Review: Jesus Camp

So I was planning to start my new blog off with a review about the movie Jesus Camp, but after writing about it for a few minutes, I realized it didn't belong on Wasted Two Hours after all, as more than half of my "review" was actually a commentary on my frustrations with the Religious Right in this country and their complete hypocrisy when it comes to The Word of God.  So instead of starting my new blog off on a political rant, I opted to post my review here, where it more readily belongs.

Jesus Camp

(2006 documentary, 1hr 24min, directed by Heidi Ewing. Nominated for an Oscar 2007.)

In all honestly, Christianity was never supposed to be the American political hot topic it's become in the first place.  We spent years trying to get away from fundamentalist crazies, and for awhile it seemed like we made headway.  That is, until Reagan, then George  (Take it up with Glenn Beck, folks.)  This gradual erosion of the Separation of Church and State, combined with the complete rewriting of facts by religious leaders in order to make a more compelling argument to their minions about why scripture is only valid when it fits their needs, makes this movie a must see.

Funny enough, I grew up a Christian, but I started questioning the foundation of these beliefs when the pastor at my church started saying and doing really questionable shit.  When I was younger he'd condemned Halloween as being a "Pagan Holiday".  You really shouldn't say such things to inquisitive minds like mine and not expect me to read up on the topic.  Later the pastor started taking himself so seriously that he started believing he was one of the chosen few who could communicate with God through gibberish, called "talking in tongues".  As someone who's always been interested in language, you listen for certain constants in language to gain a sort of context.  Every language has certain words you can pick up on, and for me, it's even more prevalent in the Romance Languages.  Hell, you can even hear the semblance of language constructs in the made-up Klingon language from Star Trek.  But when people talk in tongues, they just randomly recite non-sensical sounds that are never repeated in any sort of reasonable format.  Some people sound like they're reciting Hebrew.  Some less educated people sound like they're making farm animal noises with a French accent.  It's silly and stupid, not to mention completely fabricated in order to act as if you're more virtuous than the person next to you.  After all, God has picked you to talk shit with.


One thing to note.  I don't have a problem with Christians or people of any religion.  It's not my thing, but I have no issue with any of them.  I do however have a giant problem with blatant hypocrisy, home-schooling kids to brainwash them into becoming soldiers for some sort of political war being wages by a bunch of fucking xenophobes.  Hell, I hate advertisements aimed at kids, from McDonald's to Shell Oil.  So of course I'm going to have a problem with a bunch of fat white people with 80's hair, mangling the word of God in order to preach intolerance and hatred toward those who are dissimilar.  I mean, we fought the British for our freedom from telling us who we could and could not pray to.  How that somehow translates into America being an all Christian nation is fucking beyond me.

Jesus Camp shines a light on the Religious Right's idea that Christians are at war with Islam and anyone else in America who doesn't believe in Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.  It exposes how these "Evangelical" Christians are "waging a war" (their words, not mine) by essentially advertising to children, getting them hooked at a very young age, knowing that although some children will come to their senses as they're older, many of them won't be able to unlearn the crap they've been fed their whole lives.  In fact, this is much more like brainwashing than advertising.  43% of home-schooled kids are taught at home because their parents are afraid what their kids might learn from someone else.

This controlled learning is the scariest of all.  When I was in Beijing for several months, I hired a translator.  Although she was born in China she spoke perfect english because she went to college in America.  She was super sweet and down to earth, except for one thing.  She was convinced, as much of the impressionable youth in China, that Mao was a great leader, and that all the negative things that we know about him, like him being the most lethal dictator ever - were just lies made up for political purposes.  Or that the massacre at Tiananmen Square was exaggerated by the western press, etc.  These lies that children are taught are really hard for them to unravel.  Sometimes is takes decades.  Hell, when I was young, the town I grew up in was extremely racist, but I couldn't fully recognize the racism for what it really was until college.  It's hard to question what you've been taught, especially by family.

What quickly becomes apparent in Jesus Camp is that the misinformation taught doesn't just stop with the supposed teach of God.  It goes much deeper, such as teaching that George W. Bush was a disciple of God, that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is a holy war against Muslims, that global warming is a fabrication of the Left (for what purpose?), and that Islam teaches children from the age of 5 to use grenades.  And of course that Evolution is a lie, Creationism / Intelligent Design is the only possible answer, and Earth is only 6,000 years old somehow.  Just ignore those pesky dinosaurs or the rest of the fucking Universe out there.  You might as well say the Sun revoles around the Earth.

Speaking of which, at one point during home "schooling" in Jesus Camp the child actually said, "I think Galileo made the right choice by giving up science for Christ" to no argument from his teacher, his mother.  After all, it goes perfectly with her statement to them that "science doesn't prove anything."  Yes, who needs science and its pesky little vaccinations that keep your kids alive or technology that causes your car to run and preservatives that keeps your hot dogs from ever spoiling.  (You just know they're eating hot dogs for most meals, right?)  What's amazing in Jesus Camp is how uneducated the educators really are.  Their grammar is poor, and they shun as witchcraft almost anything they don't understand.  Their kids can't watch Harry Potter movies because it contains "witchcraft", yet the unabridged Bible is the scariest read you can have.  Not to mention the constant mentioning of Jesus' blood for some reason at every prayer, or discussing how everyone are sinners, yet sin results in death. What a much better message to kids than Harry Potter.

For those of us who are extra familiar with righteous bible thumpers like this, Jesus Camp isn't all that surprising.  It's just another wake-up call that the teachings of Christ have been radicalized to the point of inciting violence, exactly opposite of the actual teachings of Christ.  In fact, if you really want to split hairs, Christ was a socialist, with all the "greed is a sin" talk, helping to feed and take care of the sick and less fortunate, and with all the "meek will inherit the earth" talk, and so forth.  Plus, Christ was the ultimate pacifist with all the "turn the other cheek" talk.  How does that translate into a pro-war stance?

Finally, Jesus Camp, for me at least, reminded me that it's not just the Muslims and "non-believers" that they're at war with.  It's also "the enemy in government".  It's anyone who is part of the Democratic Party or who may work at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen and therefore be "redistributing wealth" by handing out "entitlements" (sound familiar?).  It's anyone who's different than the cookie-cutter midwest personas they all adhere to, like a uniform.  Every one of these people, saying their own made-up Pledge of Allegiance to "Christian America", wears the same Wal-mart clothes, has the same small-town craft and fair nick-nacks on their shelves, giant wooden spoon and fork on the wall, etc.  There's no distinction.  Even if you gave yourself fully to Jesus Christ and lived the most devout life by their own standards, you'd be kicked out as a Satanist for simply wearing all black with black lipstick and black fingernail polish.  After all, Jesus wouldn't want you to be an individual or even a little different, right?  This was extra apparent when one of the tongue-talking 

Oh yeah, one of the thing: with all the anti-Islamic "enemy" rhetoric that was mentioned, I wished that someone had mentioned that Islam is one of the few religions outside of Christianity that actually mentions and recognizes Jesus Christ as the messenger of God, born from the virgin Mary.  Maybe no one bothers to actually read the Koran or any text they don't approve of anymore before dismissing it.  I mean, who has time with all the babies of Islam readying their machine guns and grenades?

If Jesus Camp made me realize anything, it's that the Islamic radicals who want to ignorantly kill westerners because of the lies they've been told about us (80% of our women are prostitutes? C'mon, really?) -- I say just let them have it out once and for all with the ignorant masses of American Christians who've been brainwashed from birth and want to kill "foreigners" in the name of Jesus.  We can let Texas secede from the US, and we'll build that giant barbed-wire fence they're so excited about all around the border of the state, and we can fly in the homicidal jihadists for them to battle it out.  We'll come back in a thousand years and see how they're doing with all the warring, lack of government services, no EPA to stop pollution, and of course fervent ignorance to fuel the unrest.

Just leave me, and the sensible few of us that are left, the fuck out of it.

Why I Get Better Cell Reception in Blue States

In case you're unaware, I'm liberal, which by definition means I'm open-minded.  And I've always loved my country, even in long times (say, 8 years that seemed liked 18) of idiotic governing and horrible decision making (say, the occupation of Iraq and torturing people, to name two of at least a hundred).  At some point I set my Facebook profile to describe me politically as Patriotic über-Liberal.  I added the über as a way of explaining my extreme dedication to keeping an open mind about literally anything.  I stole the "Patriotic" prefix from one of my conservative friend's profiles where he describes himself as a "Patriotic Conservative", which I found amusing because of its obvious, dimwitted implication that somehow many of us liberals aren't patriots.  The irony being that recent events prove that Conservatives hate Obama more than they love America (i.e. the conservative excitement over the failed US Olympics bid, or their ludicrous outrage toward our American President winning the Nobel Peace Prize -- very patriotic, indeed).

Here's something patriotic to consider: Every Fox Noise idiot (e.g. Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly) waves a flag around talking about how America is the "best country on Earth."  Well, just how the fuck do they think it got that way?  Fine, Beck and Hannity probably think God just parted the clouds and gave our country to us as some devine gift or something (and also killed the Indians for us?)  Obviously America wound up the great nation it is through hard and constant work to get it that way, just as it takes continuing work to keep it that way.  The Great USA of 1890 wouldn't be considered so fucking terrific today if we didn't improve with the times into the USA of today.  However great our country is, comparatively we're nowhere near the best at taking care of our own people.  So when I hear from Conservatives like my father that healthcare is a privilege for those with jobs that have it, and not a right, say, for the working stiffs and their families who serve their coffee and park their cars, I have to ask: How can you call yourself a patriot and not want America to be the best at handling healthcare and keeping its citizens alive?!  It's absolutely nutso-crazy to me that conservatives can back other government help, whether it's a pubic option for flood insurance or bailing out those fucks on Wall Street, but they're against letting the government help their own citizens stay alive.

Anyway, getting back to the point, I'm no stranger to conservative ideals.  Having grown up in Anderson, IN and having a father who is a diehard, conservative Republican, I have more direct experience with and have spent more time reflecting on this subject with others (therapists?) than anyone else I know.  And having considered myself a Republican until sometime my freshman year at college, I know the conservative standstill mindset all too well.

That said, I'm having more and more of a problem these days accepting anyone who has actually thought about it and still considers themself Republican.  Yet, I always try my best to have an open mind and empathy for other people's beliefs.  So why has it been so much harder lately to "live and let live" when I encounter modern Republicans?


Well, for starters, when it comes to Conservatives, there's no such thing as "live and let live" -- no empathy for others' views.  Even if I'm not being accosted outside a Safeway supermarket by some loud mouthed conservative thug shouting at us for signing up voters (which happened to me before the 2004 election)...  Even if there were no Town Hall meetings full of misinformed and uninformed, tea-bagged bullies foaming at the mouth and carrying guns, trying to intimidate people from simply discussing healthcare reform options.  Even the most docile, guilty-only-by-association Conservative, who's never publicly intimidated anyone, represents a vote for the modern Conservative Machine, the very purpose of which is to constrain everyone else to their own limited belief system.  In other words, "you must live how I live."  It probably comes as no surprise that I think that's utter crap, and at minimum, it's hypocritical, since none of these people would ever stand for being arbitrarily limited to, say, the laws of the Koran or weirdo beliefs from Scientology, if somehow one day the majority of conservatives were in support of those ideals.


Restricting others to that of your own beliefs is un-American.  Our Founding Fathers (who seems to come up at every turn at these fake grassroots rallies) were liberals for chrissake, trying something completely progressive by leaving all the existing government models from that time in the dust.  They knew that religion should be a personal right, not to be shoved down others' throats, so they wrote the 1st Amendment.  That's called empathy, folks.  I bring this up because the Conservative Mob often throws around talk of our Forefathers, as though if they were here today they'd be fucking cheerleaders for the Conservative Movement or something.  The problem with that is these guys were Liberals, and many of them were critical of Christianity.  And if I hear one more time the nonsense that the United States was built as a Christian Nation, I'm going to scream.

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle"  -George Washington 

 "The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion." as explained in the U.S. Senate "Treaty of Tripoli, Article XI", signed into law by George Washington

"I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature."  -Thomas Jefferson

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law."  -Thomas Jefferson 

And for being Conservatives, they're not very good at their own message.  One would imagine, if Conservatives really wanted to keep things the way they are -- or were when they were children -- they wouldn't be so ready to back large corporations lobbying Congress to destroy our forests and put unsightly, pollution forming oil rigs off the coasts of all our beaches.  One would think these geniuses would be concerned that the Arctic Ice Caps, that have been there for the last three million years, are literally disappearing over a few months.  The ice caps are the source for the entire gulf stream flow of our oceans, and without that consistent same flow every year, the planet begins to hiccup out giant cyclones before reversing and causing the next Ice Age.  But instead of just looking at the goddamn disappearing Ice Caps -- you can see the results for yourself for fuck's sake -- Conservatives denounce Global Warming as some sort of political agenda to take away their Hummers or something.  Stupid.


The more I attempt to understand or reason with these Modern Conservatives, the more I find myself just pulling my fucking hair out.  Never in my life I have seen such bunch of sore losers.  Try to think back the last time you can recall an entire movement backed by one of the parties that had the single purpose of seeing a US President fail.  Republicans lost the presidential election, and instead of attempting to get anything done at all, they've set upon a mission of trying to negate every eency-bitty little thing Obama does, no matter what the consequence.  I remember this happening when Clinton was elected, but never to this degree, or even close.  (And don't even get me started with the GOP ultra-sponser, Rupert Murdoch, and his plan to use his media outlets to "destroy Obama".)


Since the shooting at Fort Hood, I've heard Rush Dipshit Limbaugh, along with two Fox News "news casters", and a few Republican governors and congressmen actually try to blame the shooting by Major Nisan Hasan somehow on Obama.  Literally, the words, "it's Obama's fault" or "we can blame Obama" coming from the Right.  What the fuck is that?!  Even if the incompetent Bush was in office, you wouldn't hear one fucking person actually trying to blame him for this nut's actions.  Why?  Because it's ridiculous trying to pin the lone act of some distressed lunatic on anyone but the person who lost it.  The argument is somehow that Obama's administration dropped the ball with regard to information that Hasan's head was starting to spin.  The problem with this is that the information obtained about Hasan was collected on Bush's watch, not that he should be blamed any more than Obama.  That's just fucking stupid too.


Or how about complaints from the Right when Obama went to Dover Airport to pay his respects to the dead soldiers coming back from Afghanistan.  Doing that dates back to the Vietnam War and people feeling that LBJ was too removed from the reality of the cost of war.  And neither Bush nor Cheney had the decency to go to Dover once the entire eight years of starting his Iraq war of choice.  Obama's visit was unplanned and definitely not a media stunt.  And if I had to make a difficult decision on whether or not to pull out of Afghanistan (just as Reagan pulled out of Beirut), I'd want to pay my respects also before I threw more lives at it from behind my desk.  The point is, there's nothing (nada, zilch, zero) that Obama can do that doesn't get criticized by the Right.  How the fuck is anyone supposed to work under those conditions??


The real problem I have with the New Republican Party is they operate primarily on FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).  Instead of trying to win people over with making people's lives better, they operate on scare tactics like, if you don't vote for us, they'll take your guns, they'll make us all socialists, they'll kill your grandma, or more basically, in the case of Conservatives, they'll change things (oooh, scary!).  And Fox News pumps out Right Wing political FUD like nothing ever seen before.


About the only type of Conservatives that make a lick of logical sense these days are the Old Schoolers and the Racists (and there's plenty of overlap between the two).  At least it's easy to understand their motives.  The Old Schoolers, like my dad, are Republican because they've always been Republican.  That type of Republican is set in his ways, and it wouldn't matter if you put David Duke on the ticket for President, they'd vote for him just because he's Republican.  It's kinda sad to think that although my dad also thinks Sarah Palin is an idiot (we agree on something!), he'd vote for her over someone as brilliant as Barack Obama just because he's always voted Republican.  But at least I can understand this type of Conservative over the ones who make a conscious decision that way.


And racists, well they're easy to understand.  Racism is either fueled by hate or fear, and fear is the primary motivator these days with all Conservatives and the GOP.  Just ask the fearful Lou Dobbs.  I heard he lost his job at CNN to an illegal wetback who is paid pennies on the dollar (I'm kidding).  But he is a dumb ass.  Anyway, racial fear is irrational, but at least I can somewhat understand it, having gown up around it my whole life.


Then there's the Reagan worshiping Republicans, who only worship him as the lone symbol of recent Republican presidents not widely considered a failure.  Whether you think Reagan was all that or not, factually speaking, he was either a president who lied under oath to Congress about his knowledge of funneling arms to Iran to fund the Contras, or he was completely incompetent in that the Iran Contras could have possibly happened behind his back without his knowledge.  Take yer pick.


But these Reaganites don't make any logical sense either.  Again, factually speaking, Reagan preached smaller government, but increased taxes 11 (eleven!) times while in office while increasing the deficit.  That's a fact.  He signed into law gun control (heard of the Brady Bill anyone?) after the assassination attempt on his life by John Hinckley Jr. in order to impress actress Jodie Foster.  He supported amnesty for illegal immigrants.  He opposed California's anti-gay Prop 6, and hosted the first openly gay sleepover at the Whitehouse.  It's also not surprising no one ever mentions that Reagan was a liberal Democrat until he married his second wife Nancy and went on to become the Governor of California.  He was called The Great Communicator, kind of like Obama is now, except no one gave him shit for it.


But the main idea these Reagan Republicans hyper-focus on is small government.  At the time Reagan was president, government was fairly bloated and needed to have some fat trimmed.  After all, no one wants to pay for a government that's over spending and under serving.  Although this was a concern at the time (30 years ago), and besides the fact that he failed to do much of anything about it, modern Reagan lovers recite this mantra over and over, preying on people's fear that someday government might take over people's lives.  Note to Republicans: no one (and I mean no one) wants that, on either side of the isle.  In fact, if the government were to attempt to encroach on our daily lives -- just as Cheney was tossing around the idea of a military state after 9/11 -- and just as Bush and Cheney attempted to by systematically repealing our rights after 9/11 using the Patriot Act and other fucked up tactics -- the Democrats will be the first to fight it.  I can promise you this: if government ever does begin to dictate our daily lives, it will be a Conservative making it happen.  After all, that's their entire M.O.  Make them be like us.


And the hypocrisy is never ending.  Case in point: Pro-Lifer Conservatives.  What a misnomer.  They're not pro-life at all; they're anti-abortion.  And Fox News and other Conservative media have the gall to call us Pro-Choice people "Pro-Abortion".  Just who the hell is all gun-ho for having a fucking abortion?!  Seriously.  And talk about the worst way the government could possibly come in between you and your doctor!  Conservatives want no government interference with their lives, but want them to interfere in the most personal of all difficult decisions a woman has to make.  Plus, if Conservatives actually were Pro-Life Christians, as their name might suggest, they wouldn't be for the death penalty or for torturing people.  And what could be more Pro-Life that improving healthcare and saving people's lives?!  You see, this is exactly the source of my problem with Conservatives.  They pick and choose their moral high ground, and this blatant hypocrisy doesn't phase them in the least somehow.


Another thing I can't understand is how poor people can be Republicans.  Although there's some corporate influence on the Democrat side of the isle, it's a well known and absolutely unapologetic fact that Republicans are the party of major corporate interests.  You want union busting?  Be Republican. You want to turn Healthcare Reform into a Insurance Company government handout without improving conditions for Americans?  Go Republican.  Or how about when Senator Al Franken put an amendment to vote that simply states the U.S. will no longer tolerate (have on the payroll) contractor companies that fail to allow their women employees to file sexual harassment, discrimination, and sexual assault charges against that company.  Simple enough, right?  Oh no.  Thirty! -- count 'em -- 30 Republican Senators voted against that.


How could Republicans possibly vote for keeping companies that allow rape of their employees on the payroll, you ask?  Simple.  It's all about corporate greed.  And Republicans are all about the buck.


On July 28, 2005, while working for KBR (an offshoot of Haliburton) in Iraq, Jamie Leigh Jones was drugged, beaten, and gang-raped by seven KBR employees, then left in a wooden crate to die.  She came home to file charges against these men and found that she's signed a contract when hired at KBR in which the fine print says she can't file suit against KBR for those type of allegations.  KBR is also well known as being the bunch of fuckheads who wired shoddy electrics to an Iraq building that house(d?) some of our military and subsequently was the cause of the electrocution of 12 U.S. service men.  Yes, you read that right.  Twelve deaths of US military folk due to faulty wiring by KBR.  And how KBR is attempting to scare the victims families into dropping charges is a whole different story altogether.


Gee, why would Republicans vote yes-please in favor of company rape on the U.S. dime?  Can you guess?  Haliburton.  The thing is, Republicans aren't exactly shy about their full-on support of Corporate indecencies.  And why should they when their poster child Cheney didn't blink in giving unprecedented no-bid military contracts to the company he was CEO of just before becoming Vice President, Haliburton.  No explanation needed.  And there's honestly too many examples of Republican corporate corruption and influence to choose from.  So why do poor Republicans vote for representatives that don't care about representing them in the least?  The same Republicans they put into office attempt to take away their employment rights, kill unemployment insurance benefits, or halt improving their health options at every turn, as if their actual constituents were the corporations and not the people.  It's so utterly stupid and baffling to me.


But more than anything, I just can't deal with the Conservative fear factor.  They'd like to think that us liberals are the pussies of the bunch, and that they're the tough guys with the guns and stuff.  But the only reason they're for mindless, constant military action is they're scared.  Fearful of another 9/11.  Or fearful in the form of racists who are scared of "those towel heads", don't understand their culture, don't want to, and think we should just wipe them all out.  (You wouldn't believe the conversations I've had in Indiana with folks about this very idea.  Some of them were military folk, too, which is even scarier.)


Misguided Conservatives worship the likes of Dick Cheney, not realizing for a moment, that behind all that gruff exterior, Cheney is nothing more than a scared old man who made poor and selfish decisions in an attempt at containing his fear.  He lied us into a war in order to lash out at the Muslim world, all in the name of flexing the might of the U.S. military and hopefully scaring would-be terrorists into taking a hiatus.  Every lie upon lie that Cheney has been caught in has been to insulate himself from repercussion while attempting to rewrite our Constitution, all in the name of making himself feel safer.  And richer.  (Let's not forget the lies he's told in order to make himself richer along the way.   Narcissistic bastard.)


A bully is someone who acts all tough in order to compensate for their insecurities and fear.  Well, I'm not scared of terrorists.  And in not being scared, I'd prefer we deal with threats to our country in a diplomatic way first, and in failing that, eliminate direct threats as they come up militarily.  That way, we keep our principles that made us great, and not be scared into repeatedly unproven stupid shortcuts, like torture of instance, that deplete our good standing in the world.


I don't want a war on our soil any more than anyone else, but since when did America become such a bunch of fearful pussies who'd rather preemptively start a disorganized, scattered war in fearful hopes of scaring opposition away from our shores.  I say, if al Qaeda wants a fight, bring it on.  When they come here, I'll stand up and fight them anyway I can, while Dick Cheney digs up paperwork to keep his hands from getting dirty, just as he filed for and received five deferments to the draft in Vietnam.  As I said.  He's a scared old man.


So with all this hyper, hyper hypocrisy, outright falsifying facts, poor people who support Congressmen who only look out for their corporate lobbyists, Sarah Palin, all the tricks motivated by hate and fear, rampant Narcissistic Personality Disorder in only caring for their own interests, lying about Global Warming for corporate interests with no regard for the planet they live on, how am I supposed to accept intelligent Conservative friends into my life?


I'll continue to try, but it's getting harder and harder to return those calls, as it's becoming an oxymoron  to be Conservative and intelligent at the same time.

Kill Fake News as News

A Proposal to Fine News Agencies That Don't Produce News

Fox News, lies. Tomato, tomahto, right?

I've been frustrated by Fox News Corp and their spin since the last World Trade Center rebar fell from the New York sky eight years ago (on my birthday, no less). After 9/11, the Bush Machine shifted into overdrive, Fox News (a.k.a. Fixed News, Fox Noise, Faux News, and my favorite, Cluster Fox) began an eight year stench as the first news corporation acting as directly as an echo chamber for the White House Briefing Room. While the towers' dust was still settling and people were spinning their heads wondering what the hell just happened, Fox News set sail for uncharted waters, namely suggestive partisan journalism. And sadly most major news organizations at the time followed their lead. Maybe it was out of fear of piercing the brief unanimity we all felt during the aftermath of 9/11. Hell, even some of my closest friends, who couldn't normally stomach the sight of our Monkey-President Bush, wouldn't hear of me speaking a single word in opposition to G.W., even as we stumbled toward an unrelated war.

Bias in journalism is not exactly new, so saying Fox entered "uncharted waters" is an exaggeration. But as long as I've been paying attention to the news in my lifetime, I've never seen such spin directed toward forwarding a President's agenda. Or thwarting it, as their mission has now become. (Funny how it was un-American to speak against the President while their Republican Christian Ideologue was at the helm, but Barack Hussein Obama is somehow fair game.)

My beef with Fox News since Barack Obama was elected is this: the Fox right-wing spin machine, that has the audacity to claim it is "fair and balanced" (!), has switched from greatly spinning news to the right to flat-out lying about the news. There's a term for what they're pulling off (I can't remember what it is off-hand), but it involves a closed-loop news feedback of sorts.

Here's how it works:

Someone at Fox "News" like Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, or one of those less-than-friendly scumbags on "Fox and Friends" (Gretchen Carlson, Steve "Doothy" Doocy, or Brian "Oh Just Kill Me" Kilmeade) makes an editorial comment about what people are supposedly talking about. Of course since none of these idiots mentioned are self-proclaimed journalists (they call themselves "entertainers" as a way of getting away with such ridiculously unsubstantiated comments), everything they say, by definition, is an editorial comment. But I'm getting off point...

So one of these stroke-offs make some crazy comment about what they claim "people are talking about". Sometimes these comments are part of some actual fringy stupidness that's already loose on the public, like "Barack Obama doesn't have a birth certificate". But often times than not they try to stir up their Republican brethren by contradicting anything the President is doing with something outrageous that is totally made up.

In turn, people who watch Fox News as their only source of news (always Republican fundamentalists, and often people who seemingly can't decipher editorial comment from fact and can't think for themselves) begin to get worked up about these newfound "facts". Then to close the loop, Fox News "journalists" conveniently pick up the story as something people are genuinely concerned about, which is only true in that people have heard it on their news station earlier from one of those aforementioned idiots or someone else who echoes Fox garbage and plants it on their right-wing blogs, etc.

You see, before Fox initially planted the story, it didn't exist. But now the people who watch this "news channel" farce may really be concerned. After all, the news told them it was true.

So while the thinkers among us are trying to debate the facts of healthcare reform, a bunch of Fox News-watching sheep herd up behind us and try to lynch us for it, all because they heard Obama wants to kill the elderly or some such fucking craziness.

Recently, there was an NBC/WSJ poll in which they found that the people who were gravely and stupidly misinformed about the facts of healthcare all had one thing in common: They all watched Fox News as their single source for news.

I've fucking had it with this bullshit.

I propose that the FCC start issuing large fines to supposed "news" organizations like Fox News who can't substantiate their so-called facts. They must provide This would promote good ol' real, fact-checking journalism, while ousting the blatant lies sold as news.

Furthermore, I also propose that penalties are given to organizations who lay a claim to being a "news station" without having either 100% actual, fact-based journalism OR issuing a disclaimer before shows like Glenn Beck or Bill O'reilly saying that these shows are for entertainment purposes only and are not to be confused with actual news.

Otherwise this self-fulfilling prophesying of fake news will never be tamed. And we'll be left to having two sets of discussions every time we want to get anything accomplished: one based in reality and actual facts, and one based on the stoked fears of people who have been lied to by their trusted news organizations.

Side note: I've personally had to deal with clinically insane people before, and it's absolutely impossible to get anywhere with them. They have their own reality, and they truly believe it to be true, so no matter what you say, you can't win. It's the most aggravating thing in the world. There are real similarities to my past brush in dealing with the insane and talking to the Republican base about healthcare. It's made all the more aggravating by the fact that these are not insane people. These are sane people who made the mistake of believing something other than fact. Worse yet, these believers just know what they've been is the truth and think us to be the ones who are either lying or misinformed. In short, arguing about reality with Republicans is far more aggravating than arguing with insane people. At least insane people are clinically insane.

GOP Lies putting the Hell in Healthcare

I was watching Platoon yesterday, and in it Charlie Sheen quoted someone anonymous as saying,

"Hell is the impossibility of reason."

Well no shit. That's exactly what we have here. Republicans and big health insurance corporations both are purposely and shamefully spreading flat-out lies in order to prey on people's fears and therefore kill any means of intelligently discussing Healthcare Reform.

What gets me is anytime someone goes on TV and says America is full of stupid people, they get lambasted with the collective anger of those who can't handle any criticism of their precious "US of A", which they view as absolutely infallible. Yet these same angry uneducated masses hear lies perpetrated by Republicans, fake grass-roots organizers initiated and funded by these corporations, and their trusted right-wing news sources, including Fox News Corp -- they hear these lies, and they act on them in mob-style revolt without doing a single ounce of research for themselves to better understand what's really going on. And then these angry masses get all pissy when those of us who have taken the time to understand what's real for ourselves say America is full of stupid people.

Well, if they don't want America to be said to be full of idiots, then they shouldn't act so fucking dumb.

For example, how about looking into what's actually being proposed for Healthcare Reform. Forget the blatant lies that many Republicans and fake "news" sources like Fox News are perpetrating, which seem so absolutely fucking crazy to the rest of us who know how inconsequential the proposed changes are for those who are happy with their healthcare as-is.

Here's how I see real Healthcare discussion happening with the Right:

First off, before you start shouting crazy talk in the hopes of silencing my blog somehow, let's start with a quick preface of what Healthcare Reform means in general. Healthcare Reform is happening solely for the purpose of bettering people's lives, not making anyone worse off. It is its only purpose! To help those who are in dire need of Healthcare! So if someone's told you otherwise, you've been lied to.

Also, if you've heard crazy fucking ludicrous things about Healthcare Reform that couldn't possibly sound reasonable, then guess what? It's a lie. Believing that kind of nonsense, just like believing Obama secretly isn't a US citizen, is fucking retarded. Which is why people on the left in this debate are so exhaustedly unwilling to begin discussing these idiotic "concerns". These things are ludicrous and not worth rational people's time discussing. Plus it's the reason people say America is, on a whole, stupid.

For those of you who are against changes in Healthcare, love your current health plan, and are happy with how much you pay for it, etc: You can now dismiss yourself from the entire discussion forever. With the proposed Healthcare Reform you don't have to change anything if you don't want. The most you'll see as far as changes from this reform bill is that you will eventually see the amount you pay go down significantly. That's it. If you're somehow against paying less for the exact same health plan, well then, I don't know what to say to that...

For the rest of you who want to really know what's going on with Healthcare, imagine this: Imagine a new company joining the free market of the Healthcare Industry. Let's call it "Govco".

Now if Govco enters the market, and you personally have, let's say, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) insurance, you don't have to buy Govco, so what's the big deal? However, Govco happens to be a non-profit entity that's run by the government, just like Medicare is. And being owned "by the people for the people" means it's not going to focus on having the largest profit margins each quarter like BCBS is. In fact, Govco doesn't have the first care in the world about making a cent of profit, outside of keeping the service afloat in combination with its government funding. Just like Medicare. So because of Govco isn't motivated by profit margins and greed, as competition it will provide a low-cost alternative for those who don't want to pay as much. In turn, greedy big corporations like BCBS will be forced to compete with Govco and therefore become as competitive in pricing as Govco, bringing down your premiums with BCBS.

So now that you understand Healthcare Reform, almost in its entirety, it's not really too scary is it? Now if you want to get more information about the benefits of healthcare, as there pretty much aren't any for those who make less than $1 million a year, then do your homework.

If you're a Republican and like to get your right-wing spin spoon fed to you from Fox News, you won't like me suggesting you watch MSNBC to get the facts on Healthcare. You may think MSNBC spins to the left too much, but the one thing they're good with is facts. I think Walter Kronkite once said that "facts tend to have a liberal bias." People like Rachel Maddow go out of their way to make sure they have the correct facts and makes corrections during her show when she's found she's made errors -- which is a far cry from those people who report their spin on the "news" as fact, such as Bill O'reilly or Glenn Beck, and then defend their lack of trustworthiness by claiming that they're not really journalists (duh), simply "entertainers". (I have personally witnessed both of them make this argument, before you get all worked up about it.) Much worse are the editorial spins of actual so-called "journalists" on Fox News, who slip in their own opinions as "what people are saying" in order to make it actually what people are saying after they watch their show. It's a closed loop of self-prophesied utter bullshit.

If you don't want to do that, then simply listen to the President speaking on the subject. What he says in those addresses is what's being proposed in Congress. Nothing more. Nothing less. There would be absolutely zero advantage of his going on national television and lying about it.

Finally, how about this stupid "Obama Death Panel" lie, also known as the alleged healthcare plan to "kill the elderly"? C'mon, really?? This lie came to life because the bill being proposed allows the newly available healthcare plan to help elderly people make "end of life" plans, namely a living will. It's purely optional. And having a will is also a good idea, and you only have to do it once. Finally, this good idea was added to the bill by Republicans in the Senate!

You're welcome.

And when Healthcare is reformed, and you benefit and see how ridiculous you've been manipulated, you can thank the rest of us then.

Blackwater (Xe) and More Christianity for All

Fucking Christians.

Now, before you get all up in my grill for pissing on christianity, I'm not. Although I find it irritating that part of the Christian Agenda is to force feed non-believers without their invitation and then shun them if they don't buy, that's not at all my beef with them.

My problem is the constant hypocrisy from this group. It's never ending. I grew up christian, and it didn't take me long to find the hypocrisy everywhere in my own church and its sermons. This is way before the spotlight turned to the Grand Adulterer Jimmy Swaggart, the adultery and thieving of shitloads of parish monies by Jim Bakker, the illegal funding sent to the Contras in Nicaragua by Pat Roberts, or the christian citings of David Duke. Of course those are just the contemporary hypocrisies. Never mind the Crusades or the Inquisition or thousands of other bloody disasters in defending the unprovable notions of a righteous few.

Christian Hypocrisy isn't exactly new, let alone news. Hypocrisy is so deeply ingrained within their practice, the contradictions are evident at the very start within the Bible itself (I had the pleasure of reading and studying the entire Bible in high school).

Well, mark another one down for the Hypocritical Bible Thumper Crowd. Yesterday, Right-Wing Evangelical Christian Crazy, Erik Prince (shown right), founder of Blackwater (renamed Xe) was outed for the true christian practices we've come to know and love from the religious right. His company was buying illegal ammunition from an American company named Lemas, as well as AK-47s and other illegal guns from arms dealers, transporting it all to Iraq, and using it so him and his racist crew could kill them-there "rag heads" (Blackwater contractors' words, not mine). Tues, Erikkk was quoted as believing himself "a "christian crusader, tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe."

How Christian is racism again? Or genocide? Oh yeah, it's not. Yet having grown up in the cornfielded flat-nowhere of Indiana, I've determined it can't possibly be a coincidence that most every racist I've stumbled upon has been either raised Christian or claims to be a practicing one. Whether they're the drunken, bi-toothal, confederate-flag-waving racist or the more dangerous, shady but always subtle, anti-Semitic "Secret Racist" who publicly denounces prejudice at every turn, they seem to always have Christ in common.

Of course I'm not saying all Christians are racists. (If you thought I'd made that point in the last paragraph, it's possible you took the same community college logic class as loony Michele Bachman (R-Minnesota).) But I am saying it's alarming how many racists in this country do consider themselves Christians.

Anyway, back to "Cleric of the Week" Erik Prince: his company provided child prostitutes to his Blackwater/Xe Executives, and had a top level wife-swap operating in his North Carolina division. In the Blackwater 'Man Camp', which Prince personally oversaw and participated in, he provided very young local Iraqi girls to give top Executives oral sex and paid the girls one American dollar for their services. Very Christ-like indeed. Yet another self-proclaimed Devout Christian doing the Lord's good work.

Apparently he was also transporting firearms illegally into Iraq via the Blackwater company jet and selling them there. So not only was his crappy company involved in many illegal and unwarranted civilian deaths (a few complaints even made it to court), but to add insult to injury, he sold weapons in Iraq for a quick buck without regard for whose hands they'd end up in. Just whose side is this dick on?? His own, I'm afraid. And of course, God's. Irk.

As far as I'm concerned, that highlights one of the godzillion problems with outsourcing military operations of any sort. Although Blackwater/Xe is an American company that the U.S. is employing in Iraq, they're still a corporation with corporate values. And who does the corporations pledge allegiance to at the end of the day? Answer: Their bottom line, and only the bottom line. Not the U.S., and not Jesus Christ, but instead, the almighty dollar bill. There's a name for people who act in accordance with the highest paid dollar, specifically such soldiers: they're called mercenaries. Mercenaries are like the last goddamned thing we need in the middle of a primarily religious battle whilst attempting to gain the trust of Iraqis and win back the Taliban regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Especially a fucking religious "crusader" who believes genocide is God's mission for him.

By the way, as I see it, by definition a mercenary cannot be a Christian. I supposed a mercenary could believe that Christ died for his sins, believe in God, etc. But there are few things less Christ-like than selling ones ethics for cash -- especially when it involves picking a side and killing the people on the other.

The last bit of fun involving Blackwater, and its founder Erikkk the "Prince of Genocide", is that the illegal ammunition they were bringing over consisted of exploding bullets that the US Military itself found to be inhumane and wouldn't use. A Blackwater employee had bragged that he shot an Iraqi with one of these bullets in the ass and was ecstatic to find that it exploded the entire left side of the Iraqi's body, killing him -- an Iraqi not in battle at the time, who I can only imagine was considered simply worthless in the killer's eyes since he wasn't Christian, or white, or because he didn't have any information they could exploit for their Almighty-driven purposes. Hey guys, go ahead and test those babies out on just anyone. BTW, wouldn't the person have to be running away from gunfire in order to get shot in the butt in the first place. Anyway you spin this, it still sucks.

I wonder what Jesus Christ would say about any of this? I'm pretty sure nothing too good.

Then again, I'm sure there's some right-wing christian faker out there who could somehow spin it all in Jesus' name.