, and yell "get a job, you bum!" Maybe the homeless man wound up on the street because he has a debilitating illness that left him broke after dealing with the insurance companies. Does he get job offers? No, he gets money thrown at him by teabaggers:



It's Susan Boyle all over again, someone that the average person would ignore or mock in a normal situation, but if they can entertain us, then we want to suddenly shower them with success. We don't need to help multiple people, just find one really good story to make us all feel good about ourselves for a week or two. It's disingenuous and sums up many American attitudes quite well, "oh sure, I'll help you out... if you dance for me first."

Ground Zero Mosque... that isn't a mosque or on Ground Zero

Earlier today, I was in a discussion with someone who supports the Park51 project, but thought the folks in charge didn't do a good job of getting in front of the story and explaining that it wasn't actually a Mosque, but a place to play racquetball. That might be the case if Fox News wasn't covering the story. It wouldn't have mattered if they had five years of hype, calling it the "Totally Non-Religious Happy Place Where There's Free Ice Cream & Hand Jobs," the minute Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media started calling it the "Ground Zero Mosque," it would've still been the Ground Zero Mosque. You have to realize these cretins shape the narrative because they have ignorant viewers and listeners that believe everything they're told. Then said ignorant listeners and viewers get outraged, start calling newspapers, radio and TV stations and demand to know why the liberal media isn't covering the Terror Mosque of Doom. And then of course the media covers it because they're pussies and are afraid of looking too liberal, so they have to report on the outrage, then the outrage blends with the story, and that becomes the perceived reality.

The right-wing is frighteningly organized, it's how Glenn Beck can get 80,000 morons to show up in DC for no reason other than to listen to him compare himself to MLK and Jesus, so he can sell books and Goldline to these same ignorant, outraged fucktards. If Sir Glenn of Moronistan and Boss Limbaugh say it is so, then it is so, it doesn't matter how much truth you throw in their face. And then the average joe, who's just trying to provide for his family and survive his soul-crushing work day, comes home and turns on the nightly news and gets a five minute version of the story that focuses on the message created by the wingnuts, as demonstrated in the above paragraph. He doesn't have time to fact check this bullshit, he just absorbs it, goes to bed, and tries to make it through another day, not thinking about how much the right wing is pissing on his face and telling him it's rain.

The media game is rigged, and the right-wing will win it every time. Even when they're down and nothing is going their way, like post-Bush administration, they always find a way to bounce back. And when the Democrats are utterly decimated and humiliated in November, you'll see exactly what I mean.

Million Moron March

We are seriously at the point in America when an insane, ex-morning zoo radio host can stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, piggyback off the anniversary of MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, all to sell books and a TV show to angry white people, and a good portion of the country is okay with it. I weep for the future of this country if this assclown is truly taken seriously by its citizens.

The Republican Party: consistently inconsistent

Just when you thought there was no way this party could be more full of shit, the Times Square wannabe terrorist turns the whole damn country upside down.  New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced that he wants to restrict the sale of firearms to people on the government's "no-fly" list.  It seems like a pretty logical restriction, if you're considered too dangerous to get on a plane, you probably shouldn't be allowed to buy a gun.  Ah, but we must remember that Republicans love them some guns; they don't care about any of the other amendments in the Constitution, but the Second must be preserved at all costs!  Restrict free speech, allow for unreasonable search and seizure, but they can't even restrict the sale of guns to suspected terrorists!

Why?  Because it may affect law-abiding citizens.  Yes, that's the Republican excuse, normal everyday folk might be inconvenienced by this law.  Meanwhile, these exact same buffoons are jumping for joy over the Arizona racial profiling law, which allows the police to harass law-abiding American citizens.  Americans must have unrestricted access to firearms at all times, even if you're on the government's no-fly list, but if you're brown and in the state of Arizona, you may have to take a trip to the police station if you don't have your papers in order.

And not satisfied with being completely insane, the GOP has to take this to "holy fucking batshit insane" levels by saying that suspected terrorists shouldn't be read their Miranda rights.  Now this may sound confusing, because Republicans have lost their damn minds, but let me try to get this straight: suspects on the no-fly list should have access to guns, but when they're arrested, even if they're an American citizen suspected of committing a crime on American soil, they should not have the rights guaranteed to every other American citizen?  Huh?!

This is why I cannot take this party seriously, even when you think they've hit rock bottom, they manage to find a way and set the bar even lower for intelligence and decency.