October 2008

What is it about religion that makes some adherents into monsters? PZ Myers found an especially rabid example of the faux-”Christian”, a moral incompetent who goes by the name of Raani Starnes. Her contribution to the global conversation is about killing people she’s decided her “God” wants her to hate:

Perilous Times: Sodomites in School

When I was in the process of moving and did not have internet access, I often visited a local library to check my e-mail and look at real estate listings. This particular library was in a small town and seemed to be a popular after school hangout for teenagers. One day as I was surfing the net, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation that was going on across the table from me. An openly gay teenage boy who was surrounded by female “friends” was talking about how he had recently had a relationship with a girl. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the girl’s parents. Not only was their daughter sexually active, but she had engaged in some very high risk behavior by sleeping with a gay male.

Yes, I’ve seen the previews for Will and Grace where they’re lying next to each other in bed platonically. Isn’t that cute? The homosexual agenda wants people to think that homosexual men are safe for women to hang around and even be alone with. Nothing could be further from the truth. The stories about Sodomites in the Bible teach us that they do violate women as well as men. I’ve also known of people personally over the years who were known as gay yet “experimented” with the opposite sex. The term bisexual is an unnecessary distinction, because a faggot wants to defile anyone or anything he can get his hands on.

A friend recently sent me this article about a “gay-friendly” high school. If we were living in a biblical society, homosexuality would be punishable by death so such a school would be unnecessary. Although I’m against the special accommodations, perhaps this new trend of segregation will protect straight kids from these predators. With any luck, some radical will blow up the gay school. No, I’m not condoning vigilantism — I’m merely saying that it would be poetic justice.

First off, Raani Starnes is a liar. She is indeed condoning vigilantism — she wants somebody to bomb a building and kill the people inside. She is advocating terrorism and murder.

And, it turns out, Raani Starnes is a coward. After having been exposed for the hateful cockroach that she is, Raani has deleted all comments from her blog, turned off the commenting option on her blog, and changed the name of her Blogger ID. Doesn’t help, though… there’s always the Google cache of her original post (mirrored here) and her Blogger profile— not to mention the power of a general Google search on her name.

Let’s be very clear on just how utterly despicable Raani Starnes is: Not only does Raani Starnes want people to die because she hates them. Not only does Raani Starnes want more domestic terrorism in the United States. But after saying all that, Raani Starnes does not have the courage to stand behind her views! Like the miserable insect that she is, Raani Starnes chooses to hide her identity and scuttle back under the refrigerator. She is afraid of the light.

Raani Starnes is an absolute wreck of a human being. The sad part is that she has children (and is pregnant with another) — more human minds that will be wasted because they are being indoctrinated in hatred and viciousness by this worthless maggot of a woman.

UPDATE 10/23/08 08:23 AM EDT: It appears that the commenting option on Raani’s shithole of a blog has been reactivated.

I pay my taxes every year.

The church down the street does not.

Yet they get the benefit of my taxes: police and fire protection, hookups to the water and sewer systems, the maintenance of the road that leads to my house and their parking lot.

In a very real sense, I am being required to “share my wealth” with them.

Isn’t that the very wingnut definition of socialism?

FactCheck.org has the straight dope on the accusations against ACORN:

In recent years, ACORN employees have been investigated multiple times for voter registration fraud. ACORN workers have been convicted of submitting false voter registration forms in Colorado Springs in 2005, Kansas City, Mo., in 2006 and King County, Wash., in 2007. ACORN's Las Vegas office was raided by a state criminal investigator on Oct. 7, 2008. ACORN workers are also the subjects of ongoing investigations in Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. The Indiana investigation started in early October and may involve thousands of fraudulent registration forms.

…

But so far ACORN itself has not been officially charged with any fraud. Aside from the heated charges and counter-charges, no evidence has yet surfaced to show that the ACORN employees who submitted fraudulent registration forms intended to pave the way for illegal voting. Rather, they were trying to get paid by ACORN for doing no work. Dan Satterberg, the Republican prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., where the largest ACORN case to date was prosecuted, said that the indicted ACORN employees were shirking responsibility, not plotting election fraud.

The McCain campaign and the wingnutosphere is trying to set up a smoke screen designed to do two things: disenfranchise recently registered voters (the majority of whom are Democrats), and provide a feeble excuse should McCain lose the election. This is a direct attack on the workings of democracy in the United States.

(hat tip: Daily Kos)

Golly. Looks like Sarah Palin is a socialist:

Welcome to the Peoples Republic of Alaska, where every resident this year will get a $3,200 payout, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Sarah Palin, the states Republican governor. Thats $22,400 for a family of seven, like Palins. Since 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests oil revenues from state lands, has paid out a dividend on invested oil loot to everyone who has been in the state for a year. But Palin upped the ante by joining with Democrats and some recalcitrant Republican state legislators to share in oil company windfall profits, further fattening state tax revenue and permitting an additional payout in tax funds to residents.

Somebody care to explain why this isn’t socialism? Cao? Big Dog? Raven? Jim Hoft? Anybody?

(hat tip: John Cole)

More on this from John Amato.

UPDATE 10/22/08 9:08 AM EDT: From Matthew Yglesias:

[I]sn’t the closest thing to socialism on the American policy agenda the status quo situation in . . . Sarah Palin’s Alaska? You have collective ownership of valuable natural resources that generates lots of revenue for the state, and then the government makes “spreading the wealth around” through the Permanent Fund, etc. its main priority.

UPDATE 10/25/08 5:22 PM EDT: Raven’s fellow wingnut ‘Duncan’ has responded to this post, but lacks the courage to allow me to answer him in the comments to his post. Here’s the comment he refuses to allow:

I’ve made no claim that the Alaska Permanent Fund is funded by any windfall profits tax. That’s a red herring of Duncan’s making, and can immediately be dismissed as such.

The fact remains that the Alaska Permanent Fund takes money from those who develop the mineral resources of Alaska and gives it to citizens of Alaska who have done nothing to earn it. That’s the wingnut definition of socialism, and by that definition, Sarah Palin is guilty of supporting a socialist scheme for wealth redistribution.

That Duncan denies this is simply another example of the blatant dishonesty practiced by wingnuts.

UPDATE 10/25/08 7:33 PM EDT: And still more nonsense from Duncan:

One thing I forgot to mention above. This is not a “redistribution of wealth”. There is no tax on people or the profits of corporations that funds this program.

The Alaska Permanent Fund isn’t a “redistribution of wealth”? Really? Where does the money for the fund come from? Duncan tells us that it is derived from:

…mineral lease rentals, royalties, royalty sales proceeds, federal mineral revenue-sharing payments and bonuses received by the state…

This money represents some fraction of the wealth of the companies that have actually developed the mineral resources of the state of Alaska. If money is not “wealth”, then what would Duncan call it?

And what happens to this money? Duncan tells us that:

Most spending from the Fund has been for dividends to qualified Alaska residents…

Hmmmm. It seems this wealth is sent to other people. If this action is not a “redistribution”, then what is it?

I’d love to ask Duncan these questions directly. Unfortunately, he and his cohorts have arranged matters so as to make it impossible for me to post any comments on their site. Guess they simply aren’t up to an actual discussion of their most peculiar — and blatantly inconsistent — definition of “socialism”.

UPDATE 10/26/08 8:01 PM EDT: What happens when one tries to ask wingnuts a couple of simple, direct questions about their claims? They refuse to answer those questions, and then close the comments thread in which one dares to ask those questions.

I cannot think of a clearer demonstration of the intellectual cowardice that is the distinguishing trait of wingnuts.

UPDATE 11/03/08 7:20 PM EST: Not having made the point sufficiently the first time, the craven milquetoasts at And Rightly So felt it necessary to display their intellectual cowardice by opening a second discussion on Alaskan socialism and then closing it as soon as it became clear that the tough questions were not going to stop.

Oh, this is just so terrible… such an enormous threat to the Republic. Wingnut screechmonkeys should be blaring this across the blogosphere any day now…

The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud.

State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California. His firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM, collects petition signatures and registers voters in California and other states.

Jacoby's arrest by state investigators and the Ontario Police Department late Saturday came after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by people employed by YPM. The voters said YPM workers tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters.

The firm was paid $7 to $12 for every Californian it registered as a member of the GOP.

Gee… listen to all those crickets…

(hat tip: Pam’s House Blend)

Is Joe the Plumber guilty of voter fraud?

Mr. Wurzelbacher is registered to vote in Lucas County under the name Samuel Joseph Worzelbacher.

“We have his named spelled W-O, instead of W-U,” Linda Howe, executive director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said in a telephone interview. “Handwriting is sometimes hard to read. He has never corrected it in his registration card.”

Golly. His voter registration doesn’t exactly match his other records. Where are the wingnuts screaming “VOTER FRAUD! VOTER FRAUD!” ?

Well, he’s not a newly registered voter, and he’s a Republican. So, of course, the screechmonkeys are silent.

It is to laugh…

(hat tip: Daily Kos)

“Big Dog” demonstrates once again the total moral vacuity of the wingnut right:

Let’s declare open season. Any liberal who gets physical gets taken down, all the way down. The only way they will vote on election day is with all the other dead folks ACORN registered.

Let’s be clear here: “Big Dog” is advocating outright murder, nothing less. Moral cretins of his sort have no place in a civilized society, and are utterly inimical to the workings of a democracy. There is no place in this society for sociopaths like Big Dog, who would encourage violence against those who hold differing views.

How can anyone possibly say that Republicans are racist?

I mean, that’s just silly.

You’d need evidence of some sort before you could make that claim… like, say, a newsletter from a Republican group that “depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken”.

I’m so glad we live in a country where this sort of thing doesn’t happen.

(hat tip: Steve Benen)

Samuel J. ‘Joe’ Wurzelbacher — the plumber who was supposedly so worried that Barack Obama’s tax proposals would make it impossible for him to buy and operate a plumbing business — found an answer to his problem:

He simply doesn’t pay his taxes.

And by the way, ‘Joe’ is a registered Republican.

Things that make you go “hmmmmmm…”

UPDATE 10/17/08 12:57 PM EDT: Another big oops — this one from the lips of Joe the Plumber himself:

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Obama’s tax hikes apply only when personal income, not the value of the business, rises above $250,000.

“What goes on your income tax form is your profit, not your gross receipts,” said Eric Toder of the Tax Policy Center.

So today, Joe, who said he makes much less than $250,000, reluctantly admitted Obama would lower his taxes.

“I would, if you believe him, I would be receiving his tax cuts,” Wurzelbacher said.

Gotta love it when a wingnut meme implodes so spectacularly.

(hat tip: Think Progress)

Why won’t John McCain explain why he happily takes money from the same people who funded William Ayers?

How can anyone vote for John McCain, knowing he is tainted in this way?

Hmmmmmm?

Any answers, wingnuts?

(hat tip: Ed Brayton)