Remember: Republicans Hate You

I don’t read the physical paper as much as I used to. However, yesterday I picked one up off of a booth after someone else read it (after all, I am entitled to free papers, just as everything else, yes?) and what grabbed me wasn’t anything local. It was the cartoon they ran.

 

Image c/o The Boston Herald

I was like “Cool! They’re running Kelly’s stuff from the Onion!”

image c/o the Onion

But then I noticed the lack of a crying Statue of Liberty, and also that is was drawn by Jerry Holbert, who actually thinks this way.

Remember! If you’re insulted when Romney insults you, that means you’re a victim-victimy-victimpants! So vote for him! Also people on disability are weak whiners who should be mocked.

Ah, first Akin, then Romney…this is exquisite. Exquisite. This must be how Romney feels when he fires large swaths of people.

Santa: The Trojan Horse in the War on Christmas

You know who else was red? STALIN.

Why am I blogging about Christmas in spring? One reason, because other news around here is too damn depressing (Man, Nevada, you suck). Two, I never get tired of blogging about conservative freakouts.

Christian conservatives warn America of a War on Christmas, under the impression that deemphasizing Santa and his reindeer is secular subterfuge. However, a new poll (c/o the Wisconsin Daily Mirror) suggests that giving Santa the boot may be a boon to curbing the rising atheist population.

The group asked atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and other non-believers to name a catalyst to their deconversion. The number one answer by about 48%? Finding out the truth about Santa Claus. OH SNAP:

When asked about their lack of belief, many atheists and agnostics point to a perceived lack of evidence, corruption in organized religion, or the seeming indifference of the universe. However, when asked to name a specific life event that led them down this path, nearly half pointed not to the man on the cross, but to the man on the rooftop.

According to a survey conducted by PEW Research, when asked what one event they could contribute to their atheism, a whopping 48% cited finding out the truth about Santa Claus as the catalyst.

It must be because atheists are so materialistic, right? Well, not really. Take it away Dr. Pazzo:

“It’s a true case of a slippery slope,” says PEW researcher Dr. April Pazzo. “Their parents raise them to have faith in a magical, kindly figure, a faith which is inevitably betrayed. When these same parents ask them to believe in a loving, miraculous figure, it’s more difficult to believe.”

It looks like the religious are already scrambling for excuses and solutions. The guy they quote in the article says that obviously, Santa has to go. Good luck with that (edit mine).

According to [Father Pabo Sah Woor], “People need to remember who we celebrate Christmas for. It’s not about gifts, reindeer and family. When you take Christ out of Christmas, you start taking Christ out of your life.”

One of those things is not like the other, Pops. Have fun telling people to quit using one of the best traditional aspects of the holiday.

Who Haven’t the Republicans Whipped Out Their Haterade On?

(image c/o Mother Jones)

Let’s see. They covered vulnerable voters with ACORN. They are losing the Wisconsin battle, but are winning the war on unions. They’re currently whacking away at uppity bitches. Who else is left?

Oh hey…don’t forget college students!

“Voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do,” [NH Speaker William O'Brien] added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students lack “life experience,” and “they just vote their feelings.”

New Hampshire House Republicans are pushing for new laws that would prohibit many college students from voting in the state – and effectively keep some from voting at all.

One bill would permit students to vote in their college towns only if they or their parents had previously established permanent residency there – requiring all others to vote in the states or other New Hampshire towns they come from. Another bill would end Election Day registration, which O’Brien said unleashes swarms of students on polling places, creating opportunities for fraud.

I think that just about covers it!

Hey, you remember when the Reps succeeded in destroying ACORN with its fake-ass “pimp sting” (much like that stupid Lila Rose failcow and her failcow stunt)? Because that demonstrated voter fraud on ACORN’s part, somehow. Meanwhile, Republicans are actively passing laws to  disenfranchise voters. LOL.

Another Tragedy Not Fueled By Political Rhetoric, Plus a Request

This is one you’re not hearing from the liberal lamestream media.

Shawna Forde, a leader of a spinoff group of Minutemen (which here is defined as “xenophobic gun nuts who run around in the desert playing vigilante border guard”), was in need of dough. Instead of selling angel food cakes like normal people, she and her group came up with the brilliant idea to raid the homes of drug smugglers for cash. So they targeted the home of the Flores family, who were non-drug smuggling American citizens.

Early on the morning of May 30, 2009, Raul Flores heard a knock at the door of his Arivaca, Arizona, home. When he opened it, he found a man and a woman claiming to be law-enforcement officers in search of fugitives. Minutes later, the man shot Flores to death. Then, authorities say, he pumped three bullets into Flores’ wife, Gina Gonzalez, who survived but played dead. “Why did you shoot my mom?” Gonzalez’s 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia Flores, asked the gunman, according to prosecutors. Those were her last words. The man put a gun to her head, fired off two rounds, and killed her.  (The Daily Beast)

Shawna Forde was acting in official capacity as the leader an offshoot of Minutemen, has ties to Aryan Nation groups, and has alluded to waging race wars and war against the U.S. government in the past. In short, she was yet another lone nut who was completely unaffected by right-wing rhetoric. Just like the last 20 that we’ve heard of.

This story, like the MLK bomb planter and most other people murdered senselessly for stupid authoritarian causes, has been totally ignored by the media. My request is this: tell everyone you know about this story. Follow that link and play the 911 call a mother made after her husband and 9-year old daughter were gunned down before her eyes.

People need to hear about this, but no one’s willing to speak up.

Stupid Ferschluggina Principles

Most of the merchandise I design (which you can purchase here, by the by) have their genesis in pure rage. It’s probably not good for my mental health, but eh. I try to censor myself, at least. Whichever ones don’t pass the civilized human being test after a brief cool-off period, I chuck.

For example, after a day of being confronted with the reality of Peak Everything, I made a bumper sticker urging folks to spay or neuter their teenagers. But it was a pinch too eugenic for my comfort, so out it went.

Shows how much I know.

Maybe I should listen to Anson and start chucking my principles out instead. I’ll start by posting pictures of brick-worthy bumper stickers without bothering to censor the license plate.

With Allies Like These…

As long as we’re bringing up Confederate Americans and other oxymorons, I’ve got this hilarious story about gay conservatives c/o Shakesville.

GOProud, which describes itself as representing “gay conservatives and their allies”, invited Ann Coulter to speak at their event. Here’s the poster:

That’s not the funniest part.

After word got out, Ann was disinvited from an event hosted by conservative cacophonic orchestra of nutzoid, WorldNetDaily.

WND says that Coulter’s decision to speak at Homocon, an event sponsored by a gay Republican organization called GOProud, disqualifies her from speaking at their “Taking America Back National Conference.”

“Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about ‘taking America back’ when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very ‘unconservative’ agenda represented by GOProud,” WND editor and CEO Joseph Farah said. “The drift of the conservative movement to a brand of materialistic libertarianism is one of the main reasons we planned this conference from the beginning.”

That’s not the funniest part.

The funniest part came when Coulter stuck up for gay conservatives like the ally she is:

“They hired me to give a speech, so I’m giving a speech. I do it all the time,” she said. “I speak to a lot of groups and do not endorse them. I speak at Harvard and I certainly don’t endorse their views. I’ve spoken to Democratic groups and liberal Republican groups that loooove abortion. The main thing I do is speak on college campuses, which is about the equivalent of speaking at an al-Qaida conference. I’m sure I agree with GOProud more than I do with at least half of my college audiences. But in any event, giving a speech is not an endorsement of every position held by the people I’m speaking to.”

She doesn’t really like queers, but by God she’ll take their money. Just like Judy Garland!

Now that’s funny.

September 12 is Burn the Confederate Flag Day!

What a bummer summer, eh? It’s super-hot, no jobs can be found, the Joplin Honkies keep squeaking pitifully for the street cred they can never have, the illusion that there’s much difference between the two parties has been resoundingly squished, and my Zazzle store could use some more customers.

The people are desperate for a pick-me-up. Pick-you-up. Pick-us-up. Whatever, we need one.

Well, brace yourself- September 12th is now Burn the Confederate Flag Day.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!

Burn the Confederate Flag Day is a protest against the right’s exploitation of racial prejudice for political gain.  We urge you to burn the Confederate flag, a long-time symbol of racial hatred, on Sept 12, the date when the racially-divisive Tea Party holds its annual hate fest.

Are you still standing, or were you bowled over by the sheer win?

One of my life goals is to create a nationwide holiday of a sort, specifically a Guy Fawkes parallel for America. Naturally, when I heard about this, I was swept in a tidal wave of jealousy for not thinking it up first. Seriously, it’s the perfect holiday- it’s patriotic, it involves pyrotechnics, and it infuriates racists!

This more than makes up for the other day, when I saw a 9 year old girl wearing this shirt:

I navigated several infuriating white power sites to find this for you. You're welcome.

Oh man, if my schedule’s good, I am sooooo going to organize one of these in Joplin. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I await the indignant bwap bwap bwap of “STATE’S RIGHTS! NOT RACIST! HERITAGE! NORTHERN AGGRESSION!” and other such idiocies.

An Example of Doublethink

If you’re a high school student, you may have George Orwell’s 1984 on your summer reading list. This novel pioneered the idea of “doublethink”– using a contradictory term to distort the meaning of the original concept. In the book, the slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH are examples of doublethink.

You may be asked to provide a real-life example of Newspeak and doublethink. Well, I got one for you! In today’s Joplin Globe, Kathryn Jean Lopez pimps the latest fake conservative “grassroots movement,” the Mama Grizzlies.

K-Lo’s dilemma is this: Misogyny is a conservative concept. It’s tradition, it’s the old way of doing things. The cure for it is feminism, which is a liberal concept, and oh by the way as been demonized by the right every since bitches started wearing bloomers. Now how do you attract women to a movement that is inherently anti-woman? The easiest way is by using “doublethink.”

In this article, K-Lo advocates for women who happen to fit the anti-feminist ideal of women- constantly reproducing (and of course they never have reproductive issues that would necessitate TEH ABORTIONZ- at least none you’ll ever hear about), always willing to stab all other women in the back, ectomorphic, and never ever threatening male insecurities (“Hey! ‘Mama Grizzlies’ makes me think of hunting! These chickies are all right!”). In womanist and feminist circles, these women are called “colluders“. But instead of rallying against feminism, which would be too damning and honest, K-Lo prefers to muddy the waters by claiming that what she’s doing is feminism.

Throughout the article, she can’t help but drop illogical anti-feminist bomb after illogical anti-feminist bomb. She mentions how women are risk averse, yet they voted the “risky and scary” Obama administration into office (maybe it’s only Republican women who are whimpering, easily-frightened infants? Republicans period?). She mentions chivalry like it’s a good thing. She hilariously refers to MG’s as “scads of attractive women”, because OMG FEMINISTS ARE FAT AND DUMPY AMIRITE? And of course, she lets the men have the last word. Actually, she has the last word, but she says that guy has the last word because she’s stupid and doesn’t understand the meaning of “last word”.

Wa-lah! By dressing up a negative idea with its positive opposite, K-Lo hopes to make you swallow the idiotic b.s. that your mothers and grandmothers fought bravely against, making you easy to fall under her party’s control. War is peace, freedom is slavery, Stepford Wives are feminists.

If you need more examples of doublethink, by the way, just hop on over to the National Review website. K-Lo’s articles are always chock full of them. Your English teacher is sure to be impressed!

EDIT: I probably should have left this to the advanced patriarchy blamers, because they’re so much more awesome than I.

Now That’s What I Call “Overkill”

I know the Globe has to consider its audience when it comes to ads. Three “ObamaCare” ads on one page, though? That’s a wee bit much.

It’s probably out of their control, but still, man. Wee bit much.

By the way, does anyone know how to do screencaps on an iPhone? I am ruing the one that got away. It’s still funny that I managed to get one that had two on it, in only five page refreshes.

Edited to add: Ah-HA!

I call this piece, "ObamaCare Ads Descending a Staircase".

This sh- is legit!

Archaeopteryx Aggravates Creationists; Diorama Creators

Oh,  Archaeopteryx, you are a card.

Are you a bird? Are you a reptile? Are you just some sort of weird guy? Your undeniable transistionalness between dinosaurs and birds is an endless source of scientific enigmas and psuedoscientific enemas. Scientists love you, creationists love to hate you while pretending to love you.

While prepping for the triumphant return of Dr. Sharp and his Big Silly Jesus Circus (to be recounted in a later blog post), I noted how he deals with your inconvenient behind. When the guy has an entire presentation called “Missing Links and Other Evolutionary Assumptions,” you know he has to eventually. For all those other feathered dinosaurs, he just pretends they’re hoaxes (which is blatantly untrue and will come back to haunt him the more the world learns about them), but you’re not so easily explained away. Luckily, creationist tribes the world over are adept in several styles of Dumb Fu. Dr. Sharp employs Monkey Style on you, using semantics and rhetorical gymnastics to explain you away. He simply states that you are all 100% bird, including the teeth, tail, modified saurischian pubis, foreclaws, and everything else; and you are not a transitional fossil because scientists have placed it in the bird family so nyeh. He caps this off by saying ostrichs and baby hoatzins have claws, therefore we can ignore your claws. And teeth. And bony tail. And pubis. And all the other features that belong to dinosaurs.

By the way, the thing about the ostrich is a lie. Creationists lie. That’s all they do.

Another creationist who lies is Ken Ham. Ham runs Answers in Genesis and the infamous Creation Museum in Kentucky. He also maintains a pretty heinous chinbeard. Seriously, look at this. Ew.

We don’t need transitional fossils; all we need to disprove special creation by a loving god is that crap on his jaw. I digress.

More like Fakeyopteryx, amirite?

His approach differs slightly from Dr. Sharp’s, in that he just completely mutilates you. The sculpture in his museum retains two of your claims to fame and discards the rest. Gone are your teeth and dinosaurian skeletal structure, in goes the beak and bird features. If someone showed this to an actual scientist and had them guess what it was supposed to be, they would never, ever guess it was Archaeopteryx. It’s not even close. It’s like putting booties on a dog and calling it a Shetland. This bird-itized reconstruction is just the thing Ken needs to further his modus operandi. Which is lying. And chinbearding.

Yep, you’re pretty aggravating to creationists. You’re also pretty aggravating to me.

That’s because I’ve been all over the freaking internet, and I cannot find one museum quality model of you. I can’t even find a toy of you. You’re the most famous fossil of all time, and you just happen to be toy sized, there should at least be a plushy of you somewhere.

How the flipping monkeypuzzles am I going to put together a dope presentation on evolution if I can’t have a Beanie Baby Archaeopteryx in there?!? That would be adorably awesome and awesomly adorable. Yet you hold back.

To heck with you, Archaeopteryx. It looks like I’m going to have to settle with a Microraptor toy. Have fun tearing it up at Ken Ham’s pad. With your stupid fake beak.