Friday, January 30, 2015

Bryan Fischer Fired, but Still Blogging and Blabbing for AFA

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Previous Related Post:
Hate Radio Host Bryan Fischer Ousted By Christian Group

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There's more on the alleged "firing" of Bryan Fischer from the Christian group American Family Association (AFA).

Rachel Maddow covered it on her show again Thursday night, pointing out that Fischer and the AFA had attacked Mitt Romney in 2012 because he was a Mormon, calling his religion a "cult" that worships a "false god." Yet mainstream RNC leader Reince Priebus and other members of the GOP are traveling to Israel this weekend on the dime of the AFA. As Rachel points out, they don't have to get on the plane Saturday morning. But I bet they do!



From Think Progress
... In reality, this might not actually change very much for Fischer. After Maddow broke the story, Fischer tweeted, “Don’t believe everything you hear! I’ll be on air same time tomorrow as always 1-3pm CT, on http://www.afr.net . Tune in!” Wildmon’s description of Fischer as “just a talk show host” isn’t so different from the many times that AFA has stipulated that Fischer does not speak on the organization’s behalf, even when he’s speaking on their radio network or writing for their news site. Though his bio has been scrubbed from AFA’s site, all of his written content remains. The incident may perhaps be an embarrassment to AFA and to Fischer, but if he’s continuing to do his radio show, his status quo — the podium AFA provides him — might not have actually changed at all.
Maddow pointed out during her segment that Fischer’s extremism was not a problem when AFA funded Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) pre-presidential prayer rally, nor for Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) recent prayer rally, but the Republican Party’s reputation in Israel may have been just a step too far.


Here's a great lampoon of Fischer babbling about how The Gays Caused the Holocaust in a song by James Rustad:
"Jesus Loves Me, This I Know, Cause Rick Perry Tells Me So, If I Die I'll Go To Hell Says Governor Bobby Jindal."



Basically the AFA demoted Fischer but didn't take away his talk show, so while he isn't technically a "spokesman" for the group, essentially he still is their mouthpiece. So the AFA may think everyone is as gullible as Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and their members seem to be, but no one is buying that Fischer is gone from their organization. It's also doubtful that the Jewish Press is going to believe it in time to save the RNC's trip to Israel which starts this weekend.

From The Advocate
The AFA apparently decided to downplay Fischer’s role amid an uproar over the fact that the group is sponsoring a trip to Israel this weekend for nearly 100 members of the Republican National Committee. The AFA is virulently antigay and on the far right concerning every other issue — the progressive Southern Poverty Law Center classifies it as a hate group — but Fischer is its most outrageous face.
Fischer's remarks over the past few years read like a playbook of antigay hyperbole: that Adolf Hitler’s most savage enforcers were gay soldiers (ignoring the fact that Hitler’s regime sent gays to concentration camps); that gays and Mormons may be plotting together to legalize polygamy; that “flaming homosexuals” will storm Christian bookstores and demand jobs if antigay discrimination is banned nationwide; that the Supreme Court ruling against the Defense of Marriage Act was a bigger legal travesty than the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin; and that if schools are teaching LGBT history, they should include the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And that’s just Fischer on LGBT issues — he has also said that religions other than Christianity have no right to free exercise under the First Amendment, that Muslims are traitors, and that believers in evolution should not hold public office.

Fischer also wrote a post yesterday on the AFA's official blog called
The U.S. Should Support Israel Because God Does
God here declares one simple, abiding truth: he will deal with the nations of the world as they deal with Israel.

A nation which stands with Israel will receive a blessing from God. A nation which stands against the Jewish people (Nazi Germany comes to mind) will rest under a curse.

You can argue all day if you’d like about whether the United States is a Christian nation. The evidence is indisputable that it is, but one thing no one can dispute is that the United States has been kind to the biological and spiritual offspring of Abraham.

. . . The Jewish people zealously protected, preserved, and passed on the very words of God as recorded by the ancient prophets and historians in Israel. Our faith as a Christian nation is rooted in Jewish soil. No Judaism, no Christianity.

Abraham is our father in the faith, the Ten Commandments our guiding standard for both personal and public morality, and the Jewish prophets of old still a source of inspiration. (You can ask Martin Luther King, Jr. about that.)

That blog post is really just a recap of Fischer's beliefs in "Christian Founding Fathers."

As Wonkette Described Fischer's Beliefs, Dec. 11, 2014
Bryan Fischer Has Magic Constitution That Says First Amendment Is Only For Christians


Yesterday, the AFA group sent a letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center further distancing themselves from Fischer's core beliefs:

From Right Wing Watch
AFA rejects the idea expressed by Bryan Fischer that "Free exercise of religion" only applies to Christians. Consequently, AFA rejects Bryan's assertions that Muslims should not be granted permits to build mosques in the United States;

AFA rejects the ideas expressed by Bryan Fischer that the violent expulsion of Native Americans was divinely ordained and that, "Superstition, savagery and sexual immorality" morally disqualified Native Americans from "sovereign control of American soil."

AFA rejects the ideas expressed by Bryan Fischer that "we" need to clamp down on immigration because Hispanics are socialist by nature and vote Democratic because it allows them to "benefit from the plunder of the wealth of the United States."

AFA rejects Bryan Fischer's characterization of minorities as "people who rut like rabbits."

AFA rejects the statement by Bryan Fischer that, "Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews."

AFA rejects the policy advocated by Bryan Fischer that homosexual conduct should be illegal

AFA rejects the notion advocated by Bryan Fischer that, "We need an underground railroad to protect innocent children from same-sex households."

AFA rejects Bryan Fischer's statement that, "If Hillary Clinton becomes president In 2016, she will not only be our first female president, she could be our first lesbian president."

....In light of this notice, do not continue to charge AFA with the statements by Bryan Fischer that we have repudiated. When identifying "hate groups" in the context of training military or law enforcement personnel, do not put AFA in a false light by quoting Mr. Fischer's statements that we have repudiated.

SPLC responded yesterday

SPLC President Richard Cohen, in a letter to the AFA today (see below), wrote that “it’s difficult to see the AFA’s disavowal as anything other than an effort to quell the negative press attention you’re receiving in connection with your sponsorship of an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel for members of the Republican National Committee.”
. . . Cohen noted that other AFA officials, including its president, Tim Wildmon, and founder, Don Wildmon, also have made statements “that reflect narrow-minded bigotry” and that AFA printed materials have demonized the LGBT community.
“Without ending Mr. Fischer’s talk show, without apologizing for the bigoted statements that he, Mr. Wildmon, and others associated with the AFA have made, and without making it crystal clear that the AFA will not tolerate any such statements in the future, the AFA’s 11th-hour disavowal of Mr. Fischer appears to serve only one purpose: to give the AFA a degree of plausible deniability while it continues to spew hateful rhetoric,” Cohen wrote. “It’s a shell game and a transparent one at that.”

Complete Letter from SPLC to AFA ~ Here



Thursday, January 29, 2015

Hate-Radio Host Bryan Fischer Ousted by Christian Group

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Rachel Maddow broke the news last night on her MSNBC show that wiggedy-whack Evangelical Bryan Fischer has been fired as spokesman from the group American Family Association, which is a cheerleading and money-raising support group for the Tea Party and the far-right wing of the GOP.

This is a complicated story, and will be ongoing for some time to come. The basic plot is that the American Family Association has paid for members of the RNC (Republican National Convention) to take a trip to Israel starting next Sunday. The Jewish press then discovered that the AFA has some, ahem, not-quite-Jewish-friendly members, such as Evangelist and Hate-Radio Talk Nut, Bryan Fischer.

The story below gave the RNC good reasons to pressure AFA to fire Fischer. Although frankly, this isn't news to anyone familiar with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Hatewatch, or the Evangelical movement.

Headline Story from Haaretz:
U.S. NGO: Evangelical 'hate group' funding Republican National Committee trip to Israel
Evangelical political operative planned 9-day freebie trip for national committee members, on behalf of the conservative Christian AFA group which blasts Muslims, gays. SPLC rights group staffer: Our issue is not with the trip, but with the 'heinous beliefs' of those sponsoring it.

The The AFA is described as a "hate group” and "extremist group” by the SPLC, an Alabama-based civil rights nonprofit, because of statements it made that are deemed anti-LGBTQ, anti-Latino and anti-black, and which suggest that the United States is a country for Christians only.
“The AFA has an extensive track record of bigotry and hate,” SPLC president and CEO Richard Cohen wrote in a letter to each member of the RNC, urging them not to go on the free trip.
Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s director of issue analysis, has said that black people “rut like rabbits.” Moreover, in a September essay, he wrote: “We are a Christian nation and not a Jewish or Muslim one.” On a video segment on MSNBC’s "Rachel Maddow Show" last Friday, Fischer was seen blasting gay activists as “jack-booted homo-fascist thugs,” and depicting Islam as “an Ebola virus that is lethal and deadly.”

So in order to save some kind of dignity for this trip to Israel, the group threw Fischer under the bus. However, he still has his radio show where he can continue to hate the Jews and everyone else as much as he wants.



From Right Wing Watch:
From what we have been able to gather, Fischer has not actually been dismissed by AFA but has rather merely been stripped of his title as director of issues analysis and his role as spokesman for the organization. Fischer will reportedly continue to produce his daily radio program for the AFA's radio arm, American Family Radio.
If this is indeed the case, then the AFA has literally accomplished nothing with this stunt and has completely failed to distance itself from Fischer's utterly despicable views. The primary venues though which Fischer has managed to spread his bigotry for the last six years have always been owned, operated, and funded by the American Family Association and that relationship appears to remain intact.

And of course, his departure is probably just the tip of iceberg, since most AFA members espouse the idea of America as a "Christian Nation" above all other religions. That's clearly why they have kept Fischer around all these years, in spite of the controversy. So will this firing make much difference? Not really. Other members of the group agree with him!

There is still their wingnut leader David Lane, quoted by Haaretz:
. . . Asked why he organized this trip, Lane said, “Who’s the best friends of Israel? The 65 to 80 million evangelicals in America who read their Bible and believe in the Abrahamic covenant.”
. . . Lane is a longtime behind-the-scenes, evangelical Christian political operative who rarely speaks to the press. In an interview with Haaretz, however, he said his work involves “mobilizing pastors in pews around the country” to be politically involved.
His American Renewal Project is working to persuade 1,000 evangelical pastors to run for public office in 2016.
“The Lord gave me this model of mobilizing pastors to try and engage the culture. Somebody’s values are going to reign supreme,” Lane told Haaretz, adding, “America was founded by Christians for the glory of God and the Christian faith.”
Lane said he’s taking a total of 98 people on the nine-day trip to Israel, which begins on Saturday, January 31. Participants will travel from the Galilee and Golan Heights to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, he told Haaretz, with Jewish tour guides and two evangelical pastors in tow. In addition to Priebus and his wife, guests include Susie Hudson, who last week was elected RNC secretary, and Jewish conservative radio talk-show host Dennis Prager.
. . . Asked who exactly furnished the approximately $400,000 that Lane says the trip will cost, he declined to share specifics. “I know people who love Israel and want influential people to travel there and see the reality of the land of Jesus,” he told Haaretz.
. . .

More on David Lane at Right Wing Watch

So the American Far-Right and Israeli Judaism are strange bedfellows. Evangelicals say that they share the same family-values with Orthodox Jews, even while they whisper among themselves that "Jews are the Pharisees who killed Jesus." Israel gets support from the GOP and Evangelicals because of Biblical Prophecy that talks of Israel's downfall during the future apocalypse of Armageddon, during which the "wings of eagles" (the United States) will save them from the Antichrist (Muslims), or something like that. It's a strange connection - the Evangelicals believe the Jews are doomed and only Jesus can save them, which isn't what most Jews want to hear.

Political Israelis such as Bibi Netanyahu use this fervent support from the Right to pull stunts, such as teaming up with John Boehner to diss President Obama over Iran in the House of Representatives. And they use it to get more money for "security in the Middle East." But the truth is, there isn't much real common ground between the Jews and the Evangelical side of the GOP, so things can fall apart in a hurry.

From MSNBC
. . .When “The Rachel Maddow Show” asked AFA President Don Wildmon what prompted Fischer’s ouster, Wildmon specifically referenced Fischer’s bizarre assertions connecting Nazis and homosexuality. Fischer, of course, originally made these remarks years ago, and has repeated related comments in the years since, but talking to us last night, Wildmon now says, “We reject that.”
As of last night, Fischer’s bio page on the AFA website has been removed.
. . .  the American Family Association, despite years of right-wing extremism, is partnering with Reince Priebus and members of the Republican National Committee on a trip to Israel, which created an awkward dynamic. Why would the RNC team up with a group whose spokesperson says things like, “Counterfeit religions, alternative religions of Christianity have no right to the free exercise of religion”?
Nearly 100 RNC members are scheduled to participate in the AFA-sponsored Israel trip, which begins this weekend. It’s against this backdrop that, all of a sudden, Fischer is no longer the religious right group’s spokesperson.






Wednesday, January 28, 2015

GOP Senators Vent Poutrage with Holder at Loretta Lynch Confirmation

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The GOP has been itching to impeach Eric Holder for years, whether for the made-up "Fast and Furious" conspiracy theory, or just because he's Obama's Attorney General, and also black.

But now Holder is about to leave office, so the GOP decided to use the Senate Confirmation Hearing of Loretta Lynch to throw shade on Holder. And they did it with complete nonsense and random statements that had nothing to do with Lynch or her career. Somebody please call them a Wahhhhhhmbulance!


































































Monday, January 26, 2015

Palin May Have Finally Jumped the GOP Shark This Time ~ Updated


gif by @SnarkAmendment

Previous Related Posts:
Palin Tosses Word Salad at Elizabeth Warren
Palin Gets White House Address All Wrong
Palin's White Trash Brawl
Palin Post on Dog-Standing Displays Obama-Derangement Syndrome
Smithsonian Honors Palin as "Significant American" - Omits Pres. Obama

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Sarah Palin made a speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit, and once again it was weird wacky word salad, which is really just the same old, same old for we long-time Palin-watchers.

But this time even Conservatives are going "huh?" to some of her statements. The concensus after this rambling and rather disturbing speech is that Sarah has finally jumped the shark, even among her most staunchly stupid fans.

And basically the GOP is telling her to go away and let other candidates run in 2016.

But just like Frankenstein's Monster, Palin does whatever she wants to do! So she will continue to be the unwanted Elephant in the Room.

What shocked the churchly crowd at the Iowa Summit was her vulgar imagery. Family Values, folks!

From New York Daily News
“'The man can only ride you when your back is bent,” Palin said — one in a series of unusual one-liners she ad libbed after her teleprompter froze. “So strengthen it! Then the man can't ride you, America won't get taken for a ride, because so much is at stake.”

“What will they do to stop causing our pain and start feeling it again” she said in a short rant over Obamacare. “Well, in other words, um — Is Hillary a new Democrat or an old one?”

“Now the press asks, the press asks, ‘Can anyone stop Hillary?’ Again, this is to forego a conclusion, right? It's to scare us off, to convince us that — a pantsuit can crush patriots,” she added.

At another point, she yelled, “Screw the left in Hollywood” — an apparent jab at critics of the movie “American Sniper,” which some liberals have claimed glamorizes war.



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Full Speech:



An impatient president doesn’t just get to trample our Constitution and ignore Congress just because he doesn’t get exactly what he wants every time he wants it,” Palin said. “It’s like an overgrown little boy who’s just acting kind of spoiled. And moms, we don’t put up with that, do we?
~ Sarah Palin Via MSNBC






Update: She was skewered by Jon Stewart of Comedy Central:

Ohhhhhhhh! The Freedom Summit, the Peak! All downhill from the summit!
. . . Ladies and gentlemen, it may be the rare, brown-haired Alaskan podium-seeker!
. . . It was all going fine until her subjects stopped talking to her verbs... Man, that's the kind of talk you hear in the drugstore just before the pharmacist says 'Ma'am, you got to leave the Walgreens.' Now we know what it's like to get cornered by Ms. Palin at an open-bar wedding. Um, listen - this Iowa Freedom Summit speech wasn't just regular-person incoherent. It was Palin-incoherent. Apparently, Gov. Palin had been forced to improvise after her teleprompter broke. But I got to tell ya - it's not that different from her on-script. Sarah Palin doesn't believe in your liberal-elitist 'grammar' and 'syntax.' She be bold! She no play by your 'ribbles' - that's what she calls rules. That's when it hit me - incoherent, rambling, unintelligible, folksy idioms. She's not speaking at a political event. Sarah Palin is trying to sell America a Lincoln (shows clip of Matthew McConaughey driving Lincoln car in commercial - switches to Palin spouting nonsense in backseat of car, LOL).




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Another Update! Sam Seder on Majority Report:



Transcript from Speech: On Sexism and Racism:

Palin: Knowing what the media is going to do throughout 2016 to all of us, it’s going to take more than a village to beat Hillary! (crowd cheers, Palin giggles as chants of "Sarah! Sarah!" rise up.)

Here's how we do it, okay? (takes a drink of water from a bottle, crowd laughs). We go on offense! We go on offense now and we expect our GOP leaders in DC to get on offense, because we, the people, we realize that this is war - as I say it is war for the solvency and sovereignty of the United States of America.

And we don’t sit on our thumbs this next time when one of our own is being crucified and falsely accused of whatever the hip accusation of the day happens to be, right, racism, sexism, whatever. Really it’s kinda Orwellian observing how that works, that rule of Saul Alinsky’s, no doubt, that the left employs, disgusting charges from the left.

Reverse them! It is they who point a finger not realizing that they have triple that amount of fingers pointing right back at them revealing that they are the ones who really discriminate and divide on color and class and sex! We call them out. We don’t let them get away with it. (crowd claps)

On Gender - oh, man, this one - on Gender. It is they who defeat women, they shackle them to the good old boys running Washington, pimping this promise that they have to provide for the little ladies’ every need, because ‘there, there, a woman, she's just not capable.’ It's the Left that does that. It isn't the Right, it isn't Conservatives. So we go on offense and reveal the real war on women with truth, because we can handle the truth!”



On Saturday evening following Palin's speech, the DNC issued a short statement responding to her speech.
"Thank you!" DNC Communications Director Mo Elleithee said in the statement.
~ Huffington Post

Update 2: Dems are using Palin's speech to raise money for Hillary!

From Huffington Post
The group, Ready For Hillary, used comments about Clinton that Palin made over the weekend in Iowa to raise more than $25,000.
"It's going to take more than a village to beat Hillary," Palin said on Saturday. "I'm ready for Hillary. Are you coming?"
Ready For Hillary immediately seized on the comments and emailed supporters, asking them to donate. On Tuesday evening, the group emailed supporters again, announcing that the super PAC had raised more than $25,000 as a result of Palin's comments -- enough to qualify the former GOP candidate for vice president to be a co-chair of Ready for Hillary.

. . . more than a few GOP loyalists came away shaking their heads at the performance of a party star, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose long, rambling, and at times barely coherent speech left some wondering what role she should play in Republican politics as the 2016 race begins in earnest.
~ Byron York, Washington Examiner



















Nicole Wallace of MSNBC, who was a handler of Sarah Palin during her ill-fated Vice Presidential run in 2008 with John McCain, pointed out that Byron York was once a Sarah Palin fanboy, but now he's apparently come to his senses:

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Byron York writes about what he calls the GOP's Palin problem. He quotes conservative activists who called the speech long and disjointed, weird, and terrible, adding it didn't make any sense. York also quotes Craig Robinson of the Iowa Republican blog who writes in part, "I'm not comfortable sharing everything I heard about the speech. It was that bad. No offense to Governor Palin, but I do think it is problematic to have someone give a speech like that in the middle of a string of serious speeches by people who are seriously thinking about running for president.

BRZEZINSKI: Obviously, Nicole, I would think you would have more insight than anyone. What do you think when you're watching this?

NICOLLE WALLACE: Well, it's interesting that Byron York came to that conclusion. In 2008 he was one of her staunchest defenders. I remember being on the cell phone with him; he was one of the harshest critics of the campaign's handling of her. I think he really thought the problem with Palin was in our packaging of Palin and to see him kind of come full circle. I mean, this is who she is. This to me is evidence that she has finally shed every last one of those annoying handlers.

"It's a Tragedy" ~ Joe Scarborough
(for whom?)


"Uncle Sugar" Huckabee Ordains Himself the Chosen One ~ Updated

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Previous Related Posts:
Mike Hucakabee ~ Uncle Sugar and the Feminine Libido
CPAC 2014 ~ Persecution and Putin-Envy
Conservatives Pee on Obama for Jesus at the "Road to Majority" Conference 2014

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Radio and Fox News Personality Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and former GOP candidate wannabe, is running for President ... again. And Uncle Sugar is crazier than ever, spouting all kinds of nonsense. God has called him to be President . . . again. This should be fun!

Huckabee once again feels he is The Chosen One, ordained by God, unlike the other fifteen GOP guys (including Santorum, Romney, Bush, etc) and gal (Sarah Palin) who believe THEY are the chosen ones.

. . . whether it is me or someone else and I do ask people to pray because for me... this is not just a political or financial decision, it is a spiritual decision. The only thing worse than not being elected president would be to be elected president without God’s blessing; I can’t think of a worse place in the world to be than in the Oval Office without God’s hand upon you. I’d rather not get near the place. But if that’s a purpose then so be it and that’s my prayer.
~ Mike Huckabee, The Chosen One

And he's tossing around some new terms to show his cognitive dissonance, like "secular theocracy" to describe the United States. Huh? That's an oxymoron, moron!

From Talking Points Memo
"We cannot survive as a republic if we do not become, once again, a God-centered nation that understands that our laws do not come from man, they come from God," he said on the show "Life Today."
When Huckabee added that he wasn't demanding a theocracy, host James Robison said, "We have a theocracy right now. It's a secular theocracy."
"That's it!" Huckabee said, describing the current political order as "humanistic, secular, atheistic, even antagonistic toward Christian faith."




Update: Here is Huckabee spouting nonsense at the Iowa Freedom Summit last weekend:

"Washington D.C. has become the Roach Motel - people go in, but they never come out"
(But he wants voters to send him there, right?)

And at 3:42 on the video, he rambles about killing pigs and making sausage. huh?

. . . governing America isn't always easy. It has been said that there are two things you should never see. You should never see a law or a sausage made. I have seen both. But I can attest to the fact that neither are very pretty. And in the case of a sausage, you in Iowa get this the way no one else in America does. But if you want some sausage, you gotta kill some pigs. And folks, there are alot of people in America who want the sausage, but they don't want to kill the pigs. We need to do some pig-killin'. To get to the sausage.



Huckabee just wrote a book called God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy. No, that isn't a joke or a parody from The Onion. In this alliterative tome, Huckleberry apparently rants about the singer Beyonce and her husband Jay-Z, both personal friends of the Obama family. What a great way to start a Presidential campaign - offend all the Beyonce fans in the world, and most of the black voters in the world, and anyone who believes that kids should listen to music they like. Yeah, that will work out well for him.

Huckabee may have a point, though. Remember all those Presidents who were elected after telling parents to burn Elvis and Beatle records? Oh wait . . . that never worked. But please, proceed, Chosen One!

From Atlanta Black Star
Huckabee slammed Jay-Z as a “pimp” for “exploiting” his wife, referred to Beyonce’s music as “trash” and said their performances together were nothing short of “foreplay” that needed to be saved “for the privacy of their bedroom.”
Huckabee’s new book titled “God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy” will be hitting the shelves soon, and it’s already garnered a lot of attention for his decision to dedicate quite a bit of space in the book to sharing his opinion of Jay-Z and Beyonce.
For those still trying to figure out why the presumed presidential hopeful for the Republican Party even decided to comment on the couple, it’s his way of slamming President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama’s character because they are friends with Beyonce and Jay-Z.
That alone is an interesting choice and train of thought on Huckabee’s behalf, but his criticisms of the superstar couple are really what has most people scratching their heads.

“Does it occur to him that he is arguably crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife as a sex object,” Huckabee wrote of Jay-Z.
He then took aim at Beyonce, writing that she, “must have been confused when she agreed to humiliate herself by performing in a way that prompted this comment from author Charlotte Hays …’Honestly, I didn’t want to watch Jay-Z and Beyonce’s foreplay.’ ”

From MSNBC
In a recent interview with People magazine, Huckabee skewers President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama’s parenting skills because they allow their teenage daughters Malia and Sasha to listen to the “Drunk In Love” singer.
After conceding that the Obamas “are excellent and exemplary parents in many ways,” the conservative former Arkansas governor said ”I don’t understand how on one hand they can be such doting parents and so careful about the intake of everything – how much broccoli they eat and where they go to school and making sure they’re kind of sheltered and shielded from so many things – and yet they don’t see anything that might not be suitable for either a preteen or a teen in some of the lyrical content and choreography of Beyoncé, who has sort of a regular key to the door [of the White House].”

But, but . . . Uncle Sugar is good friends with insidious Obama-hater and Gun Nut, Ted Nugent, and has even played "Cat Scratch Fever" with him on the guitar.



Jon Stewart called Huckabee out on this on The Daily Show. But Huck shrugged it off because he is a colossal hypocrite!

“Young girls want to be like her,” said Huckabee. “Do you know any parent who has a daughter, that says, 'Honey, if you make really good grades, some day when you're 12 or 13 we'll get you your own stripper pole?'”

“I think that's diminishing to Beyonce in a way that's outrageous,” said Stewart. “All this stuff about the culture, and it's so insidious—you don't have to do that.”

That was Stewart's cue to play a clip from Huckabee's recently ended Fox News show, where the erstwhile presidential candidate accompanied Ted Nugent on a rendition of “Cat Scratch Fever,” a typically unsubtle Nugent love song.
“You excuse of his type of crudeness because you agree with his stance on firearms,” said Stewart. “You don't excuse Beyonce because she seems alien to you. Maybe the problem is Bubba is in a bubble.”

Huckabee was ready for this. (He should have been; the “what about Nugent?” counterattack is almost a cliche.)
“When Ted Nugent did that song, 1978, never got nominated for Grammy, never performed it on national television,” said Huckabee. “In fact, do you know what the song of the year was? It was a tie between 'Evergreen' and 'You Light Up My Life' and John Denver hosted the Grammys.”

Huckabee again defended himself on ABC's The View, but an old friend of Beyonce's just happened to be there - Michelle Williams, her band-mate from Destiny's Child. And she called Huckabee out on his remarks in a much kinder way than he deserved!




Saturday, January 24, 2015

Fox News Frenzy Over Imaginary "No-Go-Zones" in Europe

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Previous Related Post:
Je Suis Charlie ~ Paris Attack on Charlie Hebdo

After the attacks in Paris by Islamic terrorists, Fox News in the U.S. decided to "Euro-splain" that many countries, specifically France and England, have segregated "no-go zones" for Muslims where regular people dare not go. Yes, they made that up out of thin air, and have had to retract all the outlandish statements by their pundits by apologizing on-air multiple times.



From The Nation
(Fox News Pundit Jean) Pirro was one of the apologizers, which she did almost with a smirk. She previously had “terrorism expert” Steve Emerson on her show, where he claimed that Birmingham, England, was a city-sized no-go zone and was “totally Muslim.” (In fact, the population is closer to 22 percent Muslim.) British Prime Minister David Cameron called Emerson “a complete idiot,” and Fox soon released a statement saying he was unlikely to appear on air again. (Emerson apologized, profusely, on his website.)
Maybe even more embarrassing was journalist Nolan Peterson telling Fox & Friends’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck that there are “741 no-go zones throughout France.” He said his own past trips to Paris were “pretty scary. I’ve been to Afghanistan and Iraq and Kashmir, India, and at times, it felt like that, those places in these no-go zones.”
Turns out, as Snopes found, the “no-go zones” are an international urban myth based on a bad translation for “zones urbaines sensibles” (ZUS) or “sensitive urban zones,” areas that “are not exempted from policing or French law, and are simply targeted for renewal initiatives.”





From MSNBC:
It’s not every day that a foreign leader feels the need to publicly criticize an American pundit, but under the circumstances, British Prime Minister David Cameron was on firm ground yesterday.
. . . Specifically, the British prime minister said, “When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fool’s Day,” adding, “[T]his guy is clearly a complete idiot.”
In a separate interview, Gisela Stuart, who represents Birmingham in the House of Commons, added, “I checked whether this was some kind of early April Fool spoof, and then I thought he was talking about Birmingham, Alabama. But then I realized he was just utterly and completely wrong.”

From Politico
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is planning to sue Fox News for its inaccurate reports on Muslim "no go zones," she told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
"When we're insulted, and when we've had an image, then I think we'll have to sue, I think we'll have to go to court, in order to have these words removed," Hidalgo told Amanpour in an interview. "The image of Paris has been prejudiced, and the honor of Paris has been prejudiced."
When asked to clarify which network she planned "to take to court and sue," Hidalgo replied: “Fox News, that’s the name.”




Hilarious Spoof of Fox's "Fear Everything" Approach
by Le Petit Journal


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Gifs Via Blinking_Red_Light on Tumblr



Jon Stewart on the Daily Show called the retractions by Fox the "rare foxus contritus of legend" for the "Zone Rangers."

"How bad does bullshit have to smell before the odor is detected by people who live on a mountain made of that substance?"



Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal took the "no-go zone" talking point and ran with it, doubling down when asked to clarify, like the dumbass that he is.

From Talking Points Memo
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) on Wednesday stood behind his declaration that European cities have Muslim "no-go zones" and went on to say that if the U.S. wasn't careful, it would be seeing its own "no-go zones" soon.
. . . "If people don't want to come here to integrate and assimilate, what they're really trying to do is set up their own culture, their own communities," Jindal said. "What they're really trying to do is overturn our culture. We need to recognize that threat."
"If we don't, we're gonna see a replica of what's happening in Europe in America," Jindal continued. "We're gonna see our own no-go zones if we're not serious about insisting on assimilation and integration."






Friday, January 23, 2015

President Obama's Epic Ad Lib During State of the Union

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A defiant and proud President Obama gave probably the best one-liner response EVER to GOP hecklers on the night of the State of the Union speech. Call it "shade," a "pwn," a "sick burn," or a "slam-dunk," it was fabulous!

Via Washington Post
"I have no more campaigns to run,” Obama said, to which the Republicans in the audience applauded sarcastically. He came back in the very next beat: “I know, because I won both of them."

Drop the mic!
















Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Joni Ernst and the #BreadBagShoes Meme ~ Updated!

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Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa gave the main GOP response to the President's 2015 State of the Union Address last night. She's the gal who campaigned on the fact that she has castrated hogs on her family farm because apparently that kind of distasteful macho boast appeals to Tea Party wingnuts. Last night I'm sure Ernst hoped to shine on national television, yet she managed to sound as crazy as her cosmic doppelganger, Michele Bachmann. It all comes down to the phrase "Bread Bag Shoes," which is now a hashtag and a meme.

Via Yahoo News
“You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry,” Ernst said. “But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet.”

Does anyone really believe this story? I certainly don't. And Ernst manages to sound as if she's just so happy to have busloads of poor children surrounding her in Iowa. But I bet that won't bother her when she votes against financial help for those same children, because that's what Tea Party members do. She is just like Senator Paul Ryan, who touted giving children an empty lunch bag instead of a free lunch. Symbolism and Irony are wasted on these people.





UPDATES:

Someone wrote a song that now has 10,000 hits!





Andy Borowitz put a comedy spin in the New Yorker:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) shared more folksy stories of her childhood on Wednesday, telling reporters that she used to wear a bucket on her head for no apparent reason.
“I’d be walking outside our house and see a bucket lying there, and I’d say to myself, ‘That’s a perfectly good bucket, I think I’ll put it on my head,’ ” she said. “It wasn’t because I needed a hat or anything. I must have had, oh gosh, a half-dozen hats or so. I just wanted to wear a bucket.”
Ernst said that during her youth, she was known for poking a hole in a large piece of corrugated cardboard and wearing it as a poncho.
“I can’t for the life of me tell you why I did that,” she said. “I just liked the look of it, I guess. Nobody paid much attention to it. People sure don’t notice your cardboard poncho when you’re wearing a bucket on your head.”



Ex-MSNBC pundit Keith Olbermann put his own spin on the meme by quoting Monty Python from the skit The Four Yorkshiremen ~ via The Gateway Pundit





















Also, she apparently stole the idea from The Simpsons, which is hilarious. Thanks, Fox!
























Friday, January 16, 2015

Academy Award Snubs Lead to Viral Hashtag #OscarsSoWhite

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The Academy Awards bore most of us senseless because: (A) many of us out in the heartland aren't able to see some of the films, and (B) the choices leave us scratching our heads. And whenever I see a movie that I think is Oscar-worthy, you can bet it will be immediately snubbed by the Academy, or thrown a "special effects" or "costumes" award. Another complaint I have is they often highlight films about women falling apart mentally or being victims of violence. So I don't even click on Oscar stories anymore.

But this week's Oscar snubs couldn't be swept under the rug as Hollywood chose to ignore actors of color and the movie "Selma" and Twitter rose to the occasion with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite started by @ReignOfApril and picked up by the national news media.









MTV Interview with April Reign @ReignOfApril
“It’s disconcerting that every single year, we can count the people of color who are nominated on one hand,” April Reign, the attorney and blogger at ReignOfApril.com who started the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, told MTV News over the phone. “That really needs to change. It’s not because there’s a lack of quality films that star or feature people of color; that’s not the issue. There was an article in The Atlantic recently which indicated who the Oscar voters are. They are 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and the average age is 63 years old … and they might not be as interested in seeing ‘Selma.’”
. . . “How is it that you can nominate a film for Best Picture, but then not nominate it for anything in any of the other categories?” Reign asked. “How is it a Best Picture if the screenplay isn’t nomination-worthy, or the actors, the actresses, the director, the cinematography? If nothing else is Oscar-worthy, then what makes it a best film? I’m happy for the nomination, but part of me says, ‘Maybe they just threw us a bone.’”

From USA Today
. . . Thursday's 2015 Academy Awards nominations, which have come under fire for a glaring lack of diversity. Social media erupted after the slate revealed that the 20 contenders for lead and supporting actor and actress are all white for the first time since 1998.
"It was a total blow, it was like getting hit in the stomach," says regional Fox network film critic Shawn Edwards, who runs the website ILoveBlackMovies.com. "It was like, 'Here we go again.' "
. . . Selma, centered around Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights struggle, received two nominations, for best picture and best song. The film's Golden Globe-nominated director Ava DuVernay, who would have made history as the first female African-American director nominee, was notably shut out. So was her much-touted star David Oyelowo.

From Entertainment Online
Not only were the acting categories filled with white men and women, the Academy also seemed to snub women as a whole in other major categories such as directing and original/adapted screenplay. We're looking at you, Angelina Jolie, Gillian Flynn and Ava DuVernay.
"I guess white men can *finally* have their day in the sun, you know? #OscarNoms," tweeted another user.
The last time the acting contenders were only white was in 2011, and before that it hadn't occurred since 1998.