FBI searching for armed anti-Muslim protester after Facebook threat to Muslim community in New York

Patriotic anti-Muslim 'Murican Jon Ritzheimer

Residents and authorities in a rural upstate New York community were taking precautions after an Arizona man posted a video online showing himself with a gun and saying he was traveling to the town for a possible confrontation, according to media reports.

Jon Ritzheimer, of Phoenix, Arizona, was seen with a gun and claiming that he was heading to Islamberg, a rural hamlet that is home to a small Muslim community about 130 miles northwest of New York City, the reports said. His comments could be viewed as threatening, they said.

Ritzheimer posted the video on Facebook, according to the reports.

New York City’s Daily News, citing sources, reported that the FBI had issued an alert to law enforcement agencies to look out for him.

More here.

Righties Play The Victim Again...

Domestic Terrorism In Colorado Springs

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The man who police say staged a deadly shooting attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic that offers abortion services said "no more baby parts" after his arrest, a law enforcement official said Saturday.

The official could not elaborate about the comment by the 57-year-old suspect, Robert Lewis Dear. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.

Planned Parenthood said late Saturday that witnesses said the gunman was motivated by his opposition to abortion.

More here.

Welcome to my morning rant.

I'm really disgusted with organized "religion" right now. I try to follow the original tenets put forth by Jesus, not the bullshit and hatred spread by what passes for modern "christianity" (small c).

Hint for "christians": The Bible says not to judge lest ye be judged. And do not get me started on the shysters pushing "prosperity gospel" nonsense. I'm not naming names as to who is being judgmental and who thinks religion is the means to financial and spiritual salvation with minimal effort (that would be, um, judgmental of me) but they know in their hearts who they are.

I haven't always lived up to proper Christian ideals, I admit that and try to do better now. But those ideals aren't in any official denomination I see. Guess I need to form my own church.

I guess no nativity scenes in "red" states this year...

IN THE NEWS

When I see our Horrific War On Terrah™ and the Islamofascists' attacks, all I see are fundamentalists attacking fundamentalists, causing grief, death, and misery for everyone. Back 'n forth. Forever and ever, Amen and Allahu Akbar. Sh*t's getting old. Too bad we can't put all fundamentalists of every ilk in a huge room and let 'em sort it out while the rest of us have a beer.

Then there's so-called Christians spreading fear of desperate migrants who are trying to flee the horrific warfare in the Middle East.

Sometimes I really hate people.

American workers are NOT over-paid

Donald Trump (wealthy developer) and Ben Carson (retired highly-paid doc), who are the current Republican frontrunners for the Presidential field, said in last night's deebate that a problem with the American economy is that wages are too high. That's right, you hard-working American grunts, your hard-earned pay is hurting America. Shame on you!

Well, I don't think so. These comments from two of Our Betters™, America's version of entitled royalty, prove that Republicans do not give a shit for hard-working regular folks. If they had their way, salaries would drop, apparently down to slave-labor rates so that profit-driven, fuck-the-worker, greedy-ass employers who have fled overseas to employ slave labor, might come back to the USA to employ slave labor here.

Why working people vote for these entitled rich folks is beyond my understanding. Our economy originally started sucking for the middle class when entitled rich assholes started buying out companies, consolidating the companies into single, "lean and mean" entities, which simply meant laying off millions of workers and eliminating any pressure to increase salaries, even as employee performance and productivity skyrocketed to new levels profitable only to the wealthy investor class. Then greedy-ass employers moved their production facilities to foreign shores, where they employed the locals (non-Americans) for pittances. This bullshit meant the middle class got screwed financially, while investors got richer and richer and richer. See, there's your explanation for why income growth is so massive for a small number of wealthy folks, while the rest of us get the, um, trickle down.

Listen here, Republicans, the economy will explode into hyperdrive when working people make decent money commensurate with their productivity. Then, said working people, who vastly outnumber Our Betters™, will have more money to spend, and companies will have more demand for products, leading to more profits for those damned investors. See? Investors can still get rich in an economy that is fair to workers. I don't hate rich folks, I hate profit-driven, fuck-the-worker, greedy-ass employers who think the only way to get rich if by fucking everyone else.

But you workers who consistently vote for these selfish turds need to realise that you are part of the problem. Things will only get better for all of us when you stop bending over and start voting for politicians who will work for all our benefits, and not just for the few rich folks who donate massive amounts of $$$$ to their campaigns. Otherwise, YOU get in line and go to your boss and demand that he/she cut your salary by whatever percent Trump and Carson think you are worth. Your choice.

Merrye Christmas. There. Are You Happy Now?

Tis the season...
... of manufactured religious persecution.

It.

Has.

Begun.

I wondered how it would start this year.

I wondered when the outrage would begin.

I mean, Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, right? And yet it was all quiet on the Western front. But the unrest percolated and the winds of war were brewing and I knew it couldn't be much longer.

And I was right.

Starbucks.

The chain emporium of burned coffee - a veritable devil's brew of bitter Jesus hatin' flavor in every cup - has pulled the first shot.

Yes, Folks, Starbucks is the Fort Sumter of this year's War on Christmas.

It seems Starbucks' holiday season cups are a simple red.

Yes, I know. Gasp.

There's no little evergreen tree of capitalism.

There's no anti-immigrant star of Bethlehem.

There's no "Merry Pagan Druid Holiday of Midwinter Co-opted by Early Christianity Which Shall Not Be Shortened To Xmas Despite The Fact That It Was A Perfectly Legitimate Christian Abbreviation From Mediaeval Times."

There's not even a gay marriage hating Little Baby Jesus. Just a simple red cup with the Starbucks logo on it.

Can you believe it?

Naturally - naturally - certain Evangelicals are outraged at this horrifying offense.

What?

Oh right. Yes, they're ALWAYS outraged, but they're outraged at this too I mean.

A counter-offensive has arisen led by faithful Christian partisans hopped up on the holy brew (see the attached video in the first comment for your part of God's Big Plan). Various fronts have been opened in the war, angels rage like steam-spitting espresso machines in Heaven, and new battles break out even as we speak. Twitter is aflame and soon the world will burn in righteous pumpkin-spice scented fire!

Right.

Listen, if as a Christian - as a Christian - you're offended, affronted, outraged, insulted, injured, disrespected, put out, or otherwise have your pious holy undergarments uncomfortably rubbing a sore spot into your Jesus bits over the design of a paper cup and you're all puffed up in an illusionary bit of self-manufactured persecution but you are NOT even MORE angry, pissed off, mad as hell, OUTRAGED over the fact that 2000 years after the Romans nailed your prophet to a cross, we, in the richest and most affluent country in the world, a country where Christians freely and routinely buy $7 seasonal designer coffee drinks just because they can, yeah, THAT country, if you're NOT outraged that we still have the same hungry, the same poor, and the same sick people that very same prophet told you selfish self-centered caramel mocha half-caf iced cappuccino swilling motherfuckers to feed, clothe, and heal, well, you know what? Maybe it IS time to bomb this ridiculous hypocrisy out of existence.

If you're outraged over a Starbucks coffee cup, you REALLY need to be chased naked and bleeding around a stadium by some hungry lions so you can gain an actual sense of perspective.

Here's the bottom line: when the people screaming loudest about their religion don't have any respect for their own prophet's ideals, why the hell should I?

https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/posts/915635201805217

From nowitall's "Get A Life" Department...

I forgot that Jesus died for our Starbucks cups.
I also forgot the part where everyone is required to practice the same religion. Silly me.
~ comment on Facebook

Heathen Starbucks Cups

Some people are angry about Starbucks’ new holiday cups. Really angry. What is the issue, exactly?

In previous years, Starbucks’ iconic holiday cups, which the chain uses in lieu of white cups in November and December, featured wintry or Christmas-themed designs like snowflakes, ornaments and nature scenes. This year, the cups are more minimalist -- a red ombre design that Jeffrey Fields, Starbucks' vice president of design, said was meant to embrace “the simplicity and the quietness” of the holiday season.

This is a huge problem for some people, who feel that the plain red cups are oppressing Christians by insulting Christmas. Source                                                                                                                                                                                                                                F'crying out loud. Get a life, peeps!                                                                                 

Happy Feed An Undocumented Alien From Europe Day!

Ben Carson Weirdness...

Why is there a picture of a black Klingon Jesus-in-a-sauna hanging in Ben Carson's home?

Ben Carson Is Hopeless

Ben Carson responded to charges that he’s politically inexperienced by writing in a Facebook post late yesterday that “every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience.”

Wrong. Most signers – including Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock -- had been elected to their colonial assemblies prior to signing the Declaration.

After being notified of his error, Carson changed his post to say the signers had no “federal” elected office experience. True, but neither did anyone else because at the time the Declaration was signed there wasn’t yet a federal government.

Carson thereby proves he’s not just inexperienced. He also doesn’t know American history, doesn’t know about the federal government, and doesn’t know the limits of his own ignorance.

What’s do you think?

~ Robert Reich

I think Carson is out of his league.

Straight Shooting: The "Gun Problem" Isn't a "Mental Illness Problem." It's Just a "Gun Problem."

Increasingly, when we talk about gun violence in this country we also talk about mental illness. In many ways, this is not surprising: A number of instances of gun violence are committed by those with untreated, or undiscovered, mental disorders. This has lately led many politicians to place the blame for incidents of gun violence squarely on the lack of resources available for those suffering from mental illness. "It's a mental illness problem," Donald Trump recently declared on "Meet the Press" on NBC. "Guns, no guns, doesn't matter. You have people that are mentally ill and they're going to come through the cracks and they're going to do things that people will not even believe are possible."

And, it seems, most Americans would agree. A joint poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News and released last week found that while 82 percent of Americans surveyed thought gun violence is a serious problem, more people -- by 2 to 1 -- believe such violence is a result of inadequate methods and means of treating the mentally ill than of inadequate gun laws. The problem with these findings, though, is that they likely won't be used to implement, or even argue for better, detection and treatment of those with mental illness. Instead, they'll be co-opted by politicians -- like Trump -- who'll use the survey and others like it as evidence that gun controls are just fine; that, as one site put it, "guns don't kill people; crazy people do."

Except that's not entirely true: The vast majority of gun violence is still committed by people who are not mentally ill. Many incidents are accidents. Many are committed by children who happen upon guns in their/their neighbors'/their relatives' houses. And many, as we know, are committed by teenagers who are just beginning to show symptoms of the onset of mental illness -- cases in which early detection wouldn't necessarily apply. And, of course, not everyone suffering from mental illness will commit gun violence -- in one study, in fact, fewer than 5 percent of gun-related deaths were committed by those diagnosed with mental illness. (As President Obama recently said, "we are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses... we are the only advanced country on earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.") Meanwhile, efforts to imply that all, or even most, incidents of gun violence are at the hands of the mentally ill only serves to increase the stigma directed towards those who suffer, which a 2013 study out of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health acutely confirmed.

So while it's easy to put the blame for gun violence on the mentally ill -- or the lack of support for them -- it's misleading, and ultimately unlikely to do anything to end needless gun-related deaths.

Dr. Peggy Drexler

Dr. Ben Carson Is A Best Selling Fiction Book Writer

Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship

Ben Carson’s campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from POLITICO, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-west-point-215598#ixzz3qjtEhgPC

Ben Carson Bristles At The Media Vetting His Stories Of Youth Violence: 'A Bunch Of Lies'

He's mad because his stories are being show to be grade A bullshit.

More here. And here.

KEYSTONE GETS THE KIBOSH

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Friday rejected TransCanada's application to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported oil across the United States-Canada border.

After seven years of reviewing the project, Obama announced his decision from the Roosevelt Room in the White House.

"The State Department has decided that the Keystone XL pipeline would not serve the national interest of the United States," he said. "I agree with that decision."

Story's here.

Republican Rep. Gohmert Slams American People For Not Wanting To Impeach Obama Like He Does

If you’ve ever been curious about what it would sound like if a certifiably crazy person tried to hold a conversation with another certifiably crazy person, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) guest hosted the ultra-conservative hate group Family Research Council’s radio show, and took calls from listeners.

Gohmert, long considered Congress’ most unhinged representative, didn’t disappoint. The Texas Tea Party Republican – who once defended a proposed oil pipeline by suggesting that caribou would love to mate on the warm pipes – was asked about his other obsession: Impeaching President Obama. A caller asked Gohmert to explain why Obama hadn’t been thrown out of office despite conservatives having “enough proof” that the president had “committed treasonous acts.”

Instead of setting the caller straight, Gohmert sympathized, saying he was “so grateful that there are people like you that understand just how detrimental this president has been to the ongoing of this country.” Unfortunately, he went on to explain, impeaching Obama just didn’t seem like it was likely to happen because for reasons Gohmert couldn’t fathom, most of the country doesn’t actually want to impeach him.

“There are not enough in the people in the country, across America, that want him removed from office before his office is over,” he sighed.

Rather than taking that as a sign that his own fantasies of Obama as a tyrant who needs to be stripped of his office are delusional, Gohmert believed this is because not enough people know what Obama is up to.

Here.

Forbes: Want a Better Economy? History Says Vote Democrat!

1. Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents

2. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents

3. Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declined under Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year)

4. Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents (If you invested $100k for 40 years of Republican administrations you had $126k at the end, if you invested $100k for 40 years of Democrat administrations you had $3.9M at the end)

5. Republican presidents added 2.5 times more to the national debt than Democratic presidents

6. The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations

Read it here.

Here are 3 reasons why everything you hear from Republicans about economics is baloney:

1. They say tax cuts on the wealthy and on corporations spur economic growth. Wrong. The U.S. economy grew faster each year between 1945 and 1980, on average, when the top marginal income tax rate was never lower than 70 percent and when corporate taxes were far higher, than the economy has grown since 1980.

2. They say economic growth trickles down in the form of better jobs. Wrong again. Almost all the gains from growth since 1980 have gone to the to the top 1 percent and into corporate income. And the share of corporate income going to workers has plummeted to its lowest level since 1951. Just since 2000, that drop has cost workers $535 billion annually, or $3,770 per worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

3. They say Republican presidents do better for the economy than Democratic presidents. Baloney. As the accompanying article from Forbes (of all places) shows, (that just isn't so.)

Given all this, why would anyone who cares about jobs, wages, and the economy vote Republican?

~ Robert Reich

I can't tell the diffy.

Gunman Kills 3 With AR-15 In One Of America’s Most Conservative Cities And Yup, He Called Himself A Libertarian

We are officially at zero days without a mass shooting in America again as a gunman ran through the streets of Colorado Springs with an assault rifle, leading police on a multiple crime scene chase and leaving three dead. After a shootout with police, the gunman was killed as well.

Little information, including motive, is available about the shooting at this time, other than the gunman may have been shooting people at random.

What we do know is that this didn’t take place in a gun-free zone or in an inner-city black community, which is where conservatives seem to think all gun violence happens. This happened on the streets of Colorado Springs, ranked fourth most conservative city in America. Where were the “good guys” with guns? One eyewitness has emerged that said he witnessed the chase from his window. He ran outside to yell at the gunman and ended up flat on the ground as bullets flew over his head when the gunman turned and fired at police.

Through several blocks, across streets and through neighborhoods culminating in a shootout at Wendy’s where the gunman died, not a single person made good on the reason most conservatives will tell you they need a gun. Not that it’s a bad thing, mind you, because chances are the idiot thinking they were going to intervene would be dead or could have shot an innocent bystander, but it kind of interesting that when the sh*t hit the fan, not a single hero popped up, and it was yet again the people who are supposed to have guns that ended the conflict.

More here.

GOP hates the media because they are liars: The damning, evil history of the right’s war on a free press

The real story behind CNBC debate, and Fox News' very existence, comes down to the right's fear of being exposed

According to the Republican contenders for the presidency who “debated” on CNBC Wednesday night, America’s problems today are caused by “the mainstream media,” which is “the ultimate super PAC” for the Democrats.

This charge is nothing new. Since the 1950s, Movement Conservatives have fought the fair examination of their ideas. They embrace a worldview in which a few wealthy men control the economy and dominate society. This idea repels most Americans. When voters can see it clearly, they oppose it. Movement Conservatives have gained power only by obfuscating reality. They make war on the media because it sheds daylight on their machinations. Transparency threatens their power.

In 1951, a young William F. Buckley, Jr. began the war on the American media. He joined big businessmen in hating the New Deal consensus that called for government regulation and social welfare measures to protect workers. Surely, government bureaucrats should not tell society’s leaders how to run their businesses. Such such an intrusion undermined God’s organization of a proper society, one with a few select leaders on top. In “God and Man at Yale,” Buckley railed that secular New Dealers were destroying America. The principles of religion and a free market economy were non-negotiable, he insisted. Unfortunately, when given fair access to facts, Americans chose secular ideas and business regulation. The only way to return Christianity and individualism to dominance in American society was to inculcate those values in followers. He showed how to do this in the book itself: he misrepresented his opponents, he cherry-picked quotations to make them sound damning, he posed as a persecuted victim.

When voters elected Republican Dwight Eisenhower president in the following year on a platform he called the “Middle Way,” big-business Republicans were horrified that the heresies of government regulation had infected their own party. They insisted government regulation was communism, and it was destroying the country. Trying to undercut the president, they attacked media that supported Eisenhower, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and Life, as communist rags.

More here.

The Rs and Hillary and Teh Media

For a given set of observations or data, there are always an infinite number of possible models explaining those same data. When dealing with Hillary, our friends the Rs go with the most awful models. If one awful model don't work, why, just create another one out of whole cloth. You can always find 2 or 3 data points that lead to the awful model, while, of course, being sure to ignore that 4th, 5th, 6th, etc data point that leads to the actual model, which most often is the simplest, shall we say, truth. Nature prefers simplicity. The simple answer is that attacks on Hillary (and to a lesser extent, Bernie) are bad politics. Several Rs have admitted as much on that danged mainstream media. Wasn't THAT inconvenient for the narrative of BG!

You can't blame me for being skeptical of R politicians' sudden concern for 4 dead American Patriots after they didn't express outrage for hundreds of dead American Patriots during Reagan's administration, or dozens of dead Patriots during Bush's. Even so, all those previous R-lead BG hearings found no criminality by Hillary. Mistakes, abolutely. Criminality, nope. Of course, mistakes were made in the hundreds of deaths I mentioned above, but Rs didn't call for the IMPEECH! and the PRISON! for Reagan/Bush. Of course, many Democrats did, again, because of politics.

On a final note about the deebates. It was apparent to me that the F network was throwing bombs at Trump because he isn't far enough to the right for them. And it was obvious that one CNBC host in particular was tossing firecrackers because he wanted to trip one or more of the candidates up. But surely these candidates are big boys. The say they will handle PootyToot better than O'Bama/Bernie/Hillary, so they should be able to handle bombs and firecrackers thrown at 'em in a deebate!

As always, I am yoonannymus in my opinion!