Uh oh! Shelly let her batshit get out of control and now it might be about to backfire.

Courtesy of NPR:

Even as Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann backs off some from an inflammatory claim that a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer led to mental retardation in a young girl, two bioethicists are turning up the heat. 

Yes, the leading group of pediatricians in this country slammed Bachmann and said "there is absolutely no scientific validity" to statements that the vaccine against human papilloma virus is dangerous or causes retardation. 

And the Minnesota Republican has conceded she's not a medical professional, saying in a radio interview: "I am not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a physician. All I was doing is reporting what this woman told me last night at the debate." 

But Dr. Steven Miles, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota, has ponied up $1,000 if the mother Bachmann talked about can produce medical proof that her daughter suffered mental retardation from the HPV vaccine, the Star Tribune reports. "These types of messages in this climate have the capacity to do enormous public health harm," Miles told the paper. "It's an extremely serious claim and it deserves to be analyzed." 

And Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania has placed what amounts to a $10,000 bet on the issue. 

I think that we can safely assume that there will be no VP slot open for Bachmann when Mitt Romney finally gets the nomination. I don't think the GOP is ever going to allow anybody to get that spot without much MORE stringent vetting than a certain Alaska politician was subjected to.

And for all intents and purposes we are watching that vetting play out right before our eyes.

I don't know about you, but I find it pretty entertaining!

Good news for the millions of disenfranchised Republicans, feeling trapped in their party. Apparently you can leave.

Courtesy of Truthout:

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy. 

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages. 

The debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization. 

Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. Of course they might - the attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was "bring it on!" 

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

I imagine that for many old school Republicans they must feel as if the inmates have taken over the asylum, and are just hoping this is a passing fad, and that somebody will restore order.

Personally I have been watching things headed this direction for quite some time, though admittedly when I saw how horribly the Bush administration failed at running the country, I thought the GOP might be a little less cocky and more likely to work WITH Democrats in order to get our country back on track.

Why yes I DO still believe in the Tooth Fairy, why do you ask?

These days I can only predict that things are going to continue to erode until something really HUGE happens that will bring us all together. (And NO I am not suggesting that the Obama administration conduct a False Flag operation. Democrats don't do that.) Or the Teabaggers actually convince enough people to take up arms against the Federal government and we have our second Civil War.

That last option might seem a little crazy, and at one time it did to me as well.  At one time.

Defining Dominionism.

Courtesy of AlterNet:

Dominionism is a broad political impulse within the Christian Right in the United States. It comes in a variety of forms that author Fred Clarkson and I call soft and hard. Fred and I probably coined the term “Dominionism” back in the 1990s, but in any case we certainly were the primary researchers who organized its use among journalists and scholars. 

Clarkson noted three characteristics that bridge both the hard and the soft kind of Dominionism. 

1. Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe the United States once was, and should again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy. 
2. Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity. 
3. Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, believing that the Ten Commandments, or “biblical law,” should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles. 

At the apex of hard Dominionism is the religious dogma of Dominion Theology, with two major branches: Christian Reconstructionism and Kingdom Now theology. It is the latter’s influence on the theopolitical movement called the New Apostolic Reformation that has been linked in published reports to potential Republican presidential nominees Perry, Bachmann or Palin. All three of these right-wing political debutantes have flirted with Christian Right Dominionism, but how far they have danced toward the influence of hard-right Dominion Theology is in dispute. It would be nice if some “mainstream” journalists actually researched the question. 

“While differing from Reconstructionism in many ways, Kingdom Now shares the belief that Christians have a mandate to take dominion over every area of life,” explains religion scholar Bruce Barron. And it is just this tendency that has spread through evangelical Protestantism, resulting in the emergence of “various brands of ‘dominionist’ thinkers in contemporary American evangelicalism,” according to Barron. 

The most militant Dominion Theologists would silence dissenters and execute adulterers, homosexuals and recalcitrant children. No…seriously. OK, they would only be executed for repeated offenses, explain some defenders of Christian Reconstructionism. Even most Christian Right activists view the more militant Dominion Theologists as having really creepy ideas. 

Much of the controversy over the issue of Dominionism is caused by writers who use the term carelessly, often conflating the broad term Dominionism with the narrow term Dominion Theology. Some on the Left have implied that every conservative Christian evangelical is part of the Christian Right political movement; and that everyone in the Christian Right is an active Dominionist. This is false. Some critics even state that the Christian Right is neofascist. Few serious scholars of fascism agree with that assessment, although several admit that if triggered by a traumatic societal event, any contemporary right-wing populist movement could descend into neofascism.

There is more to this very informative article and I strongly urge you to read the entire thing.

And then when you are finished imagine what having a disciple of this particular militant brand of Christianity, such as Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, or Rick Perry, in the White House might mean for this country.

And you wonder why I never sleep.

Palin is making the Teabaggers jump through hoops with the promise she MIGHT show up on Saturday.

Courtesy of the Des Moines Register:

Christine O’Donnell is off the guest list – again – and Sarah Palin is a “maybe.” 

In the latest episode in the drama over the speaking lineup for Saturday’s Tea Party of America rally in Iowa, organizer Ken Crow said Palin’s staff called this morning to say Palin’s appearance at the rally was “on hold” until three changes were made. 

“They said, ‘Ken, can you take care of bing, bing, bing’ and I said, ‘Yessir, I will’ and I did,” Crow, an Indianola Republican told The Des Moines Register. 

“Now I’m waiting to hear back.”Crow said two of the requests were logistical details: Email a copy of the program today, and address concerns about back-stage security and who will be allowed in that area. 

Asked about the third request, Crow said: “Can I let that remain private for now?” 

Meanwhile, Crow telephoned staff for O’Donnell, a Delaware Republican who ran for the U.S. Senate, to say she can’t speak at Saturday’s event. 

“We’re all friends and she’s not coming,” he said, referring to O’Donnell.

Five points to the person who correctly guesses which THIRD change had to be made. And the first two don't count.

Oh yeah Christine, that was ALL about you baby.

Personally I am disgusted with these baggers for letting Palin treat them like her own personal handbag carriers and ass-wipers.  I mean hell THAT'S Tawd's job!

I hope that somebody takes that Mudflats post and e-mails it to Ken Crow, you know if you had access to his e-mail address, you know like this one right here for instance: ken@teapartyofamerica.org.

Not that I'm suggesting that anybody do that, after all Ken has so much on his plate already.

But if it were ME I would certainly like to know what kind of lunatic was making me look like an idiot in front of the press.

Team Sarah is now DEMANDING that their members FORCE their friends and family to attend Sarah Palin's propaganda film "The Undefeated." Just buy a ticket Mom, and nobody has to get hurt!

With full credit for the graphic once again to Azure Ghost.

 This was sent to my e-mail from my favorite mole over at Team Sarah.

I will try to recreate it exactly as it appears in the e-mail, including the screaming capitalization's and histrionic changes in font size, just so you can get the full, batshit crazy effect.

A message to all members of Team Sarah

Team,

The movie, The Undefeated, faces an onslaught of the same kind of “invalidation” that Sarah Palin faces from the media establishment.

For those who have been out promoting the movie, and trying to get people in the cities where it is showing to BUY TICKETS NOW, this has been quite a journey.

Movies, ALL movies, have their ups and downs, but you can bet that when The Undefeated has its “ups” the media will ignore that and when it has its “downs” the media will over-hype it, as if “it’s all over because of a bad day!”

Everyone knows that "success" is never a straight line!

The fight to make sure people KNOW the truth about how the ESTABLISHMENT treats ordinary Americans who rise to leadership is only just beginning!

Just because you don't live in a city where the movie is currently playing does not mean you CANNOT HELP! Email teamsarahhq@gmail.com to see how you can help as a virtual ambassador!

Whoever thinks this is going to be easy, here's the truth. IT CANNOT BE EASY!

The stakes are too high!

The opposition is DESPERATE to discredit all that we stand up for!

Hard, however, is not IMPOSSIBLE.

What kind of country do you want to leave your children, one where the values of a Tina Fey rule or one where the values of Sarah Palin are strong?

WHAT WE DO NOW will potentially decide how that question is answered!

How much can you do, how far out of your comfort zone can you go, for your children's future?

Here's what is needed: we need to get people to come to these theaters and we need to beat back the liberal narrative. WE CAN DO this because we MUST do it!

Here’s the WHOLE point of all this- We need EVERYONE in EACH CITY to focus on getting 25 people to come to the movie TOMORROW and THURSDAY!

TICKETS are available here,

IF you live in any of the cities where this movie is showing, or within 100 miles, then WE NEED YOU! If you DON'T live near these cities, we STILL need you!

EMAIL teamsarahhq@gmail.com and we will send you our own information pack!

The movie IS coming to DVD, but even if millions of the DVD’s are sold, the media will STILL try to use whatever WE DO at the box office as a measure of success. COUNT ON IT!

We need to ask people we know in those cities to COME!

Don’t ask, tell! What I mean is, call your buddy up and say, “you’re going to this movie, OK? It’s a done deal, I need you to go.’ Don’t be shy. Imagine your children’s future depends on it.

WE NEED-

CITY HOSTS who live near the cities where the movie is being launched. More cities are being added, so just email and we will put you on a list when the movie comes your way....

VIRTUAL AMBASSADORS- people who can help with social media and making phone calls. You don’t have to LIVE in a city to RECRUIT for that city!

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

EMAIL teamsarahhq@gmail.com and we will send you our own information pack!

Thanks to all who are helping now!

The Tiny Team Behind The Team

 
Visit Team Sarah at: http://teamsarah.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

 Wow!  I mean, wow! That was just, wow!

Well thank God they are not panicking anything, right?  Just imagine how much worse it would be if they lost faith in their idol's ability to draw a crowd on her own and they felt they had to FORCE PEOPLE TO GO TO HER MOVIE! 

I mean seriously?  Who tells their friends and loved ones that they either go see this movie or else?

You know I was worried before, but now I think we are actually seeing the mental breakdown of the Palin-bots playing out in real time.

When she breaks the bad news about not running for President to them, they are going to lose their shit!

Michele Bachmann gets a note from her doctor saying she can TOO run for President!

There has been a lot of talk recently about Michele Bachmann's debilitating migraines, and the fact that such a medical condition, which is significantly exacerbated due to stress, might make her unfit for a job as President of the United States.

Gee, ya think?

Oddly enough this has inspired a number of journalists and political pundits to leap to her defense inferring that reporting on her migraines is sexist.

Which is interesting, since Michele Bachmann herself has blamed the migraines on her high heel shoes. Which, I am sure you will all agree, is in NO way sexist.

Anyhow in order to put the issue to rest Shelly got a note from her doctor, which essentially says she is excused from gym class but CAN run for student body president.

So there you go.  Michele Bachmann's blinding headaches are NO reason she should not be considered a viable GOP candidate for the most important political office in the land. No really, her doctor said so.

Now can we get back to focusing on the more important things, like the fact that she is batshit crazy and that she has virtually NO understanding of American history please?

If you wake up on August sixth wondering where all of the batshit crazy Christian ministers have gone, they will be with Rick Perry in Texas.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Wow!  I don't think there are nearly enough mental health facilities in the country to contain all of THAT crazy!

Everybody's favorite Queen of Quitting inspiration for character of bubbly, somewhat psychotic teacher in Cameron Diaz movie.

Courtesy of the Playlist:

Lucy Punch had some interesting things to say about the inspiration for her character, the neurotic and perpetually chipper teacher Ms. Squirrel. “It was pretty much that character on the page but when I read it, just because of the way she talks, because she’s rather twee and perky. The first person I thought was she seems if Sarah Palin had a little cousin who’s an elementary school teacher. I mentioned it to Jake [Kasdan] and he said, ‘You know, I don’t think that was the intention.’ I don’t know if they’re in there but I threw in a few winks and “you betchas”. That’s just who I had in my head, that energy. Not to say that Sarah Palin is deranged or unhinged,” Punch said.

Thomas Lennon then clarified: “That’s almost exactly what you’re saying.” To which Punch shot back: “I’m talking about her perky energy!”

Yeah I have news for Ms. Punch. Sarah Palin IS deranged and unhinged, it only SEEMS like "perky energy" to the uniitiated.

See?  How is that NOT deranged and unhinged?

By the way, I happened to see "Bad Teacher" last Friday, and I loved it.

Do you know how you see something that makes you laugh, and you think "I am going to hell for this?"  Well this whole movie is like that.

But if you have a truly demented sense of humor, like me, then you will LOVE it!

Here is the trailer.



P.S. This movie has the least sexy fully clothed dry humping scene of all time. Just so you know.