Uniformly Funny

You've probably figured out by now that I don't like getting blindly-forwarded, guilt-trip inducing, "support our troops the way I say you should, or you're un-American" email messages.

A friend sent me one a few days ago that starts like this:

Half Man - Half Boy

If you read this, you WILL forward it on.

You just won't be able to stop yourself.

The average age of the military man is 19 years. He is a short haired, tight-muscled kid who, under normal circumstances is considered by society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry behind the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old enough to die for his country.

...and I unloaded on him with this reply:

I find it neither patriotic nor worthwhile to forward an email message designed to perpetuate national priorities favoring the privileged few over the less well-off many by taking advantage of the idealism of those very "Half Man - Half Boy" troops it disingenuously pretends to champion.

I'll continue to support our troops by working to show folks who forward such messages the difference between jingoism and patriotism and to elect leaders who espouse policies which see war as a last resort rather than as the centerpiece of foreign policy.

Today, I have reason to believe that my friend is discovering that sappy emails and yellow "ribbons" made in China and stuck on the bumper of a gas-guzzling SUV do not constitute support for our troops. Like wakes and memorial services for the dead, they exist primarily to make those left behind feel good, and they do absolutely nothing for those who have undergone the experience which is being commemorated.

Just a few minutes ago I received the following from him:

OK! OK! Try this.

THANK GOD THEY CAN STILL MAINTAIN THEIR SENSE OF HUMOR OVER THERE!!!

God Bless Our Troops!

God Bless America

Indeed!

Our troops are very good at making lemonade out of the lemons which life and the inept Bush administration has thrown at them.

They're also quite capable of taking care of themselves without sappy, self-serving acts of faux-patriotism from us.

She's a Witch

It looks as if the GOP has been watching old Monty Python films for ideas as it prepares to oppose President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as the replacement for David Souter on the Supreme Court.

The attacks on Sotomayor's character currently streaming from the hate and fear-mongers of the rabid right make about as much sense and use the same logic as this video clip in which a woman is captured, dressed as a witch, tried, and condemned by a group of ignorant and frightened men who aren't the least bit interested in the truth.

Click on the image and see if you don't agree.

Supreme Irony

Funny in its absurdity, yet sad in its spot-on accuracy, this video "newscast" illustrates the abject stupidity of the strategy the GOP has embraced in response President Obama's efforts at finding bipartisan solutions to the economic, health care, energy, global-warming, and other problems facing America.

The clip presents how the Party of No might respond if President Obama were to name Jesus Christ as his nominee to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court.

Click here or on the image below to watch this supremely clever lampoon.

Here's a sample of the fun: GOP concerned about Savior's "troubling Middle Eastern ties."

Washing Away Their Sins?

On May 22, conservative radio hosts Erich "Mancow" Muller got waterboarded, and after lasting just six or seven seconds, he admitted it is "absolutely torture."

Click the image to watch the video.

Now that one of their own has been baptized in the truth, it's time for fear-mongers like Dick Cheney and the frightened, juvenile sheep who follow them to shut up and let the adults who were elected last November get on with the job of cleaning up the mess they left us in.

Rebranding the Right

For more than thirty years, the radical right has hoodwinked Americans into voting against their own best interests through a coordinated and well-financed strategy which used hate and fear mongering ads to make wedge issues dominate elections.

This tactic has been quite effective in eliminating both reasoned discourse and logical thinking from political debate, replacing them with vacuous, emotional appeals and outright lies carefully wrapped in the flag or couched in the guise of religious "truth" - often both.

It was the method chosen by "born-again" George W. Bush to lie us into war by claiming simultaneously that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda and that God had put him in office to protect America.

Now, Roger Simon of POLITICO reports that, despite the written objection of their Chairman Michael Steele, the RNC is mounting a campaign to rebrand the Democratic Party as the Democrat Socialist Party.

In light of this initiative and the fact that the GOP is rapidly turning into a southern regional party, I offer the Democrats a fair and balanced rejoinder to the RNC's stratagem in the form of an updated logo and motto for the once-proud Party of Lincoln.

Sen. Inhofe's 700 Club

Q: When is a scientist not a scientist (or one with no expertise in climate science)?

A: When you find his or her name on the list of 700 "prominent scientists" used by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) to reject bona fide scientific evidence of global warming.

File this one under: "You may be entitled to your opinion, Sen. Inhofe, but you are not entitled to make up your own facts or to use a bogus list of "experts" to force your religious beliefs on others."

Click either the link or the image below to read INHOFE'S 'EXPERTS' by Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly:

In a related story, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will not attend tonight's White House Correspondents Dinner. "First Dude" Todd Palin will take her place at the event so that the governor, who also denies the existence of global warming, can "visit parts of Alaska that have been struggling with the most serious flooding in decades."

RNC Clown College

Have you ever been to the circus? Do you remember how you laughed when all those clowns got out of that itty-bitty car?

Well, once you view this slideshow, you won't be able to think of anything else the next time you see the GOP congressional delegation troop down the Capitol steps en masse toward the waiting microphones in order to demonstrate their 100% solidarity against a bill passed by the Democratically controlled Congress or to unanimously denounce, out of hand, President Obama's latest attempt to address one of the problems facing America.

The only difference is that instead of a tiny car these clowns come out of a very small and constantly shrinking tent.

Click on the image and enjoy the RNC Clown College!