But they are Blanche!

Build that wall!

The GOP's Periodic Table of Elements

Koch Bros. - They're The Evil Thing

Koch Bros. - They're The Evil Thing
Parody of "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" - the classic Coke commercial from the early 70's, targeting the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch. Yes, they have power, and they literally have money to burn. But remember, the Koch Brothers wasted $400 million dollars of their own fortune trying but failing to defeat President Obama's re-election in 2012, and trying but failing to defeat the Affordable Care Act. Since April 25, 2014), the video has been shared over 44,000 times! It's going viral! Thanks, everyone!

The Difference Between a Tea Party “Patriot” and a Real Patriot

Republicans are great at coining a term and using it over and over and over and over and – well you get the point. It’s as if there’s a secret handbook only conservatives are given access to where they’re instructed which words to say and when to say them. Rich people aren’t wealthy, they’re “job creators.” Laws that legalize using religion to discriminate against others are “religious freedom” laws. Even when it comes to patriotism they act as if they’re the only ones who are patriotic. As if flying an American flag, putting a “God Bless America” bumper sticker on their vehicle and finishing sentences with “support our troops” instantly makes them patriotic. 

It’s Propaganda 101, but they’re masters of it. Though it’s easy to be a master of propaganda when you’ve conditioned those who support you to blindly support almost anything you say. 

And while I don’t doubt some of these conservatives are true patriots, many of them aren't anything close to being that.

A true patriot loves this country. They want to make this country better for every American, not just those who look like them. A real patriot might question our government, but they don’t hoard guns in anticipation of overthrowing it. True patriots respect our military by only putting them in harm’s way if it’s absolutely necessary, not because they want something by which to try to define their presidency. 

Real patriots respect the rights of all Americans, they don’t try to pass laws which aim to restrict the rights of those who they don’t feel should have certain rights. Actual patriots realize that the best way to fix our government is to make sure it’s easier for every American to vote, not harder. 

Genuine patriots understand that supporting our troops means supporting our troops, even after they've served their country and are trying to adapt to civilian life. Authentic patriotism means understanding that being an American isn’t defined by skin color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, how many flags you own or how many guns you possess. 

Patriotism means understanding that there’s no such thing as “traditional American values” because our Constitution was set up for a nation to evolve and grow as society evolves and grows. It’s not always liking who’s president, but not actively rooting for their failure. 

It means supporting our Constitution, even if it doesn’t support something you think should be constitutional – but isn’t. 

Most tea party “patriots” don’t fall into any of those categories. They say they love our Constitution, yet do everything they can to violate it whenever it doesn’t side with their personal beliefs. They say they support our troops yet their party is the one that always sends them off to needless wars. They brag about their love for America while hating most Americans. They constantly harp on about standing for freedom while seeking to restrict the freedoms for those with which they disagree.

The only “patriotism” that’s found within most of these tea party “patriots” is found in the trinkets they own, like flags and bumper stickers, yet when it’s time to act like an actual patriot they don’t have the slightest clue what that actually means.

John Fugelsang Destroys The Bible-Thumping Republican Candidates In 2 Minutes

In this hilarious clip, political comedian John Fugelsang calls out the Republican presidential candidates for constantly praising Jesus Christ but hypocritically ignoring His words when it comes to social issues and legislative policy.

As the child of two ex-clergy, Fugelsang is perfectly equipped to discuss “Mom’s first husband”: “I love the guy, but the fan club scares me.”

He then ridicules the Republican mass of candidates and recommends that Jesus of Nazareth would be a good choice for the GOP ticket. “The GOP would love to get behind a guy who was a peaceful radical, a non-violent revolutionary, who hung around with lepers, hookers, and criminals, who never spoke English, was not an American citizen, a man who was anti-capitalism, anti-wealth, anti-public prayer, anti-death penalty, but never once remotely anti-gay!”

Death for Drug Dealers and Quarantines for AIDS Victims: The Mike Huckabee You May Not Remember

On Tuesday, Mike Huckabee made it official. The former Republican Arkansas governor and Fox News host launched his second bid for the White House in his hometown of Hope, Arkansas, vowing to stop the "slaughter" of abortion and calling for the protection of the "laws of nature" from the "the false God of judicial supremacy."

Huckabee is joining a GOP field that's bigger and more competitive than the one he out-hustled to win the Iowa caucuses seven years ago. The Christian conservatives who flocked to the former Baptist preacher in 2008 can now turn toward other evangelical-minded candidates in the GOP presidential race. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is already in the hunt; former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and and ex-Texas Gov. Rick Perry are mulling bids. But Huckabee of today is also a far different candidate than the affable ex-gov who once rocked a bass guitar while stumping with Chuck Norris (although Walker, Texas Ranger is officially on board for this campaign, too). Since dropping out of the 2008 race, he's flaunted a more combative, occasionally conspiratorial brand of politics—flirting with birtherism, advising prospective enlistees to avoid joining the armed forces until President Barack Obama has left office, and, just last month, warning social conservatives that the United States is "moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity."

By the standards of his political career, 2008 was in many ways an aberration. As he mounts a second run for the nomination, Huckabee is staying true to the kinds of red-meat issues he first entered politics to promote, in a long-shot 1992 bid for Senate against Democratic incumbent Dale Bumpers.

Huckabee, then a Baptist pastor who operated a small television station out of his Arkadelphia church, made sex and morality the centerpieces of his '92 campaign—and he preached as fiery a message from the stump as he did from the pulpit. The novice politician let loose with eyebrow-raising tirades that occasionally put him to the right of the most fire-breathing conservatives. He endorsed quarantining AIDS patients, condemned efforts to shield homosexuals from discrimination, and called for the death penalty to be imposed on big-time drug dealers. He attacked Bumpers repeatedly as a libertine who supposedly supported giving condoms to 12-year-olds, sanctioned gay throuples, and voted to use taxpayer funds on "pornographic" art.

Huckabee's 1992 platform was an artifact of the Moral Majority's high-water mark. In interviews and on the stump he explained that the nation had strayed toward "selfishness and sensuality" and had been "savaged by radical groups bent on a moral and social agenda" at odds with Judeo-Christian values. "When I was in school, they passed out Gideon Bibles—today, they pass out condoms," he said at stop after stop on the trail. In the new liberal order, Huckabee warned his hometown paper, the Hope Star, a family would consist of "three homosexual men living together."

The gay agenda, he believed, was influencing and restricting the nation's response to the AIDS crisis. He endorsed quarantining AIDS patients from the rest of society—a radical view even among conservatives at the time—while arguing that the severity of the epidemic had been exaggerated because gay people wielded so much political clout. The federal government should spend less money on AIDS, he insisted, and more on diseases that the afflicted had not brought on themselves, such as cancer.

"I realize a lot of people have received AIDS through blood transfusions, but AIDS is basically a lifestyle disease, and when the lifestyle is changed, the disease risk goes significantly down," Huckabee said in one interview. AIDS advocates themselves, not taxpayers, should pony up: "Elizabeth Taylor went before Congress and made a big pitch that we needed more federal funding for AIDS. If Elizabeth Taylor would take one of the rings off her finger and sell it, she could get more money for AIDS research than the average Arkansan will make in two years of hard work. If she's really serious about it, she's got assets that she could dispose of. Why should she make me take money from my children’s future, and take it right off my table when she needs to cough up some of her own coin for that."

Huckabee's campaign literature made frequent note of Bumpers' alleged favoritism toward gays. He attacked his opponent for supporting the Americans with Disabilities Act (because it included protections for AIDS patients) and a 1991 civil rights bill that would have prohibited housing discrimination based on sexual orientation. "Mr. Bumpers voted for all the bills which help to give homosexuals rights but takes away employers and others rights to protect themselves," a Huckabee mailer asserted.

According to Huckabee, being gay wasn't just a sin—it should be a criminal offense. Another Huckabee fact sheet noted that "Bumpers voted no on an amendment saying that 'the homosexual movement threatens the strength and survival of the American family,' and calling for enforcement of state sodomy laws," which made gay sex a felony "crime against nature" in many states.

The ongoing conservative attack on the National Endowment for the Arts fit neatly into Huckabee's narrative of Bumpers as a tool of the gay rights crowd. At the time, the federally funded agency was in the hot seat over a handful of artworks presenting religious symbols in ways critics considered blasphemous. Bumpers had said the art was in poor taste, but he voted not to defund the agency. Huckabee ran a radio ad accusing Bumpers of funding "pornography." Bumpers called the ad "vile."

"What's vile," Huckabee replied, "is having our tax dollars spent on photos of a man urinating in the mouth of another man, using tax dollars to fund a fictional story about the Biblical character of Lazarus having homosexual liaisons with Jesus Christ before and after his resurrection, and funding for a jar of human urine in which a crucifix had been placed and entitled, 'Piss Christ.'"

Then as now, Huckabee was a staunch opponent of abortion, a procedure he believed women underwent for superficial reasons. "Should we take a perfectly viable human being and end that human being's life because the mother wants another semester of college or wants to play in a tennis tournament?," he asked one interviewer. And he proposed expanding the death penalty to include major drug dealers and anyone who, after committing a previous felony, shot someone with a gun—even if the shooting wasn't fatal. "I know that's harsh, but someone who has shot someone in the leg could easily shoot someone in the heart," Huckabee said. (Huckabee did not respond to a request for comment on whether he still holds these views.)

Although Huckabee would later draw the ire of conservatives for raising taxes as governor of Arkansas, he took a die-hard stance on government spending. He called welfare "a new type of dependency and slavery" and warned that "the government has become a plantation system...The master is in the big house and we're the sharecroppers out here."

Late in the race, Huckabee discovered that his rival’s campaign had purchased more than a dozen videotapes of Huckabee's old sermons, a potential opposition research gold mine. He suggested Bumpers watch them. "I hope he listens to the message on pornography that I presented a couple of years ago," he said in a press release, "because then he'll know why I feel so strongly about the way pornography degrades women and children, dehumanizes sex into animal behavior, and why I so vigorously oppose the use of my tax dollars being used to fund it." The Bumpers campaign never did anything with the tapes Huckabee had encouraged the senator to watch.

Fire-and-brimstone Huckabee ultimately fell flat—he lost by 20 points. But the race provided a launching pad for his quick ascent up the political ladder. In later years, as he grew into a more polished politician, Huckabee became more protective of his old sermons. During the 2008 presidential campaign, reporters were told that videos of his sermons had been destroyed—or that they still existed and were open to the public but not to reporters. Huckabee, meanwhile, lasted longer than anyone expected in 2008 by crafting a reputation as a wisecracking pol who poked fun at Republicans who use "summer as a verb."

"I think he's the same guy who started out," says Max Brantley, editor of theArkansas Times, who covered the 1992 race. "He's got a penchant for sort of cheap-shot quips. He thinks a lot of himself. He thinks he can talk himself out of anything. The main thing I still marvel at is how many people think he's a nice guy, because he's got a real mean streak."

But at this point, after spending the years since the 2008 election feeding red meat to his base, the tapes may not even matter much. In just the last six months, he's urged states to ignore a possible Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage and attacked Jay-Z for "arguably crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife [Beyonce] as a sex object." Researchers won't have to scour church basements for dusty VHS cassettes containing his stem-winding sermons. They can just turn on the television.

CHRISTINE M. FLOWERS: People have spoken and Supreme Court should listen

John Roberts cut through the semantics and the florid prose about "dignity" when he said this to one of the attorneys arguing in favor of same-sex marriage: "You're not seeking to join the institution. You're seeking to change what the institution is."

And there, my friends, you have the critical question: is marriage a large-tent institution that embraces many different variations of "devotion" (and therefore gays and lesbians are only asking to enter under the tent,) or is it a solemn petrified edifice that must be remodeled, stone by stone, to accommodate the wishes of a newly-empowered minority.

When you put it that way, you understand what is really at stake.

It's common to hear opponents of same-sex marriage described as bigots, religious zealots or inhabitants of the "wrong side of history," as if we were walled up behind Check Point Charlie in East Berlin. There is this sense of inevitability on the part of gay marriage advocates, to the point that they can sometimes even show sympathy for those of us who insist on traditional definitions. I've had conversations where my enlightened interlocutor will smile sadly, tilt her head as if dealing with a confused child and figuratively pat me on the head as if I were Cindy Lou Who and she was sending me off to my bigoted bed with a glass of milk.

The attendant sigh says "she'll learn."

Actually, "she" has been learning a lot of things lately, particularly in the wake of the conscience law controversy in Indiana last month. Hopefully, the justices on the high court have been studying up as well, particularly when it comes to that crash course in societal bullying.

John Roberts wasn't explicit, but it's clear he was referring to what happened in his native Hoosier state when he observed that gay and lesbian couples are trying to impose their conception of marriage on a pre-existing institution, changing it beyond recognition. Attorney General Donald Verilli also realized what was happening when, in response to a question about what impact the universal legalization of gay marriage would have on a religious school's right to deny teacher housing to a gay couple, he delivered the equivalent of a sophisticated "uh, um" and failed to provide a legitimate answer.

That's what usually happens when marriage equality advocates are faced with the blunt question: "What do you do if someone doesn't want to bake you a cake?" or in more general terms, how does your concept of equality square with someone else's sense of freedom?

Before the Indiana dust up, proponents of same-sex marriage tried to make it seem as if legalization of these unions was simply a matter of due process and equal protection, or as Justice Anthony Kennedy likes to trill in his Rod McKuen-like majority decisions, "dignity." But when it comes to the dignity of people who object to gay unions on religious or moral grounds, they are dismissed as bigots. The rainbow flags come out, CNN marches into the street to find the most aggrieved and photogenic victims and, poof!, a governor is reduced to blathering apologies about offending a minority whose political clout far outweighs its size.

I'm actually glad this happened so close in time to these critical oral arguments on same-sex marriage, because it provides a blueprint for the justices of how we arrived at the point where two men marrying each other became an undeniable civil right, and speaking out against it became hate speech.

This is the classic modus operandi of those who seek change by all costs, even through intimidation. The advocates for marriage equality (clever term) are well-versed in that practice which was perfected by feminists of the Roe v. Wade era. They could not find an actual "right" to abortion in the constitution, and so they switched their focus and started talking about the "dignity" of women while at the same time, minimizing the dignity of the unborn child. At some level, it was a fabulous success. Abortion became legal at a national level.

But anyone who has been a warrior on the bloody battlefield of abortion rights over the past four decades knows how Roe kept the debate alive, because we who think judges shouldn't usurp the voice of the people on these crucial issues refused to go gentle into that nihilistic night.

I'm predicting that will be the case if the justices rule in favor of the same sex advocates. Frankly, if you asked a majority of Americans, they'd have no problem with giving same sex couples all of the legal rights and privileges (and headaches) conveyed by traditional marriage. By nature, we tend to be an egalitarian population that rewards fair dealing.

But we don't like to be told by a few men and women in black robes that, because we disagree with the frenetic wave of change orchestrated by a motivated minority, we are bigots. As Justice Roberts said, "People feel very differently about something if they have the chance to vote on it than if it's imposed on them by the courts."

If the high court chooses to reward the loudest voices with a right that simply does not exist at either common law or in the reverent folds of the constitutional fabric, they can rest assured that there will be battles waged by those who refuse to capitulate in someone else's version of "dignity."

They could be people of faith. They could be atheists with a devotion to constitutional integrity. Or they could simply be people who prefer the stability of a great stone edifice to the wind-whipped flimsiness of a fragile tent.

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Readers may send her email at cflowers1961@gmail.com.

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/02/6205471/christine-m-flowers-people-have.html?fb_action_ids=10205669671455006&fb_action_types=og.comments#storylink=cpy

Harlem Hate Pastor James David Manning: Justin Bieber Is A Transgender Man

In the last few weeks Manning has declared that Starbucks laces their lattes with "sodomite semen" (which can get womenpregnant), that former President George H.W. Bush has had "anal sex with 100 men," that all gay Americans will "become cannibals" by next year, and that Islamists are justified toexecute homosexuals. Today he reveals that pop idol Justin Bieber is a transgender man who "threw his life away and at 20 years old can't grow his breasts back." Just wait until theBeliebers get a hold of this.

Fox ‘News’ And Bill O’Reilly Get Hammered By High School Students For Their Lack Of Journalistic Ethics

Court: State lawyer’s ‘bullying’ of gay student not protected by 1st Amendment

A state attorney fired for an anti-gay campaign against a college student can’t collect unemployment benefits, the Michigan appeals court says, rejecting claims that his off-hours activities were protected by the First Amendment.

Andrew Shirvell (left), with a defaced image of gay college student Chris Armstrong that Shirvell posted on his blog in 2010.

The attorney general’s office was justified in firing Andrew Shirvell in 2010 because his posts on Facebook and an anti-gay blog, as well as his campus visits and TV appearances, clearly had an adverse impact on the agency’s credibility, the court said in a 3-0 decision released Friday.

The court overturned a ruling by an Ingham County judge, who said Shirvell was entitled to jobless benefits because he was fired for exercising free speech.

“The department, as the chief law enforcement agency in the state, represents all of the citizens of Michigan irrespective of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or creed. … Shirvell’s conduct reasonably could have created the impression that neither he nor the department enforced the law in a fair, even-handed manner without bias,” the court said.

There’s no dispute that Shirvell targeted Chris Armstrong, an openly gay student government president at the University of Michigan. Shirvell appeared on local and national TV shows to defend his blog and criticize what he called Armstrong’s “radical homosexual agenda.”

In response, Attorney General Mike Cox’s office received more than 20,000 complaints.

“Shirvell’s conduct undermined one of the department’s specific missions — i.e. the integrity of its anti-cyberbullying campaign,” said judges Stephen Borrello, Christopher Murray and Peter O’Connell. “By employing an individual such as Shirvell, whose conduct Cox agreed amounted to bullying, the department undermined its own message.”

Reached for comment, Shirvell of Palm Coast, Florida, said he’ll appeal the case to the Michigan Supreme Court.

“Every public employee, whether liberal or conservative, will now be in fear of what they’re doing on their off hours,” he said.

Armstrong’s attorney, Deborah Gordon, said the decision was “excellent.”

In a separate matter, a federal jury in 2012 ordered Shirvell to pay $4.5 million to Armstrong for defamation and emotional distress. An appeal is pending.

“You cannot expect to behave in such an outrageous, illegal, harmful, menacing manner and think that your employer is going to keep you on board as a government employee and it’s not going to affect how you’re perceived by the public,” Gordon said.

McConnell wants credit for economic turnaround

Over the weekend, for example, the Kentucky Republican insisted a “regulatory onslaught” was “the principal reason” the economic recovery isn’t stronger. It prompted Danny Vinik to explain, in persuasive detail, “McConnell is betraying his ignorance on economic issues.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) probably has a variety of strengths as a politician. A familiarity with the basics of economic policy isn’t one of them.

Three days later, McConnell shifted gears. As of this morning, the GOP leader is not only impressed with the improved economic conditions, he also wants credit for them (via Sam Stein).

“After so many years of sluggish growth, we’re finally starting to see some economic data that can provide a glimmer of hope; the uptick appears to coincide with the biggest political change of the Obama Administration’s long tenure in Washington: the expectation of a new Republican Congress. So this is precisely the right time to advance a positive, pro-growth agenda.”

This would be amusing if it weren’t so sad.

We just saw an election cycle in which Mitch McConnell argued every day that President Obama is destroying the economy. In fact, his indictment was specific: the combination of “Obamacare,” higher taxes, Dodd-Frank, and federal regulations were a “wet blanket,” holding the country back.

All the while, even as McConnell whined, economic conditions just kept getting better and U.S. job growth reached a 15-year high last year. Which apparently led to an amazing rhetorical detour: never mind all that stuff McConnell said in 2014; in 2015 he wants credit for the recovery’s unexpected strength.

It’s worth emphasizing that McConnell took his time to come up with this rhetorical trick. Two days before Christmas, Americans learned that GDP growth in the third quarter of 2014 reached an 11-year high. And what did the Republican Senate leader have to say about it at the time? Literally nothing.

In fact, when the economic data was released, Republicans – from McConnell to Speaker Boehner to the RNC – apparently couldn’t think of anything to say at all. Two weeks later, however, Team McConnell wants acclaim for the growth he was previously inclined to ignore.

In case this isn’t obvious, that GDP report that was so impressive referred to economic growth in July, August, and September of last year – before anyone could say with confidence what would happen in November’s elections. McConnell is now effectively arguing that businesses and other employers were so excited – over the summer – by the mere possibility of a Republican Senate that economic growth soared. It wasn’t the result of Republican policies, so much as the broad anticipation of McConnell & Co. passing bills for President Obama to veto.

What’s worse: the notion of McConnell actually believing this nonsense or McConnell expecting Americans to buy it?

HRC PUBLISHES 114TH CONGRESS ANTI-GAY 'FACES OF INEQUALITY'

The Human Rights Campaign has published a listing of six of the 114th Congress’s most ardently anti-LGBT members. The six Republicans featured in the “Faces of Inequality” hail from a wide range of different professional backgrounds, but their track records regarding gay marriage, ENDA, and anti-bullying legislation are all exactly what you would expect:

• Jody Hice (R-GA): compared marriage equality to bestiality and incest, and said “The concept of ‘love’ is not the issue when it comes to marriage!”
  
• Glenn Grothman (R-WI): promised to be “an outspoken” opponent of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) because it gives “preferences” to LGBT employees.
  
• Tom Emmer (R-MN): said he would not sign anti-bullying legislation to promote safe schools because “I don’t want the government doing that for us.”
  
• Cresent Hardy (R-NV): was one of only 13 lawmakers who voted against Nevada’s bill banning housing and job discrimination against transgender people.
  
• Mike Bost (R-IL): opposed any form of relationship recognition for same-sex couples, saying, “I didn’t vote for civil unions and I won’t be voting for gay marriages.”
  
• Thom Tillis (R-NC): has continued his fight against marriage equality in North Carolina, hiring a rabidly anti-LGBT activist attorney from the fanatical anti-equality National Organization for Marriage.

Check out the full list here.

After Charlie Hebdo attack, U.S. Catholic group says cartoonists ‘provoked’ slaughter

In the aftermath of the deadly assault on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper, much of the world has rallied in solidarity with the publication, its irreverent cartoonists and their right to free speech.

But not everyone is so supportive. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a U.S. organization that "defends the rights of Catholics," issued a statement titled "Muslims are right to be angry." In it, Donohue criticized the publication's history of offending the world's religiously devout, including non-Muslims. The murdered Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier "didn’t understand the role he played in his [own] tragic death," the statement reads.

"Had [Charbonnier] not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive," Donohue says, in what must be one of the more offensive and insensitive comments made on this tragic day.

"Killing in response to insult, no matter how gross, must be unequivocally condemned. That is why what happened in Paris cannot be tolerated," says Donohue. "But neither should we tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction."

Pope Francis prays for the victims in Paris and asks God to "change the hearts" of the perpetrators. (Reuters)

The statement says Charlie Hebdo has "a long and disgusting record of going way beyond the mere lampooning" of religious figures. "They have shown nuns masturbating and popes wearing condoms," Donohue says. "They have also shown Muhammad in pornographic poses."

Among the covers is a too-racy-for-WorldViews depiction of the Christian Holy Trinity locked in a three-way homosexual orgy (as part of a critique of French religious leaders' opposition to gay marriage) and a whole array of images mocking pedophilia by priests.

Charlie Hebdo doesn't pull its punches. But some critics say it goes too far, specifically with Muslims. The newspaper, after all, fired a cartoonist who published an article deemed anti-Semitic in 2008. But when it comes to depicting Islam, writes the Financial Times' Tony Barber, the publication has no qualms specifically "mocking, baiting and needling French Muslims."

Donohue, who in his statement presumes to speak for all Muslims, is not concerned with that argument. Instead, he clings to a defense of religious sensitivities bound to infuriate free-speech advocates and secularists and pins the fault of a terror attack on its victims.

The statement ends with a quote from U.S. founding father James Madison: "Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty, as well as by the abuses of power." In other words, we may be free to speak, but we have to appreciate the value of that right. Donohue should follow his own advice.

Pat Robertson Says Non-Religious Children Should Be Beaten Until They Respect Christian Beliefs

In another example demonstrating that Pat Robertson believes in persecuting non-Christians and indoctrinating children, the televangelist openly suggested that parents should beat their kids until they respect Christian beliefs.

During yet another shameful episode of the 700 Club, which runs on Disney-owned channel ABC Family, Robertson received an email from a woman who claimed that her grandson disrespects their Christian faith when they visit their daughter on Christmas and chose not to visit this past year.

“We declined going to our daughter’s house on Christmas this year because there is always an argument, hard feelings etc.,” viewer Karen wrote.

“One grandchild comes high on marijuana, cursing and challenging our faith. I correct him and have told my daughter to ask him to respect our beliefs, but he keeps it up. Our daughter say she is a Christian but will drink too much and offend her daughter and her husband. Were we wrong to not to attend another Christmas that leaves us upset or someone angry? I have shared my beliefs many times with them and am ridiculed by this grandson and son-in-law.”

Robertson’s immediate solution? Beat the child until he respects Christianity.

“Somebody take that kid to the woodshed and let him understand the blessings of discipline,” Robertson advised before predicting that the kid would end up in prison if a strong male figure didn’t start beating him right away.

“He needs a strong male figure. He’s going to wind up in a correctional institution, and the next thing you know, he’s going to be doing hard time in some prison. And then he would wish he wasn’t such a smart, you know, wise guy. Because he’ll be disciplined in a way that he’ll never forget in some prison… He needs discipline in the worst possible way.”

Here’s the video via YouTube.

One solution Pat Robertson conveniently didn’t mention is for Karen to stop bringing up religion at her daughter’s home. She says she has “shared her beliefs many times with them” and admits that it always causes an argument. Well, there’s her problem. Stop trying to force your beliefs upon your daughter’s family and the arguments will probably cease. It’s not that people are offended by someone just because they practice a certain religion, they just tend to get offended when someone tries to force those beliefs onto them. By doing this, Karen is inviting arguments, hard feelings, and ridicule from family members who don’t want to be preached to during a holiday or any other day of the year for that matter.

Robertson’s solution is not only cruel, it constitutes child abuse, which is against the law. Beating a child into respecting a religious belief is the very definition of indoctrination and violates the constitutional rights of the abused.

Robertson’s call for beating kids into religious submission is similar to a Glenn Beck rant from 2013 when he also advocated for parents to physically abuse their kids until they believe in God. Just two years earlier, fundamentalist Christian parents beat their nine kids in the name of God. One child actually died from the abuse. Telling religious extremists to beat their kids is a very dangerous thing to do, and if any religious parents beat their kids like Robertson is advising, he should be charged as an accessory to child abuse.

Dear Obama Hater - You Just Wasted A Decade Of Your Life

Lots of you continue to get unhinged emails from people on Facebook, your drunk uncle, and various Tea Party relatives. Here's a gentle response to them....

Pretty soon Obama will be gone and you will have to face up to the fact that you will have lost a whole decade of your life passing around conspiracy theories and whipping yourself into a frenzy of hatred. All of you lost friends, severed relationships with family members, and some of you even lost your job or your marriage due to your unhinged behavior.

You lost that decade wailing about Obama the gay Communist Muslim narcissist dictator who was going to let the UN invade America and various hoaxes like "death panels," birth certificates, Iraq's WMDs, and the "Ground Zero Mosque" (remember how you wasted two years of your life over that?). Just think of what you could have accomplished if you hadn't wasted all that time. You could have gotten a college degree, you could have written a book, you could have run your first marathon, you could have built a boat and sailed it around the world. You could learned to speak another language - oh wait, you never would have done that.

You kept waiting for Obama to be impeached or for the GOP candidates to "take off the gloves." But they never did because your favorite stories were hoaxes, and the GOP can't impeach or win the White House based on hoaxes. No doubt you were waiting for someone, anyone, in the White House to be indicted or arrested, like all those people under Nixon and Reagan and Bush, but no dice. 

Many of you will never recover from this experience. Physically, your health is no doubt worse for having lost a decade watching television and whipping yourself into a frenzy of hatred. Your ability to reason is probably permanently damaged, and nobody really wants to listen to your opinions anyway. Yes, you can successfully annoy the waitress at the diner, because she can't run away from a customer, but that doesn't mean she agrees with you. Some of you will be going into nursing homes because people gave up on you a long time ago and nobody can stand to listen to one more day of you babbling about Saul Alinsky (who died in 1972, by the way).

Some of you have no doubt suffered financially from all the time you wasted hating Obama. But some of you have actually done very very well under his "anticapitalist," "communist," "dictatorship." You do know that the economy usually does much better under Democrats, right? And that the best four years of job creation in the last 50 years was under Jimmy Carter, right?

The next two years would be a good chance to start making amends to your families and trying to rebuild relations with people in your life. Yes we know there's another election in 2016 and you'll be falling down the next rabbit hole of insanity, but try to leave your families with a few memories of you acting like a normal human being.

And the next time there is a GOP president, just remember that there will be fatal embassy attacks under the GOP president, just like the dozens of fatal embassy attacks that occurred under previous Republican presidents. Except Democrats won't be working themselves into a frenzy of conspiracy theories when it happens, they won't be cheerleading for the terrorists, and they won't be trying to overthrow the US government every time something happens.

Fox News Runs Outrageous Hit Piece On Pope Francis For Making Republicans Look Bad

First the “mainstream media” had a liberal bias, then “schools,” then “reality,” but all of that has been less difficult for conservatives to handle than Pope Francis, who has used his station to consistently shame the very kinds of ideas they hold dear.

First, there was an article on the political site The Hill which criticized the pope for “driving a wedge” between himself and Republicans by never taking their side on political issues (gee, I wonder why?). After it was reported that Pope Francis was integral to Obama’s historic shift in diplomatic relations with Cuba, conservatives reacted with a characteristic whine:

“But Francis’s agenda, which also includes calls to address income inequality and limit climate change, is putting him at odds with Republicans, including GOP Catholics in the United States. 

Hours after President Obama announced moves to ease trade and travel restrictions to Cuba, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a practicing Catholic and potential 2016 presidential candidate, criticized the deal and Francis’s role in it. 

“I would also ask His Holiness to take up the cause of freedom and democracy, which is critical for a free people, for a people to truly be free,” Rubio told reporters.”

However, buried in the article is a brief mention of the fact that while Americans are absolutely fed up with politicians (and Republicans, in particular), the pope enjoys an incredible 78 percent approval rating among all Americans, and an even more astonishing 93 percent approval from Catholics. The pope’s popularity is so high that presumably the one or two Catholics polled who said they didn’t approve of his work had names like “Paul Ryan” and “Marco Rubio.”

But while some conservative politicians are angry, nothing quite compares to how livid Fox News is. The conservative network is having an absolute freakout because, at least from their perspective, the pope is making conservatives look like bigoted, anti-science, heartless monsters – and worse, if those poll numbers are to be believed, people seem to agree with him.

Things recently came to a head when Pope Francis wrote a papal letter to be sent to all the bishops in the church that insisted they do more to help combat climate change. Fox News, which trades exclusively in climate change denialism and oil company-approved talking points, didn’t take it well.

Immediately after learning of the pope’s stance on climate change, Fox ran an unabashed hit piece on Francis, calling him an “activist” (conservative dog whistle for “liberal”) and pulling quotes from Catholic leaders who have been critical of his leadership. It was a hatchet job and an incredibly tasteless one – a television network modeled around conservative propaganda devoted an entire segment to lecturing the pope on why he was so bad. “Surreal” doesn’t begin to describe it.

Media Matters preserved the clip:

Some of the “controversial” things Fox News criticizes the pope for: being more tolerant towards gays, helping Obama ease tensions with Cuba, believing in the existence of climate change, believing in the existence of evolution, arguing that greed and unchecked capitalism are bad.

It’s official: Conservatives are now more anti-science than the pope.

The conservative right has gotten left so far behind that now everything - from the Pope to reality – looks like it has a “liberal bias.” Rather than view that as a massive problem, Republicans have become more entrenched, more paranoid in their belief that they, and they alone, see things clearly. Science has abandoned them. And now so has religion. What do they have left? Just Fox News. And Fox seems fine with playing the role of spiritual leader to its aging, white conservative flock. It would be funny, if it weren’t so sad.

Waking the sleeping beast of religious liberty

Something remarkable happened in the run up to the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Hobby Lobby vs. Burwell. A movement was born. A potentially historic movement that does not yet know its name — but which may yet bring the light of hope to a darkening political landscape.

The Supreme Court ultimately threw out historic understandings of the right of individual conscience — what we generally call religious freedom — by extending the right of conscience for employers to claim broad exceptions from laws and regulations on the basis of their religious beliefs.

The decision magnified and encouraged the notion that among other things, religious exemptions from the law justify discrimination against LGBTQ people.

The best known of these exemptions have been bills introduced in state legislatures under the rubric of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Proposed RFRAs (pronounced rif-ruhs) in the past year have included provisions that would allow anyone to refuse to do business with, or provide services to, same-sex couples by citing religious beliefs.

Mike Huckabee Quits Fox News Because God Might Tell Him to Run for President in 2016

After six and a half years together, Mike Huckabee and Fox News are parting ways - a devastating blow to anyone who enjoyed getting their misinformed Republican Party propaganda in a neat little 700 Club-esque wrapper. 

Said the Pat Robertson-lite on Huckabee last night:

"I've never had so much fun in my life. I've met people I never dreamed I'd meet and I've played music with legends in the music business. But I also realize that God hasn't put me on Earth just to have a good time or to make a good living, but rather God has put me on Earth to try to make a good life. There's been a great deal of speculation as to whether I would run for president. And if i were willing to absolutely rule that out, I could keep doing this show. But I can't make such a declaration."

Huckabee added that he wouldn't make a final decision on 2016 until late next spring.

A Creationist Decided to Answer My 10 Questions and the Results are Hilarious

Let me go ahead and explain what you’re about to read. I wrote an article titled 10 Questions Everyone Who Believes in Science Should Ask a Creationist, which simply featured 10 questions I think people should present to creationists to see if they have a response that makes any sense.

Well, somebody I presume to be a creationist decided to answer my questions. Here are the unedited results:

1) Do you understand the difference between science and faith?

Right back at you! It takes more faith to believe in evolution, and may scientists even use the term faith to describe their believe in “missing links”. The real question is “Where you there?” Did you observe the beginning of creation? I thought that was necessary for science apparently not . . . especially when science needs to take a “leap of faith!”

2) If Noah really lived for 900 years, do you realize that means he lived for nearly 1/6 of the time you claim the world has existed?

If the dinosaurs lived for billions of years as you suggest, isn’t it interesting that they existed for 1/6 of your age of the earth? What kind of science can prove either? It takes faith to believe both. I see you’re still struggling with that “faith” thing!

3) If God could create the Earth in 6 days, why couldn’t he have just given Noah an ark instead of making him build one?