Green Eagle

As we are all aware, a persistent story has been swirling around the wingnut world for some years now: that liberals are waging a vicious war of oppression against Christians, particularly white Christians. Well, how might that have happened? I am old enough to remember when the image of a Christian in this country was Reverend Peters down at the Methodist Church running food drives and hosting the local boy scout troop, or kindly old Catholic Father Rooney (well, Father Rooney might have been up to a few not-so-kindly things with the altar boys, but we didn't know that at the time.) That's not true any more.  While the millions of decent Christians did nothing, the name of their religion has been seized by a vicious pack of religious fanatics, many of them openly in support of forcing a theocratic dicatatorship on the country.  When you hear "Christian" today, you don't think of Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa, or even of almost moderate TV preachers ...

Ted Cruz, proving once and for all that he just doesn't get it: "We need to look to history to find out what works and what doesn't, and the one thing that is clear is that if Republicans run another candidate in the mold of a Bob Dole, or a John McCain, or a Mitt Romney [...] we will end up with the same result, which is that millions of people will stay home on election day..." Didn't notice, did you, Ted, that the last time the Republicans ran a candidate like you (that would be Barry Goldwater) they got smeared in the election all over the country.  As I have been pointing out for years in my posts covering the tea party, the impeach Obama folks, the birthers and other right wing loons, there just aren't enough crazy people in the country by a long shot to elect someone like you. And more importantly, didn't it ever occur to you that the rich guys own your party, and so they get their Republican nominee every single time?   Nixon, Ford, Reagan, ...

Or not. As Is Green Eagle's custom, here is a selection of pictures from Impeach Obama Week II events all over the country, demonstrating, I think you will have to agree, just exactly how mighty this movement has become:  Austin, Texas  Bakersfield, CA Edison, NJ  Key West  Norwich, NJ Somewhere in Ohio.  Couldn't make it past the front lawn, huh? And my favorite one of all, from Jacksonville, Florida: Yes, this movement is such a miserable failure that they actually had to post a photo bragging about an event in which, apparently, nobody showed up. All in all, a total visible attendance of 19 at seven events.  That makes the eight who showed up at the Simi Valley event Green Eagle attended seem like the crowds in Tiananmen square. What is the word that describes a condition beyond pathetic?  I don't know what it is, but boy, it sure describes this movement. And yet, at least 19 Republican members of the Hous...

Let's just start out with this amazing scoop from Town Hall: "Study Shows Liberals More Likely Than Conservatives to "Unfriend" Someone Over Politics" They forgot to mention that the same study showed Conservatives are less likely to have friends that disagreed with them. Byron York, Town Hall:  "OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- The image some conservatives have of Greg Orman, the wealthy businessman running as an independent against veteran Republican Sen. Pat Roberts here in Kansas, is that Orman is, in the words of a recent Weekly Standard story, a "vacuous cipher." Which may be true.  On the other hand, that still beats the racist, corrupt jerk the Republicans are running. John Ransom, Town Hall:  "The Petro-States in Shambles Despite Obama...Despite an administration that has no energy policy" Of course, the minute a Democrat talks about an energy policy, wingnuts start screaming about Communism.  By the way, John, did you noti...

This is a story that has infuriated me for decades, so let me vent. Do you remember Janet Cooke?  Probably not, so let me describe her in the words of Wikipedia: "Janet Leslie Cooke (born July 23, 1954, in Toledo, Ohio) is a former American journalist. She achieved infamy when it was discovered that she fabricated a Pulitzer Prize-winning story for The Washington Post." The story, which was published in 1980 about an alleged 12 year old Heroin addict, resulted in Ms. Cooke being fired from the Washington Post and her never being employed again as a journalist. Maybe appropriate punishment, maybe not.  But then, Janet Cooke was female, and black. Now for how a white male "reporter" was treated by the press at the same time. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter was running for reelection against Ronald Reagan.  As normally happens when debate time comes around, Jimmy Carter's staff had prepared a "briefing book" detailing his positions on all the...

So Green Eagle went to the only Los Angeles area gathering for Impeach Obama Week 2, in Simi Valley, home of the jury that acquitted the police who beat Rodney King. It was quite the event, attracting an attendance of eight, pretty much par for the course for one of these things (that's not counting Green Eagle himself, of course- that would hardly be fair as he was not really an enthusiastic participant.)  Well, here's the evidence of the atrocity: This is going to bring Obama down in short order, yes sir!   I included the last picture because it is of a guy who, when he found out that I didn't exactly agree with their notions, started proudly asking me a bunch of hostile questions revolving around whether I was Jewish.  As you can see, he was quite pleased with himself for this bit of analysis, since who could be against racism and hatred except a Jew? Now for the math:  There are, let's say, about ten million people in the Los Angeles area, and ei...

I wrote a post a few days ago about the endless barrage of panic-filled begging e-mails from Democrats all over the country.  There is something that I think I need to add to my comment about the combat fatigue these have caused in me. I think what really has made me just tune all of this out is the fact that constantly squeezing Democratic voters for money has become a substitute for even the pretense of governing on behalf of the American people. Where are the prosecutions of Wall Street?  Where are any signs of consequences for the Bush Administration's war crimes?  Where is any attempt to rein in the national surveillance state?  Where are even the Democrats (with only a couple of exceptions) who will stand forthrightly and say that they will never see Social Security or Medicare damaged?  We all know, in fact, that Obama was ready to cut Social Security and Medicare, for nothing in return except empty promises from Republicans who never keep their promi...

Coming fast on the release of the police recording revealing (to the four or five people in the world who didn't get it yet) what a pack of low life trash the former Republican vice presidential nominee and her family are, is this tragic news: "TLC has pulled the plug on its hit reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo after reports surfaced that star "Mama June" Shannon is dating a convicted child molester, Mark McDaniel." And here he is.  Of course, giving that it's Mama June we're talking about here, maybe that's the best she could do. In a fine display of how seriously this sort of person really takes the endlessly repeated right wing blab about "family values," the adorable "Mama June" dumped the father of Honey Boo Boo a few months ago, and now has taken up with this guy, who just got out of prison for "forcing oral sex" on an eight year old.  The victim is apparently some sort of relative of Mama June, jus...

A Palestinian poster celebrating the heroic life of the guy pictured above.  Part of the text reads:  "The martyr hero Abd al-Rahman al-Shaloudi performs a sacred act of running over the settlers in occupied Jerusalem." His act of bravery?  He deliberately killed a three month old Jewish baby with his car.  A sacred act.

So Nelson Bunker Hunt seems to have died yesterday.  The essence of all the reporting on him seems to be that he was an oil billionaire, who inherited his money from his oilman father and in concert with his brother, lost most of it in a harebrained scheme to corner the world silver market, and then got a lot of it back.  The reporting, and the information easily available on the web sort of stop there.  Examine, for example, the Wikipedia page on him, which only devotes a couple of sentences to the real reason for remembering him, his brother and his father: their rabid right wing politics, backed up by massive amounts of their oil money.  In fact, the Hunts were the prototype for the malignant Koch brothers, who have taken upon themselves the right to do so much damage to the country today. Hunt with his brother Their father was an uneducated wildcatter who made a lot of money and left it to the brothers, along with their thirteen other siblings.  The...

And once again, Republicans in the United States narrowly miss an opportunity to act just as irrationally as the world's most lunatic dictatorship.

Just for the record, here is a link to the 27 minute police tape made at the scene of the brawl involving the Palin family a month or so ago. Two comments, and then I'm out of here: First of all, John McCain should be tied to a chair and forced to listen to this tape about a hundred times, until he is ready to face the sickening spectacle he unleashed on the American people.  Thank God she will never have a position of real power ever again. And second, can you imagine the press circus if, say, Joe Biden's family was involved in such a disgraceful incident?  I do not believe I am exaggerating to suggest that it would produce wall to wall press coverage for two years, just like Clinton's blow job did, with Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd and all the rest of them declaring to the public that Biden must be driven from public life.  But in this case, oh that wacky Sarah and her wacky family.

I can't resist this.  It's the hottest song right now in Liberia, and as sick a joke as it is, the song is indeed going viral: Well, I actually like it, even though it's not the kind of thing I usually listen to.  I'm happy to give the musicians a couple of hits.

Which I feel called upon to make before election day:  I have been overwhelmed with e-mails with panic-stricken titles, begging me for money for candidates.  I don't know about you, but I'm receiving at least 40 to 50 a day.  I just can't deal with it, even though my interest in politics is obviously much greater than the average person's.  Except for a couple of names (e.g. Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren) I just delete them en masse, resulting in my political contributions this time around probably being lower than in a normal election year. Sorry, I'm only one person, and I just can't deal with it.  I suspect a lot of other people are feeling the same way.  Five hundred or a thousand begging mass e-mails are simply not a workable answer to the Koch brothers.  As long as elections are about nothing but who has the most money, we are screwed. We'd better find a way to take these anti-American rich sociopaths out of the picture, because they have se...

Yeah, that's the story.  At least in the mainstream press (the headline above is from Reuters,) which seems to be tiring already of its latest irrational scare story.  Ebola "crisis."  Which consists of exactly three cases- one person from Africa who died, and two people who got it from him, who seem to be on the road to pulling through.  Three cases and one death in a country of over three hundred million people.  So even on a random basis, your odds of getting it in this country seem to be about one in a hundred and fifty million.  Even the Powerball lottery looks like a good investment compared to that. Let me remind you that, if this is an average day, over 1300 people will die in the United States from smoking-related causes.  And if you think Ebola is bad, you should watch someone die from lung cancer. And this could be largely stopped immediately by a President with the honesty and guts to place tobacco on the schedule 1 narcotics list with ...

As we enter the last crucial couple of weeks of the 2014 Congressional campaign- crucial because lies told at this point can never be refuted in time for their falsity to sink in with the ignorant American voters, the mainstream press is demonstrating in classic form exactly how "liberal" it really is. Three examples from just the last day: This article from Reuters: "President Barack Obama made a rare appearance on the campaign trail on Sunday with a rally to support the Democratic candidate for governor in Maryland, but early departures of crowd members while he spoke underscored his continuing unpopularity." Now, the real story:  Obama made an appearance at a high school stadium in Maryland.  The eight thousand tickets sold out immediately, and many more people showed up than could be accommodated to hear the speech.  The extra people were put into the high school gym.  Obama, when he heard about this went to the gym and met personally with the people t...

Something Green Eagle has said many times too.  I was going to complain that, for some reason, people listen when this guy says it, but ignore Green Eagle.  Then it occurred to me that no one really listens to him either- at least no one who can do anything about it. The nation's number one case in point - WalMart: "Walmart’s low-wage workers cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing, according to a report published to coincide with Tax Day, April 15." That means that, every year, American taxpayers contribute $6.2 billion dollars directly to the Walton family- money that should be paid by the company, but we pick up the tab. The six Waltons on Forbes' list of wealthiest Americans have a net worth of $144.7 billion.  Next year, at least $150.9 billion, I guess.

No wonder the government is so screwed up.  I know, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover and all that, but really-here is a picture of  Missouri Republican Congressman Billy Long: Boss Hogg was a joke when he was on TV.  It's not a joke when these ignorant crackers send him to Congress.

Slim pickings these days from the wingnut blogs.  I guess they're trying to keep a low profile until they see on election day how many ignorant voters they conned into thinking they are decent human beings.  Oh well, count on them to not be able to just shut up altogether: Daniel Doherty, Town Hall:  "Womp Womp: "One-Fifth" of Dems in Massachusettts Are Undecided" Womp Womp?  What the hell does that mean?  Just how infantile are these people? Rich Galen, Town Hall:  "Bibbidy-Bobbidy-Boo" What's with these guys at Town Hall today?  Did somebody spike the punch? And now, Republicans Focused on the Issues: Roger Simon, PJ Media:  "The news is unrelentingly grim. Is the world approaching the End of Days?" Yeh, that's it- the end days are coming.  That must be the explanation for everything. God, these people will pander to anyone, as long as they are stupid right wingers. Charlie Spierling, Breitbart:  "Obama'...

Just a brief comment on those Republican cowards who are spending their time demanding that Obama ignore the recommendations of the experts and impose a "travel ban" on people who have been to West Africa. There are no direct flights between West Africa and the United States.  That means, for anyone to get here on an airplane from West Africa, they would have to fly through another country.  If we stopped them from the last leg of their flight here, all we would be doing is dumping the problem on someone else, and demonstrating to the world once again that that the governing principle of American life is "I've got mine- screw you." It not only makes no sense; it constitutes a moral outrage.  Or in other words, standard Republican policy.

It's here again!  Oh boy, it's been less than two months since the last one, which was, as is typical for these wingnut Woodstocks, a failure of monumental proportions . Think they'll do any better this time around?  Green Eagle suspects not, but we shall see what we shall see.  I'll get back to you as soon as I have some humiliating pictures to show from this week's festivities.

So he is going to do what Republicans are demanding, and what, until this week they declared was one of the greatest alleged abuses of his Presidency, and appoint a Czar to oversee the three known cases of Ebola in the country. There should have been only one answer from him:  The proper person to fill this role is the Surgeon General, and there will be one as soon as Republicans quit playing their sick political games and approve his appointment.  And the Surgeon General will take appropriate action and see to it that we are protected in the future as soon as the Republicans quit playing their sick political games and restore an appropriate level of funding to the National Institutes of Health. Until then, he should make it clear that Republican "input" about this problem is not welcome.

I haven't mentioned the Icelandic volcano situation in quite some time, so I thought I'd write a short post just to let you know that it's still going on- earthquakes, lava, gas, all the usual.  Things are changing in minor ways as the lava gets blocked one way and flows another, but the reporting lately has been pretty technical- I can't absorb a lot of it, and I doubt too many people care about the geological details.  Anyway, the thing could go either way, or just go on as it is indefinitely.  If any real change takes place, I'll let you know, presuming anyone cares.

Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina, reacting to complaints about the Confederate flag that flies on Statehouse grounds: “What I can tell you is over the last three and a half years, I spent a lot of my days on the phone with CEOs and recruiting jobs to this state,” the governor noted. “I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.” Well, it's okay with the CEO's.  That solves that issue.

If you kill them, they bleed on their pelts and then you can't make a good rug out of them.

One of the greatest bits of theater of the absurd, courtesy of Florida Governor Rick Scott: Scott is already doing a poor job of running for re-election, as befits an out and out criminal.  It was a sign of the stupidity of Florida's voters that he won the first time, but the mainstream press has already signaled that if he loses this time around, they will blame it all on this four minutes of non-debate, rather than the fact that he is a corrupt monster from a party of corrupt monsters. Oh well, give it a look, it's pretty funny. Update:  Here's the headline of Town Hall's coverage of this story:  "Charlie Crist Violates Debate Rules, Forces Debate Delay."  That's their story and they are sticking to it.

Which, of course, we will never hear in a thousand years: Texas, one of the most Republican, Conservative States in the country, and consistently near the bottom of States in the quality of the healthcare services offered to residents, has made a conscious decision to favor the opportunities of the rich over the welfare of the vast majority of its people. The breaching of this nation's wall of protection against the Ebola virus took place in Texas, where the three known victims were located, and two of them infected and allowed to possibly spread the virus further, because of bungling by the inadequately supervised and financed Texas health care system. In the meantime, Republicans are screaming for the appointment of a "Czar" to handle the Ebola situation, despite the fact that the person who should have been available to fill that position, the Surgeon General of the United States, does not exist because of Republican pandering to their right wing base on an issue t...

Their role in degrading the political discourse of our country, always in favor of the Republicans. This one revolves around Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who is in an almost unprecedented struggle to retain his Senate seat in Kentucky, and who has taken to simultaneously going around the State attacking Obamacare, while at the same time telling Kentuckians that they can keep their insurance under the wildly popular Kynect plan, which (contrary to his claims) is nothing but the Kentucky implementation of Obamacare. There isn't really much to understand about this, is there?  However, it is apparently not only beyond the comprehension of the press, but is even too complex for liberal commenters to grasp.  Here is an analysis by Bryan Beutler in the New Republic, which I found because it is favorably covered at Daily Kos: "The Media Is Ignoring McConnell's Obamacare Waffling Because They Don't Understand It...What’s particularly frustrating about McCon...

And, as Green Eagle is always sad to lose a source of such unparalleled ridicule, a good thing too.

Let me just talk about one of the stupidest things in the whole history of right wing stupidity: Former Congressman and White Supremacist Ron Paul:  "Liberty, Not Government, Key to Containing Ebola" That is going to work great, right?  Liberty, whatever the hell he means by that word this time around, is somehow going to substitute for the billions that it takes to develop a vaccine with no hope of any kind of financial return on the investment, and to mobilize the thousands that it takes to deliver it in an often hostile environment.  Well, let's hear more: "President Obama's response to the Ebola crisis has been to send 3,000 troops to West African countries to help with treatment and containment. Obama did not bother to seek congressional authorization for this overseas military deployment. Nor did he bother to tell the American people how long the mission would last, how much it would cost, or what section of the Constitution authorizes him to sen...

Republicans slashed the VA budget, and then blamed Obama when waiting times for an appointment got too long. Republicans cut $500 million from the State Department's budget to protect foreign embassies and consulates, and then blamed Obama when one of them was attacked. Republicans slashed money to the CDC for disease prevention, including funds to develop an Ebola vaccine, and now are blaming the Obama administration for it. That's the way things work now, folks.  Just don't point any of this out in public- it just wouldn't be polite.

Bernie Sanders, because it apparently takes a hero to get on a TV talk show and state the truth: "We are here today because of the disastrous blunder of the Bush-Cheney era, which got us into this war in Iraq in the first place, which then developed the can of worms that we're trying to deal with right now."

-or- Where in the World is Kim Jong Un? If there is one thing those of us who read left wing blogs get used to, it is seeing the plain truth right in front of us, and finding that not one of the supposedly brilliant pundits and columnists (with the exception, of course, of Paul Krugman) is willing to say what is so obvious. Here's another example.  Do I have absolute proof for what I am about to say?  No, I don't, but it is so overwhelmingly likely that I have no hesitation in stating that something very much like this explains the goings on in North Korea, for many years in the past, and right now. What is vitally important to remember about North Korea is that it is a dictatorship, pure and simple, like those run by Gaddafi, Mugabe, the Saudi "Kings" and so many others.  The North Korean government may dress themselves up in the trappings of Communism, or some deranged sort of God-King cult, but in the end, all it really amounts to is a plain old garden vari...

It's certainly time to run around screaming in terror, now that one man in the whole country has died of Ebola!  Never mind the fact that in the last couple of weeks, twice as many black teenagers have been killed by the police in the St. Louis area alone.  That is far less of a problem than one Ebola death on American soil, don't you think?  We'd best reserve all of our howling panic for that.

And there is never a hint that anyone will ever be held responsible.   In the news the last couple of days, if by "in the news" you mean ignored by almost everyone in the press other than a few local papers and left wing blogs, is this story: "California aquifers contaminated with billions of gallons of fracking wastewater...Industry illegally injected about 3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater into central California drinking-water and farm-irrigation aquifers, the state found after the US Environmental Protection Agency ordered a review of possible contamination. According to documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity, the California State Water Resources Board found that at least nine of the 11 hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, wastewater injection sites that were shut down in July upon suspicion of contamination were in fact riddled with toxic fluids used to unleash energy reserves deep underground. The aquifers, protected by state law and the ...

The budget deficit for the coming year's proposed Obama budget will be one third the size of the deficit under the last Bush budget. IN OTHER REALLY BIG NEWS, DEMOCRATS ARE OUT OF CONTROL SPENDERS SO WE NEED TO ELECT REPUBLICANS TO KEEP THIS COUNTRY'S SPENDING UNDER CONTROL!!!  EVERYONE KNOWS THAT!

Rumors are circulating that Kim Jong Un has had to take time off to supervise the installation of his own personal Velveeta machine adjacent to his bedroom. Could this photo be the proof?

I don't want to belabor this, but here is a great article   from Dave Niewert, at Crooks and Liars, which really reveals the alternate reality in which these violent play soldiers live.  For years now, Niewert has been the best generally available source of information about the border militias, including his great book on Shawna Forde, And Hell Followed With Her. And here is a picture from Niewert's article, showing a couple of these pathetic wankers: I think this pretty much says it all.  How would you like to have these brain-dead losers take for themselves the right to decide if you lived or died? The only thing I would like to add to Niewert's story is that, when these people handcuffed and "detained," i.e. kidnapped some of these people, the police and Federal agents did nothing.  I guess even kidnapping is okay if you are a right winger.

That's how Daily Kos describes what happened today- the court, by the usual 5 vote right wing margin, legalizing the Republican party's thievery of the vote in North Carolina, just days after it allowed laws legalizing gay marriage to stand. It is vitally important to understand what has happened here, with these two decisions which seem to come from totally different places on the ideological spectrum, because they do not come from any place on the ideological spectrum at all. First, as to what the Supreme Court gave:  can anyone possibly be so naive as to believe that these five Supreme Court justices, the Republicans in Congress, and the people who pay to keep them there, really give a flying fuck about gay marriage?  What they gave was something that meant nothing to them- all they care about is money and power, and a gigantic marriage of every gay person in the country to every other gay person wouldn't threaten that.  Which brings us to the "taketh away...

Republican (I guess that goes without saying) Congressman Tom Cotton: "Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown they’re willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas." Right.  Because there is nothing that Mexican drug cartels want more than to see a highly increased U.S. law enforcement presence on the border.  That will be just great for business.

So the new adaptation based on the religious exploitation novel "Left Behind,"  starring Nick Cage, managed to gross $6,300,000 its first weekend.  Well, that's a lot more than Atlas Shrugged part anything made, but only barely more that the Nick Cage classic piece of trash, Drive Angry, which managed to gross $5,200,000 its first weekend, with a story featuring a simultaneous gun fight and sex scene as one of its highlights .   Nick playing a guy who escaped from Hell is just about as popular as Nick pimping for the Christians.  Of course, Drive Angry was a better movie, from all that I've heard.  I have no intention of going to see Left Behind, although I must, for full disclosure, admit that I worked on Drive Angry, which almost made it worth being in Shreveport.

From the Washington Examiner, via Daily Kos: " Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said Saturday that while he "hate[s] to invoke the term 'czar,'" President Obama needs one to combat the spread of the deadly Ebola virus." Jack, maybe this never occurred to you, but there is such a person available.  He's called the Surgeon General. Or, at least there would be if you and your fellow Republicans, in your frenzy to destroy everything Obama tries to accomplish, hadn't spent the last year or so refusing to approve the appointment of a new one.

And a step that has been going on for decades now, very successfully.  It involves an ongoing campaign by Republicans to cram down the throats of the Senate, Supreme Court nominees who are bought and paid for by the rich and who enter the court with an unacknowledged commitment to rule in favor of corporations and the rich, no matter what the law says. An opinion piece  by Eric Lewis in the New York Time s today dances around this fact, without, of course, ever daring to state the real truth: "The direction of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. over the past decade has been anything but consistent. As the court readies itself for another term, it may not be possible to speak of a Roberts court jurisprudence at all.   But we are not completely in the dark about who is likely to be granted legally enforceable rights and who is not...The Roberts court has already charted a course in which rights are extended to those who have real clout in Ameri...