Saturday, February 21, 2009

Picture of today

Kill chimpy, story on page 23

I wasn't bothered by the aroma of racism in the NY Post's infamous cartoon. Cops really did shoot a chimp. The basic premise of the cartoon didn't just come out of right field for no obvious reason. And many on the left have spent the past eight years calling George W. Bush “Chimpy.” If we don't like calling people chimps, we shouldn't call people chimps. And why are so many liberals so quick to identify chimps as blacks? Seems to me there's a lot of unconscious stereotyping going on here.

No, what bothers me is that the chimp representing Obama was lying dead in a pool of blood. It appears to me that the NY Post is calling for Obama's assassination. They certainly don't seem to be perturbed by the possibility. Calling for the president's assasination is bad enough in the best of times, but right now it is an active fantasy of a disturbingly large number of heavily armed Republican nutcases. Why isn't anyone in the media talking about that angle? It seems that there is some kind of unwritten rule against criticizing Republicans for inciting murder.

Hell, it appears there's an unwritten rule against criticizing Republicans for actually committing murder. When Republican Jim Adkisson recently shot up a church with the explicit intention of killing liberals, it made only the smallest ripple in the national news. As much as Bush and his sycophants bragged about the lack of terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11, you'd think a terrorist attack on American soil would get quite a bit of airplay and analyis. And this Republican terrorist has since published a manifesto aimed at getting other Republicans to go on murderous rampages. Where's the outrage? Can you imagine the reaction if a Democrat shot up a megachurch and called on other Democrats to kill conservatives? Yes you can.

And worse, a Republican terrorist was recently found to have the ingredients for a dirty bomb and he was actively planning to build one. He wasn't even caught by the police. Had his wife not killed him, he may have realized his dream. As far as I know, this has gone completely un-commented on in the media. Think about it. A Republican terrorist actually has radioactive materials and is building a bomb and that gets no media attention. How can that be?

And you have morons like this guy, publicly calling for mass murder and ruminating about what to do with all the dead bodies. Chances are, these guys are little tips of big icebergs. How many of these Republican nutcases are out there plotting.

It's monumentally irresponsible for the media to ignore this groundswell of Republican terrorist activity. Hopefully, the police are doing a better job.We need a national campaign to expose these assholes and pressure their enablers to stop their hateful nonsense. Anyone who advertises with the NY Post, Fox, or any other Murdoch property should be boycotted. Let's see how much money they can make from people who are unashamedly pro-terrorist, who don't hide their desire to assassinate Obama behind lame non-apology apologies.

(Links via Sadly No)

Monday, February 16, 2009

An illustrative example

I overheard two wingnuts discussing taxes as I was having a coffee at the botanic garden this morning. One said that on a $50 million profit, even a tax increase of one tenth of one percent(at this point he paused and you could see little gears spinning behind his eyes), which would be $500,000, could seriously harm business in this country.

Well, the little gears started spinning behind my eyes. I'm not a math wiz, so I started with 1 percent of $100 equals one dollar, then one percent of $1000 equals $10, until I eventually worked my way up to one tenth of one percent of $50 million is $50,000. That's $50,000 not $500,000.

I think that's just about right. The difference between $50,000 and $500,000 quite tellingly illustrates the vast chasm that separates wingnut beliefs from reality.

Update: Fixed my embarrassing math error. I knew the formula, just got confused about how many zeroes are in $50 million.

Picture of today