Retired military chaplains are claiming that it will be impossible to serve both the armed forces and god if they can't preach that homosexuality is a sin. It is the retired chaplains that are speaking out because, they claim, their active duty brethren would be open to charges of insubordination if they went public.
Worshiping another god is also a sin, but the Constitution protects those who worship another god. Are Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists to be made second class members of our armed forces because they don't share the same faith as the chaplain?
These chaplains took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Part of that Constitution is the right to worship other gods. Chaplains are honor bound to support a member's right, to sin. They knew that going in. Why are they suddenly so upset about a different sin?
This is a secular nation. A secular nation needs a secular armed forces. We must guard against turning our armed forces into an Army of god. If these sky-pilots can't abide by their oath, bye-bye.
H/T New York Times
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Was Barack Obama busy apologizing to everyone for losing the election yesterday? Maybe, but somehow he still found time — maybe during his cigarette break — to send a squadron of Flying Death Robots to Pakistan, for a routine killing spree. [BBC]
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Just Imagine. The man who bites heads off birds and fronted for the hyper-heavy metal band, Black Sabbath, has bits of Neanderthal coursing though his veins. Ozzie Osbourne joins DNA co-discoverer James Watson and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates as persons having their entire genome sequenced and analyzed. Ozzie it seems has a little segment on his chromosome 10 that very likely traces back to a Neanderthal forebearer. Says the unflappable Ozzie, ""Given the swimming pools of booze I've guzzled over the years—not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol…you name it—there's really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. Maybe my DNA could say why." Brutish determination ,it seems, is the answer. I am taking up funds to get a similar DNA sequence done for Dick Cheney. Any ideas on his forebearers?
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MATT LAUER: You remember what he said?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yes, I do. He called me a racist.
MATT LAUER: Well, what he said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: That's -- "he's a racist." And I didn't appreciate it then. I don't appreciate it now. It's one thing to say, "I don't appreciate the way he's handled his business." It's another thing to say, "This man's a racist." I resent it, it's not true, and it was one of the most disgusting moments in my Presidency.
Der Monkey Fuhrer, upset that Kanye said "George Bush don't care about Black people."
Butt Monkey, what other inference is possible?
While this was happening in New Orleans...
Bush the Clown was playing with himself in Arizona...
"Lookie me, Pickles, I'm Clint Black!"
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Barack Obama's Green Agenda Crushed at the Ballot Box
With a slew of new climate change deniers entering Congress, Barack Obama's environmental ambitions are now dead.
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The timing makes this especially tragic:
As the Tea and the Republican Party activists were gearing up for their election day campaigns, including plans to intimidate Democratic leaning voters from casting ballots, ACORN, responsible for registering millions of young, minority, and working class voters, closed its last door, ending its 40-year run as arguably the nation's most effective anti-poverty group.The group, whose state affiliates dissolved months ago, is filing for bankruptcy, selling off its few remaining assets.
Can anyone name a single crime they committed? Anyone?
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Margaret, happy days are here again. The skies above are blue again. It really is just too good to be true. The Republican gains delivered by the Tea Party are almost more than I could hope for. I only wish that lovely Witch in Delaware could have come along for the party as well.
Now let's see. Where do I begin? Our taxes will soon be about zero percent so let's start spending today to get this economy back on track. The government will shrink to a size somewhat equal to the size of our military which means Social Security has to go. Those of us who were smart enough to save for a rainy day will be high and dry… for at least a few months. And I got a good check-up from my doctor recently so I don't need my Medicare… for at least a few months.
Now about that black man in the Oval Office. It will take a few days to get impeachment hearings underway, but until then I hear they are moving him out of the White House and into that little room at the top of the Washington Monument so he can't cause any more trouble. Oh and Ms. Pelosi is out too. How dare she take on the Health Insurance Industry. Didn't she realize people own stock in those companies?
Gays are no more. They all left, presumably to join the French Army. And teen pregnancies are a thing of the past. Teens will no longer have sex. Except the Palins. The Palins will abandon teen pregnancies as easily as a camel will pass through the eye of an early pregnancy test stick. No. The Palins will continue to give birth to abstinence only babies. That we know for sure.
Abortion? Well everyone knows that was just a luxury American women really couldn't afford anyway. And government will now be small enough to actually fit inside a woman's uterus, so all women with unwanted pregnancies have left, presumably to join the French Army.
Sarah Palin has a clear path to the Presidency in 2012… which means we'll have another presidential election in 2014 when she quits. No problems though. Michele Bachmann has been talking to God and he assures her that the two years as Vice President will fly by and she will be in the Oval Office before she knows it. Let's all start a prayer group for her now.
I found it interesting that John Boehner declared that Washington has been put on notice. Considering how long he's been a part of Washington, I say Politician heal thyself. Yes. Washington has been put on notice indeed. It's been put on notice that Americans have the attention span of a gnat.
If there is one thing we learned last night, it is not that Americans are mad at their government. It's not that Americans want lower taxes. It's not even that Tea Party Americans who voted for McCain don't like Barack Obama. We knew all that. What we learned last night is something we really should have known all along. Americans want what we don't have. And once we have it, we no longer want it. 2012 will be here before we know it, and I wonder how we will feel then about what we have now.
No worries Margaret. Nothing changes quickly in Washington. And that is probably the best thing about our system of government. Time is on our side. Eventually Americans realized that slavery was unacceptable. Eventually Americans realized that women should be given the right to vote. Eventually Americans realized that Senior Citizens needed a little help at the end of their lives and those living in poverty needed a little leg up from time to time. Eventually we even realized that healthcare should be available for anyone who needs it…. errr. Well, it takes time. That's my point.
Now go have some pie and take some time to enjoy your day. I mean it. Really.
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A letter from a progressive to President Obama.
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The End Of The Girl Era - by digby
Limbaugh classy as always celebrated the political demise of the woman who made his manly parts shrivel into raisins:
The manly orange men are back in charge. The lost decade that "began in 2007 when "Nancy Pelosi and the girls took over the House" has been prematurely terminated. He's happy now.
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No one but ourselves to blame ...
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The citizens of this country have been anything but united since 9/11 and the SCOTUS's decision only proves that even 45% of our citizens united with the common desire to vote is no match for a handful of corporations and their political arm in the Chamber of Commerce.
You have only yourselves to blame and I have nothing but withering contempt for every single last one of you.
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The same party that started needless and illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to no appreciable benefit to either of our three countries and eventually cost us trillions bloating the military-industrial complex, the party that wanted to deport over 11,000,000 hard-working brown people, wanted to spy on you without FISA court warrants, that strive to make our children more ignorant in schools, to make abortion illegal even in cases of incest or rape, the same party that is bound and determined to remove the very last sinew of regulation on any industry even as they're polluting our ecosystem and killing us. The same party that demonized African Americans after Katrina, wounded veterans when their neglect was revealed and the newly unemployed and homeless when they understandably looked to our government for help.
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Getting into a climate change debate on Twitter could be even more exhausting than it sounds now that a software developer named Nigel Leck has automated the process. Tired of arguing with climate change deniers in 140 character quips, the programmer wrote a script to do it for him. Chatbot @AI_AGW scans Twitter every five minutes searching for hundreds of phrases that fit the usual denier argument paradigm. Then it serves them up some science.Those responses are pulled from a database of hundreds of responses that the software matches up to the argument made by the original tweeter. Those who claim the entire solar system is warming are met with something like: "Sun's output has barely changed since 1970 & is irrelevant to recent global warming" followed by a link to corresponding scientific research.
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'dissenting voice' on going to war with Iraq and thought
about dumping Dick Cheney from the 2004 ticket, running
with Kanye West, instead.
Harry Reid waves the white flag (it's what he does best)
[Senate majority leader Harry] Reid said Wednesday morning that the Senate's shrunken Democratic majority will have to find a way to collaborate with GOP lawmakers, both in the Senate and in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.Let's be clear on this. "Collaborating with the GOP" is just another way of saying "surrendering to the GOP". Republicans have been very consistent that their idea of bipartisanship is not negotiating, it is no giving something to get something, no, not in the slightest. The Republican idea of "collaborating" is simply "you agree to do it my way."
Harry Reid must be one of the dimmer politicians in office if he cannot understand that. I have to wonder if he is suffering some sort of dain bramage from having been punched in the head too many times. The concept that the Senate is a collegial place where senators from both parties will work together in an atmosphere of mutual respect and cooperate to pass mutually agreeable legislation is now as much a quaint relic of the past as are high-button shoes and steam locomotives, but good old Harry can't see that.
(It's a good thing that Harry Reid wasn't around to negotiate who occupied what territory at end of the Second World War; he'd have given the Soviets all of the territory to the east of the Seine River.)
America's darling Abstinence Educator and unwed teenage mom, Brisket Palin, forgot to vote:
"I did not send in my absentee ballots to Alaska. I'm going to be in trouble. Sorry, mom!"
Well, I guess that's OK. Those dancing Gorilla-gram jobs are hard to come by.
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Orange is the new Black - All praise and flowers to our new Speaker of the House, the Oompa Loompa Überboss, Weepy the Cigarette Smoking Skidmark. Proving that you can fool enough of the people some of the time, the GOP has swept back into power on a promise of austerity for thee, but not for me, and tax cuts for the rich and powerful.
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Bloomberg reports that Republican-leaning outside groups — like Karl Rove's American Crossroads and the Chamber — spent $167 million on the U.S. midterm elections and came out on the winning side of almost twice as many races as they lost. The New York Times notes that these outside groups helped offset cash advantages held by Democratic incumbents.
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Here is a snapshot of the GOP Class of 2010's extremism: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/11/03/gop-frosh-class/
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Karl Rove's Scary Stories Helped Electorate Realize Obama Is Muslim
