AlterNet: Valerie Tarico: 'Why Do the Craziest Religious People Get the Most Attention?'

Source:AlterNet- columnist Valerie Tarico.

“There’s no question that religion can have some ugly moral and social consequences. The homophobic and misogynist attitudes of many American Evangelicals come straight out their sacred texts. So do the Islamic concepts of “dhimmitude” and jihad. So does the Jewish notion of favored bloodlines. So do Mormon and Scientologist recruiting practices. The Bible prescribes the death penalty for thirty six infractions, ranging from childhood disobedience to marital infidelity to witchcraft. The Quran contains over a hundred verses sanctifying the slaughter of infidels in one context or another. I’ve argued in the past that religion disinhibits violence rather than causing it, but in a world of complex causation, one where straws sometimes break the backs of camels, that may be a distinction without a difference. The fact is, putting God’s name on Iron Age morality contributes to Iron Age behavior.

There also can be no question that, in this regard, not all ideologies are created equal. Religions differ in their history, teaching, and priorities, and consequently in how readily they are leveraged to justify oppression or violence. To name this month’s most salient example, Islam’s death penalty for blasphemy, combined with a prohibition of images, means that some Muslims are uniquely likely to flare when testosterone gets ignited by blasphemous pictures. The Onion made this point recently with a graphic cartoon depicting Jesus, Moses, Ganesh, and Buddha engaged in sex, beneath the caption, “No One Murdered Because of This Image.” 

From the AlterNet

“In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher addresses Indiana’s new “religious freedom” law and calls on moderates of all religions to come out against fundamentalism.”

Source:Real Time With Bill Maher- on religious fundamentalism.

From Real Time With Bill Maher 

“Religious fundamentalism: sexier than Catholicism”

Source:FreeState MD- a woman who is perhaps out of this world.

Probably the same reason why the craziest Atheists who want to outlaw religion, because they are crazy and don’t understand the U.S. Constitution. If you don’t want to hear about someone, stop talking about them and you’ll hear less.

I like this article in the AlterNet, (perhaps the only article I’ve ever liked by the AlterNet) because Valerie Tarico takes on fundamentalists from all religions. Not just Evangelical Christians, which is what today’s so-called Progressives (the Far-Left really) only focus on:

“Christian-Conservatives, are evil bigots, because they put down women and gays. Conservative-Muslims, are good decent people, who are simply misunderstood. And when they do and say bad things, it’s America’s fault.” Which is generally the attitude that you get from the Far-Left. Which is what the AlterNet is, a clearly left-wing, if not socialist publication on the Far-Left. But with what you get with Valerie Tarico, is religious fundamentalism is bad, even it comes from non-Anglo-Saxon Protestant males.

If religious fundamentalism and bigotry that comes from religious fundamentalism, is a bad thing like gays aren’t real humans, or are mentally handicapped, or women’s place is in the home, etc, then religious fundamentalism is bad period. Doesn’t matter the religion, the race, ethnicity, or color of the people.

If you’re going to put down the Christian-Right when one of their members murders a man simply because he thought that guy was gay, because he had a feminine voice and demeanor, then you can’t defend that same behavior when it happens in Saudi Arabia. Where gays are put to death by their own Islamic government.

The debate about religious extremism shouldn’t be about race, ethnicity, color, or a specific religion. Unless you’re simply bigoted about one race, ethnic, or religious group. To coin a phrase from the great movie about Watergate All The President’s Men: “Follow the money.” Or in this case follow the bigotry. When the Christian-Right behaves badly, sure, go after them. But when Islamists behave badly, don’t call people who criticize that behavior bigots simply for criticizing bad behavior.

Stupid people, unfortunately come in all shapes, sizes, colors, races, ethnicities, religions and genders. Which makes them harder to deal with, because they can hit you at anytime from anyone. No race, ethnicity, religion or gender, has a monopoly on stupidity and bigotry. Which is too bad, because it would be easier to deal with and eliminate:

“Hey, now that we know what all stupid look like, lets just focus on them and put the bigoted morons away.”

You can’t do that with a mental disease like stupidity, simply because we don’t have enough prison and hospital space to house all of those morons. And given these facts when you just concentrate on the bigots from one religion and race of people, while you ignore the bigots from another religion which just happens to be the largest religion in the world, being Islam, you give away get out of jail free cards to a lot of people. Who are just as bigoted as the Christian-Conservatives you don’t like. Which is stupid in itself. 

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HLN: Showbiz Tonight- Countdown: 'Best Burnett Ever!'

Source:HLN- From Showbiz Tonight. 

Source:The Daily Journal

"The cast of the "Carol Burnett Show" including Burnett herself countdown the show's best moments on Showbiz Tonight."

From HLN

Source:The Daily Review- The Carol Burnett Show, being honored.

One of the best variety comedy shows of all-time, sort of like a half-hour Saturday Night Live. Speaking of SNL: SNL gets a lot of credit for being such an original variety skit-comedy show that other shows have tried to follow and make their own versions of it. And all of that is true, but Carol Burnett, was essentially the same thing, but came out 6-7 years earlier in the late 1960s, instead of 1975 with SNL and was on CBS instead of NBC. And you could make a case that Carol Burnett herself and her show with his her great cast and writers, inspired shows like Saturday Night Live and later In Living Color, MADD-TV and other skit comedy shows. Because of how good it was, how original it was, the topics it covered. That it wasn't about sending a political, or cultural message, but about making fun of everyday American life.

The Carol Burnett Show, covered and had everything and they weren't about politics at least in the sense they were trying to push some political message. It was simply about entertainment and what was going on in America at the time especially as it related to pop culture. And always looking for the funny side of everything they covered. They mad fun of politicians, movies, TV shows, actors, musicians, weren't worried about political correctness and pleasing everybody. But great comedians who all had similar sense of humors, great chemistry, who liked each other loved working with each other. And in that sense at least it reminds me of Seinfeld and was better than Saturday Night Live, that generally looks at politics from a political slant. Carol Burnett, was simply about making people laugh and doing it in a classy way and having a great time at it.

Russia Today: Thom Hartmann: 'The GOP Idea of Freedom'

Source:Thom Hartmann's Big Picture on President Vladimir Puttin's Russia Today.

"Thom Hartmann will be leaving The Big Picture TV show (on RT TV and Free Speech TV) at the end of September. We’ve had a great run with The Big Picture and earlier this summer we decided to discontinue that evening show so we could focus more directly on our daily 3-hour midday show, The Thom Hartmann Program. 

Having complete editorial control over a TV show syndicated internationally into more than 700 million homes was a great (and rare) opportunity.  We worked hard not to do "sports" or "soap opera" when covering politics, and instead focus on issues; we believe we accomplished a lot in that regard.  We're grateful to RT for the opportunity, and for fully honoring our contractual independence at all times.

You’ll still be hearing and seeing me on The Thom Hartmann Program, which is growing weekly in the noon-3 PM ET daypart." 

From Thom Hartmann

"The GOP Idea of Freedom" 

From The Big Picture With Thom Hartmann

"RT (formerly Russia Today or Rossiya Segodnya) (Russian: Россия Сегодня)[9] is a Russian state-controlled[1] international news television network funded by the Russian government.[16][17] It operates pay television and free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic.

RT is a brand of TV-Novosti, an autonomous non-profit organization founded by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005.[8][18] During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO "TV-Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia.[19][20][21] RT operates as a multilingual service with channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (2010–2022),[22][23] RT UK (2014–2022) and other regional channels also produce local content. RT is the parent company of the Ruptly video agency,[5] which owns the Redfish video channel and the Maffick digital media company.[6][7]

RT has regularly been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy.[2] Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation[58] and conspiracy theories.[65] UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality, including multiple instances in which RT broadcast "materially misleading" content.[72]

In 2012, RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Russian Ministry of Defence.[73] Referring to the Russo-Georgian War, she stated that it was "waging an information war, and with the entire Western world".[17][74] In September 2017, RT America was ordered to register as a foreign agent with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[75]

RT was banned in Ukraine in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea;[76] Latvia and Lithuania implemented similar bans in 2020.[77][78] Germany banned RT DE in February 2022.[79] After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland and then the entire European Union as well as Canada announced they were formally banning RT as well, while independent service providers in over 10 countries suspended broadcasts of RT.[80][81][82] Social media websites followed by blocking external links to RT's website and restricting access to RT's content.[83][84] Microsoft removed RT from their app store and de-ranked their search results on Bing,[85][86] while Apple removed the RT app from all countries except for Russia." 

From Wikipedia

"Thomas Carl Hartmann[1] (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio personality, author, former psychotherapist, businessman, and progressive political commentator.[2] Hartmann has been hosting a nationally syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, since 2003 and hosted a nightly television show, The Big Picture, between 2010 and 2017" 

From Wikipedia

Salon Magazine: 'Could Mitt Romney Take Paul Ryan Down With Him?'

Source:Salon Magazine.

"Grumbling from conservatives about Paul Ryan’s muted presence in the White House race could be a positive development for the Wisconsin congressman’s long-term political prospects. But it’s also possible that Ryan will end up ruing the day he accepted the offer to team up with Mitt Romney.

When Ryan was picked, many on the right hoped that the GOP ticket would run on Ryan’s budget blueprint, which calls for radical tax cuts for the wealthy, sweeping reductions in the federal social safety net, and the transformation of Medicare into a quasi-voucher program.

Instead, Ryan has been forced to present himself as a generic vice presidential candidate, disowning his own program and running on Romney’s intentionally non-specific platform.  This puts him in line with the Romney brain trust’s conviction that the weak economy will ultimately prompt swing voters to turn on Obama and that Romney will best be positioned to capture their votes if he’s seen as a competent but inoffensive protest vehicle." 

From Salon Magazine 

I hate to sound cliche and act like some cliche TV news reporter who at the end of his piece, doesn't have the answers to his own story and simply ends it by saying like: "Only time will tell. Back to you, Bob in the studio." but we'll know in about 6 weeks from now. 

If President Obama win reelection in a modern blowout, 10 points or so in the popular vote and wins North Carolina, Indiana, and Missouri, to go along with Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and Florida, then of course both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will get a lot of well-deserved blame for that. You don't believe me, just look at Geraldine Ferraro's political career post-1984, after she ran with Walter Mondale, who was a destined landslide loser to President Ronald Reagan.

But if Romney-Ryan come close, maybe we don't know who won the election until Wednesday of that week or something like that, Representative Ryan would get credit for getting Mitt Romney very close to the finish line and adding a real spark to a pretty dull and sluggish presidential campaign.

Thom Hartmann: 'Thoughts On Freedom'

Source:Thom Hartmann hosting a discussion about freedom.

"Thom Takes calls from listeners/viewers who share what freedom means to them." 

From Thom Hartmann

CBPP: 'Mitt Romney Budget Proposals Would Necessitate Very Large Cuts in Medicaid, Education, Health Research & Other Programs

Source:Center For Budget & Policy Priorities with a look at Mitt Romney's budget plan.

"Governor Mitt Romney’s proposals to cap total federal spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and boost defense spending to 4 percent of GDP would require very large cuts in other programs, both entitlements and discretionary programs. 

This update of an earlier analysis is based on updated economic and budget projections that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued this summer and additional information that the Romney campaign has provided on his budget proposals.  The resulting estimates of the required budget cuts are somewhat smaller than the ones we released on May 21, but they are still very deep.

For the most part, Governor Romney has not outlined cuts in specific programs.  But if policy­makers repealed health reform (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) and exempted Social Security from cuts, as Romney has suggested, and cut Medicare, Medicaid, and all other entitlement and discretionary programs by the same percentage to meet Romney’s overall spending cap and defense spending target, then they would have to cut non-defense programs other than Social Security by 22 percent in 2016 and 34 percent in 2022 (see Figure 1).  If they exempted Medicare from cuts for this period, the cuts in other programs would have to be even more dramatic — 32 percent in 2016 and 53 percent in 2022.

If they applied these cuts proportionately, the cuts in programs such as veterans’ disability compensation, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for poor elderly and disabled individuals, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), school lunches and other child nutrition programs, and unemployment compensation would cause the incomes of large numbers of households to fall below the poverty line.  Many who already are poor would become poorer.

The cuts in non­defense discretionary programs — a spending category that covers a wide variety of public services such as elemen­tary and secondary education, law enforcement, veterans’ health care, environmen­tal protection, and biomedical research — would come on top ofthe substantial cuts in this part of the budget that are already in law, due to the discretionary funding caps in last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA).  By 2022, the cuts under Governor Romney’s budget proposals would shrink nondefense discretionary spending — which, over the past 50 years, has averaged 3.9 percent of GDP and never fallen below 3.2 percent — to 1.8 percent of GDP if Medicare shares in the cuts, and to 1.3 percent of GDP if it does not.

These cuts would be noticeably deeper than those required under the austere House-passed budget plan authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI).  (Romney’s nondefense cuts are deeper because his proposal increases core defense spending — the defense budget other than war costs and some relatively small items such as military family housing — to 4 percent of GDP, while the Ryan budget does not.)  Over the coming decade, Romney would require cuts in programs other than core defense of $6.1 trillion, compared with $5.0 trillion in cuts under the House-passed budget plan."

Source:Center For Budget & Policy Priorities

The Romney budget is essentially the Ryan budget. But the way to save the safety net, especially Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and so- forth, is not by gutting them but making them real Welfare Insurance programs, only intended for the people who need them, self financed, so they don't put so much pressure on the rest of the Federal budget, including the national debt. And turning them over to the States to run, along with reforming the defense budget and tax code. There's the deficit vanishing and we can finally start paying down the national debt, once we obtain some real sustaining economic growth.

Lynn Stuart Parramore: 'Are You Ready For a Post Masculine World?'

Source:AlterNet columnist Lynn Stuart Parramore.

SourceThe Daily Journal 

"The sun began to set on traditional masculinity over 500 years ago – just around the time musketeers arrived on the battlefields of Europe. At first, the feudal knights scoffed. How unnatural, and worse, how unmanly to go around pointing ungainly, smoke-belching sticks at your enemies!

But soon enough, technology won out, and it was the knights who faded into obsolescence. Poets pined for the old masculinity, but the days when the brawniest ruled the land were numbered. Brains now counted. So did the ability to adapt to new technologies. Just ask Elizabeth I." 

From the AlterNet 

“There are a few things that happen when you attempt to travel the streets of New York with a bright yellow book that screams The End of Men under your arm. First, you get a lot of inquisitive stares. Some people snicker. When you accidentally leave the book on the counter of your morning coffee shop, the man who returns it to you points to the cover, giggles, and does a little jig.

But if you are the author of a book called The End of Men—with a man for a husband and a boy for a child—you get sticky notes left on your bedroom door. “My 6-year-old, to whom the book is dedicated, writes things like, ‘Only bullies write books called The End of Men,’” says author Hanna Rosin, whose 2010 Atlantic essay turned 310-page book hit stands this week. She clarifies: “He’s learning about bullying in school.”

Source:The Daily Beast- "It's not the end of men - but they're in trouble." From Hanna Rosin.

From The Daily Beast 

“Are we seeing an end of men and a rise of women? In our guest spot today Hanna Rosin author of The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, points out that women are no longer gaining on men they have pulled ahead of them. In her book she investigates the shifting power dynamics between men and women throughout every level of society and the implications it has on life events.

Check out an excerpt from The End of Men: And the Rise of Women and be sure to tune in at 3:40pm for the full conversation.

“Award-winning journalist Hanna Rosin argues that the transitional economy is ushering in a new era in gender relations, and explores how both men and women can adapt to our rapidly changing social and cultural dynamics.” 

Source:NBC News- Hanna Rosin's book.

From NBC News 

"Award-winning journalist Hanna Rosin argues that the transitional economy is ushering in a new era in gender relations, and explores how both men and women can adapt to our rapidly changing social and cultural dynamics." 

Source:The RSA- Hanna Rosin talking about her book.

From The RSA 

Warning: this article could be construed as politically incorrect by oversensitive tight asses. Actually, it probably will be.

Men, who needs them? A Far-Left pipe dream where men are not even welcome, or where masculinity disappears, or where all men are essentially gay. I find it ironic that people on the Far-Left who are so anti-male man-haters, tend to be somewhat dykish even and have masculine characteristics themselves. Even though they claim to be anti-masculinity. They see football, boxing, interest in cars, tools, gambling, checking out attractive women, and I could go on, but I have other things I would like to accomplish in my life, but they see all of these activities as somehow sexist. Even though a lot of American women, straight even, like football, boxing, cars, tools, gambling, etc and are some of the most feminine, beautiful and sexy women you’ll ever see.

It is not so much masculinity that the man-hating sexist Far-Left doesn’t like. Well, they don’t like masculinity, but it’s male masculinity and male heterosexuality that they don’t like. But if women are a Dyke, no problem, because she’s just being who she was born as. According to Socialists on the Far-Left who don’t like masculinity when it comes from straight men. 

You’ll never see straight men, or women who are to the right of Socialists, (democratic or otherwise) which is only most of the world, try to put down female femininity. Because we love women, especially straight women. At least coming from a straight man. We love who they are and how versatile that they are. That they’re cute, beautiful, well-built, funny, but they’ll also stand up for themselves and watch sports with the guys.

There are straight women who like sports and there are straight men such as myself, who like soap operas. If they’re funny, well-written, well-done and seem to have some broader point other than: "Who is Jake going to stab in the back now." Or whoever the character is. Without straight men and yes we tend to be masculine which is a common characteristic about straight men and something that straight women tend to like about us, we would have a country of gay men and overly adorable and feminine straight women who never grow up. We would be a national day care center and kindergarten class. With no one to fix the cars when they break down, police the streets, defend the country and so-forth. Because all the men would be makeup artists, or clothing designers. Well, I guess the dykes could handle the male responsibilities. It would be a strange universe where everyone who enters who use to live on Planet Earth would think they drank too much, or got too high the night before.