Merry Christmas Eve! Here's an omnibus post to fill your stocking.
Greetings, Dot Calm Readers, Truth Seekers, and fellow Champions of Justice!
It's sad that there is so much bad news to fill your blawg stawking with this time of year.
But be of stout heart and good cheer--I return tomorrow with a genuine Dot Calm Christmas story that will warm your heart and put a smile on your face.
Happy holidays to each and every one of you (because, yes, unlike the RWNs, I consider Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Yule, Kwanzaa, AND New Year's to be holidays).
Oh, and Merry ChriFSMas to all my beloved Pastafarians out there (can I get a Ramen?).
--Dot Calm's shadow
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Don't forget:
Nationwide Baby-Drop
Has Started!!!
(thud)
Starting at midnight, December 22, 2015,
you may now drop off
your unwanted baby, child,
(or husband)
at the nearest anti-choice location.
Look for the home or office of any
Tea Partier, Christian, Republican,
or Catholic priest.
When in doubt, leave your bundle of joy
on the hood of a car
with any of the above bumper stickers
(anti-science bumper stickers work, too).
Then walk away, knowing that
they'll welcome your gift
as a blessing from God.
Remember:
If they want to make YOUR decisions,
then give THEM the consequences!
Don't forget:
Nationwide Baby-Drop
Has Started!!!
(thud)
Starting at midnight, December 22, 2015,
you may now drop off
your unwanted baby, child,
(or husband)
at the nearest anti-choice location.
Look for the home or office of any
Tea Partier, Christian, Republican,
or Catholic priest.
When in doubt, leave your bundle of joy
on the hood of a car
with any of the above bumper stickers
(anti-science bumper stickers work, too).
Then walk away, knowing that
they'll welcome your gift
as a blessing from God.
Remember:
If they want to make YOUR decisions,
then give THEM the consequences!
********************************************
Seriously, folks...can you imagine what would happen if women fought fire with fire?
Maybe it's time women stopped accepting the role of second-class citizen....
Now that we have our PSA out of the way, let's go to Mrs. Betty Bowers's homage to one of the most punchable faces in government and see how things shake out from there:Seriously, folks...can you imagine what would happen if women fought fire with fire?
Maybe it's time women stopped accepting the role of second-class citizen....
AlterNet summaries:
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Moar AlterNet summaries:
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From If You Only News:
LYING BASTARD WHO MADE PLANNED PARENTHOOD VIDEOS JUST GOT HIS A$$ HANDED TO HIM IN COURT
David Daleiden, the lying piece of filth that created the fake Planned Parenthood videos, just got some severely bad news slapped across his face by a U.S. District Judge.
RELATED: WATCH: PLANNED PARENTHOOD VIDEO MAKER FORCED TO ADMIT HE IS A LIAR ON LIVE TV (VIDEO)
Judge William Orrick ruled that the secretly recorded videos from the Center for Medical Progress contained nothing illegal or anything that alluded to criminal activity by Planned Parenthood or its employees. This shuts down, yet again, virtually every Republican argument that uses these videos as its base. How many times have they been debunked now? Four? Five? Will Republicans ever accept it?
However, what is extremely significant is that the judge also ruled these videos could put providers at risk. Citing the recent mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic, death threats doctors have received and a suspected arson at another facility, the judge made it clear that these videos are motivating people to engage in domestic terrorism.
The ruling, in this case, is important. David Daleiden and his organization could potentially be held criminally liable for further crimes where the videos were a motivating factor.
Catherine Short, attorney for Daleiden and his fellow propagandists, took the usual right-wing cop-out and claimed that there is no direct proof any crimes were motivated by their videos. Considering the Planned Parenthood mass shooter said, “no more baby parts” when he was arrested, it’s a wonder how she keeps her law license.
It’s beyond dispute that this material is of significant public interest,” Short said. “I don’t think this court should be saying the public can’t handle the truth. (Source: CBS News)
Attorney Short summed up the entire argument for these videos to keep being promoted with her statement. “Significant public interest” is her only motivating factor. They simply do not care how many women live in terror or get killed, as long as they can peddle their right-wing pornography.
Featured image via Youtube
Still Moar AlterNet summaries:
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I'm posting this one for my Tea Party Christian friend who thinks that Europe should arm itself the way Texas does:
A petition from Daily Kos
Republican Presidential candidates are keeping up with their outrageous threats against women, even against women’s most basic constitutional rights.
Sign if you agree that we can not let these Republican candidates make decisions for women.
Ben Carson stated that supporting a woman’s right to choose was like supporting slavery. Ted Cruz has compared funding Planned Parenthood to funding an ongoing criminal enterprise. While Jeb Bush is just “not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health.”
It is time to end this extremism by electing more pro-choice Democratic women. Join EMILY’s List and take a stand to elect more pro-choice Democratic women today.
Keep Fighting,
Carissa Miller, Daily Kos
Paid for by EMILY’s List, www.emilyslist.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
The True History of the Right-Wing's Favorite Paranoid Fantasy, 'The War on Christmas'
December 22, 2015
Bill O'Reilly on 'The O'Reilly Factor' 092914
Photo Credit: YouTube
Photo Credit: YouTube
In November 2007, the American Family Association found itself in a state of panic. The collective cold sweat came after the self-proclaimed culture war crusaders saw that the word “family” — not “Christmas” — appeared before the word “tree” in the slick pages of Lowe’s just-released holiday catalog.
Doncha just love pix of ol' Bill-O? He always looks like he's ready for some Metamucil....
The organization quickly alerted its members. “The ads mentioning ‘Christmas’ cover only 12 square inches of the 5,236 square inches available,” the AFA notice said. “Lowe’s even has one of their Family trees turned upside down on a stand.”
Whiskey tango?!?? Have these people even BEEN to Lowe's? They barely let us have Halloween before saturating every store with Christmas paraphernalia.
Whiskey tango?!?? Have these people even BEEN to Lowe's? They barely let us have Halloween before saturating every store with Christmas paraphernalia.
The reaction was swift and severe: AFA members clamored to their phones and keyboards to reprimand the home improvement store’s corporate offices for such errant and offensive diction. The same day, a Lowe’s spokesman issued an apology, saying that the word swap was a mistake, and that they were “disappointed in the breakdown in [their] own creative process.”
I pity the poor Lowe's people for having to waste their time with this bullshit. Sounds like those AFAers need to get laid more often so they can start minding their own business instead of poking their wrinkled noses into everyone else's. Then again, as George Carlin would say, these are probably not people anyone would ever want to phuque.
I pity the poor Lowe's people for having to waste their time with this bullshit. Sounds like those AFAers need to get laid more often so they can start minding their own business instead of poking their wrinkled noses into everyone else's. Then again, as George Carlin would say, these are probably not people anyone would ever want to phuque.
Awash in victory, the AFA later wrote on its website that “Lowe’s has contacted the AFA and assures us that it is proudly committed to selling Christmas trees this year, as it has done in the past.”
I'm sure this epic battle was one of Jesus' top priorities. Skroo all that feeding the poor, healing the lame, clothing the nekkid, and housing the homeless crap He actually talked about in the Bible. That's for commies, not Christians.
I'm sure this epic battle was one of Jesus' top priorities. Skroo all that feeding the poor, healing the lame, clothing the nekkid, and housing the homeless crap He actually talked about in the Bible. That's for commies, not Christians.
That day marked one battle the AFA had won amid the interminable “War on Christmas,” but the nonprofit knew that many more loomed. In the years since the Lowe’s incident, the American Family Association has fought against any and all actors they believe are attempting to secularize the United States — a process that, if successful, the group fears will gut the country of its moral foundations.
This “War on Christmas,” AFA executive vice president Ed Vitagliano wrote in a November 2015 missive, is part of a “wider attempt to secularize the nation.” Such a move, Vitagliano continued, is “bad for America and ultimately threatens the very existence of the Republic.”
Oopsie--I see a typo. Do you? Here's a hint: he meant "theocracy," not "republic." Notice how he carefully omitted the word "democracy" when mentioning our government. Democracy is not something Christians approve of, it seems.
Oopsie--I see a typo. Do you? Here's a hint: he meant "theocracy," not "republic." Notice how he carefully omitted the word "democracy" when mentioning our government. Democracy is not something Christians approve of, it seems.
Vitagliano’s fear of a godless, “family tree”-filled world where citizens can barely find the wherewithal to whimper “Happy Holidays” to one another may very well be a Salvador Dalí-esque study in hyperbole. His worries of a war on Christmas, however, are not that far outside the realm of historical reality. Indeed, one of these wars has already taken place on American soil, and is older than the United States itself. Unlike today’s so-called War on Christmas — which the AFA claims has been ongoing for nearly the past decade — this war lasted for nearly 200 years, and was waged by Christians in the name of Christianity.
In the early 17th century, a cadre of austerity-cloaked Christians who called themselves Puritans made their way to the so-called New World. The icy, grim ground they met upon arrival corresponded well with their vision of an authentic Christianity: one shorn of its Elizabethan frills and scrubbed of its insidious pagan stains. It was from this “pure” soil and purified Christianity that these individuals believed a model society would, and must, be born.
Their immaculate beacon would also be born from labor. Historians have noted that New England’s calendar was one of the most physically draining ever adopted, with colonists working practically every day save for Sabbath, Election Day, public thanksgivings and “days of humiliation.” In 1629, Massachusetts Bay colonists went so far as to make it official company policy that those who appeared to be “idle drones” would not be allowed to live among them.
Christmas, then, posed a problem to Puritanical society. As practiced in Elizabethan England, the day offered both idleness and indulgence, and to the Puritans a painful reminder of the moment that Roman Christians mixed blood with dirty pagan customs, thus marking Christianity’s fall into wanton decadence. Wrote George William Curtis in an 1883 Harper’s, “Ritualistic decorations and delights, the pomp and splendor of holy-days…were not only [relics] of popery, but their retention was a sign of the fond cleaving of the Church of England to the hideous abominations of Rome.”
Christmas was not just an annoyance to ornery Puritan colonists; its celebration was a threat to discipline, an instrument needed to realize the colonists’ divine, purifying mission. Should the Puritan colonies succeed, Christmas and all it represented had to be buried.
And so it was. Before they officially banned Christmas in 1647, Puritans used labor to suppress the holiday’s observance. Shops were to remain open on Dec. 25, and on the first Christmas in Plymouth, colonists did not rest but began to build colonial settlements. Wrote one Plymouth colonist, “Munday [sic], the 25th day, we went on shore, some to fell tymber, some to saw, and some to carry, so no man rested at all that day.” He added that the closest the colonists came to commemorating Christmas was at the tail end of the day, when a master “caused us to [have] some Beere [sic].”
Outside Plymouth, the Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed the holiday in 1659, punishing those caught celebrating Christmas with a fine. Colonists in Connecticut went so far as to prohibit the making of minced pies, dancing, playing cards and any instrument except — inexplicably — the drum, trumpet or Jew’s harp on Dec. 25.
The faithful held the holiday hostage until 1681, when laws banning Christmas were repealed. Over the decades, though, anti-Christmas attitudes had been woven into New England’s cultural fabric, and thus did not bend in accordance with the vacillations of the law. Well into the 19th century, Boston schools remained open on Dec. 25, and students who missed class to await the gifts of Santa — whom many Puritans believed to be both pope-like and, perhaps not so coincidentally, the Antichrist — were punished. The nearly 200-year Christian war on Christmas would only end after an 1870 federal intervention, when Ulysses S. Grant made the day a federal holiday in an attempt to unite the post-war North and South.
Nevertheless, Puritans were more or less successful in their mission of erecting a model society. Curtis noted that while we might see dour bigotry as one of colonists’ primary imports, we cannot forget the fact that they also planted “the greatest of free commonwealths” and established liberty’s centrality in both church and state — a liberty that, rightly or wrongly, many today invoke in their own culture wars.
But where Puritanical fears centered on how the holiday would affect labor and encourage excess, today’s Christmas crusaders situate the holiday around themes of consumption and fears of cultural erasure. In its annual “Naughty or Nice” list, for instance, the AFA rates a company’s apparent morality — and therefore deservedness of business — according to how often the word “Christmas” appears in its holiday advertisements. To receive a perfect score, an honor that no such business has received this year, a company must “promote and celebrate Christmas on an exceptional basis.” To be deemed “nice,” a business must use the term “Christmas” on a regular basis in its advertisements. “Naughty” companies such as Gap and Amazon fail to acknowledge the holiday, or use its name in just one form of marketing. Occasionally, AFA will select one company on its “Naughty” list to boycott from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Indeed, the very material excesses against which the Puritans railed in their centuries-long “War on Christmas” are those that today’s crusaders use to quantify their perceived persecution — and employ as weapons against their ostensible aggressors.
Vitagliano ends his November note by saying that “a good smear [by the “secular news media”] is quicker and cheaper than actually trying to understand us.” Likewise, it might behoove Vitagliano to try to understand the history of the “war” that he inherits. For better or worse, the “War on Christmas” that actually existed was waged in labor and law, and as a founding principle. Today, the supposed war assumes a more reactionary stance, apparently taking place in holiday ads, chain coffee shops and the salutations of supermarket cashiers. Quite frankly, that’s a pretty cheap take on faith, and Christianity’s materialism-decrying savior. Maybe the Puritans got something right, after all.
Dear Faithful America member,
If you read the headlines, Christianity is an excuse to treat
Muslims as less than human, a justification for shooting up a Planned
Parenthood clinic, and even a reason to be upset about Starbucks cups.
You and I know that's not what our faith is about. But thanks to
right-wing politicians, gullible journalists, and feckless church
leaders, today America is seeing a sick and twisted version of Christianity that has nothing to do with Jesus.
It's time for us to speak up, and that's why Faithful America
exists. As the largest online community of Christians working for social
justice, we bring together hundreds of thousands of everyday Christians
to raise our voices and show the nation another side of Christianity.
But our current funding just won't cut it against the rising tide of right-wing extremism,
especially as the election season heats up. We need more staff, more
support for local activists, more newsworthy events across the country
-- and we can only do it if we raise $25,000 by the end of 2015.
Make an emergency end-of-year donation to Faithful America
With almost 300,000 grassroots members across the country, Faithful America is the largest organization of our kind. We're not affiliated with any church or denomination. We have no pastor, property, or charitable tax status to protect. We're not afraid of criticism, and our small staff and creative use of technology means we can turn on a dime to respond to the latest right-wing attacks.
Here's what our work looks like in action:
- Strength in numbers. Whether it's 15,000 of us or 60,000, each time we join together to challenge the religious right it shows the growing grassroots energy among everyday Christians.
- Headline news. Whether it's an outlet as large as The New York Times or as small as The Billings Montana Gazette, our campaigns consistently generate waves of media coverage -- and get the attention of those targeted by petitions delivered in-person by local Christians.
- Changing conventional wisdom. Politicians and journalists have gotten lazy about assuming that religious-right extremists speak for all Christians. When confronted with our campaigns, their expectations change quickly -- like when CBS host Bob Schieffer said on air that he'd been "inundated" with complaints from Faithful America members about Family Research Council president Tony Perkins.
With the Republican presidential primary heating up, things are about to get a lot busier for Faithful America. Often we have to act on just a few hours' notice, and that means we need to raise funds right now to prepare for the right's next attempts to hijack Christianity.
Make an emergency end-of-year donation to Faithful America
Thank you, and Merry Christmas,
Michael
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Christ...
Christ...
Christ...
Christy Christmachrist!
Ho...
Ho...
Ho!
(...Jesus H. Christ!!)
Christ...
Christ...
Christ...
Christy Christmachrist!
Ho...
Ho...
Ho!
(...Jesus H. Christ!!)
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Hey, Fux Noise and American "Family" Association--does this make me Christy enough for ya?
Does it get me off your "naughty" list
and onto your "nice" list?
Don't you have better things to do than get your panties in a wad at all the sales clerks and companies selling coffee or Chinese junk this time of year?
Wouldn't you rather go after those hypocritical Christian grifters, cheaters, wife-beaters, pedophiles, charlatans, and abusers?
You know, the ones giving Jesus a bad name?
Nah...didn't think so.
Hey, Fux Noise and American "Family" Association--does this make me Christy enough for ya?
Does it get me off your "naughty" list
and onto your "nice" list?
Don't you have better things to do than get your panties in a wad at all the sales clerks and companies selling coffee or Chinese junk this time of year?
Wouldn't you rather go after those hypocritical Christian grifters, cheaters, wife-beaters, pedophiles, charlatans, and abusers?
You know, the ones giving Jesus a bad name?
Nah...didn't think so.
posted by Dot Calm @ 7:49 AM
