The End Of A Not-So-Great Year: What Fact Affected Ordinary Mortals Most In 2014?

BREAKING!
The rich get rich,
and the poor get poorer!

Of course I don't know all the possible candidates, but offhand I'd pick this one from Frank Minero at Addicting Info:

The Rich Get Richer: World’s 400 Richest Get $92 Billion Richer in 2014 (VIDEO)

... which means, of course, the rest of us got at least $92 Billion poorer. Yeah, I know, it's not a zero‑sum game, but the exceedingly wealthy have been playing it as if it is. I predict 2015 will be no better for us ordinary folks.

How many public schools would that $92 Billion buy? How many road repairs and other infrastructure improvements? How much more clean water and clean air? How many more jobs for working people?

Read Joseph Stiglitz's The Price of Inequality or any of the similar books out there: the extreme degree of economic inequality, in America and worldwide, is bad for everyone, including the wealthy. It doesn't have to be this way. But it will continue to be this way as long as the obscenely wealthy are allowed to pick the pockets of literally everyone in every other socioeconomic stratum.

Remember: there is no constitutional right to exorbitant wealth. But there is a human right to reasonable physical comfort, adequate food, secure shelter, basic healthcare, education for children and purposeful gainful employment for adults.

If the trend to an extreme schism between the very wealthy and the non‑wealthy continues to grow, it is only a matter of time before civilization itself goes to ground. We can surely do better.

NSA Report Must Have Been (ahem) An Oversight

Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept:

The National Security Agency on Christmas Eve day released twelve years of internal oversight reports documenting abusive and improper practices by agency employees. The heavily redacted reports to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board found that NSA employees repeatedly engaged in unauthorized surveillance of communications by American citizens, failed to follow legal guidelines regarding the retention of private information, and shared data with unauthorized recipients.

While the NSA has come under public pressure for openness since high-profile revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the release of the heavily redacted internal reports at 1:30PM on Christmas Eve demonstrates limits to the agency’s attempts to demonstrate transparency. Releasing bad news right before a holiday weekend, often called a “Christmas Eve surprise,”  is a common tactic for trying to minimize press coverage.

...

Read it all, if you think the gigantic equivalent of a typical Washington Friday press dump contains anything useful. I have other things to do in the next couple of days.

Ferguson Prosecutor Admits He Knew Some Witnesses Were Lying, But Called Them To Testify Anyway

McCullogh

From the WaPo, we learn that Robert McCulloch, prosecutor in St. Louis County, Ferguson, MO, has disclosed, a month after he announced the grand jury's no-true-bill on officer Darren Wilson's killing of the unarmed Michael Brown, that he (McCulloch) knew some of the witnesses he put on the stand were lying... but he was determined to allow all self-announced witnesses of the killing to testify, good, bad or ugly perjuring.

Wilson — Brown

And he's not going to prosecute any of those for perjury, not even those he now claims are surely lying.

Some days I just want to sit down and cry. Other days, I want to stand up and scream. Neither response will change a damned thing.

Elves On Shelves, Elves On Shelves — Children Who Surveil Themselves

The Elf on a Shelf™ is now a decade old, but I am only just now learning of it. Here's Kelly J. Baker at USC Annenberg's Religion Dispatches:

“I need to be good because of the elf that lives my room,” my five-year old explained.
“The what? Who lives where?” I ask.
“The elf that knows if I’m bad or good,” she replies.
 “There is no elf in your room,” I say.
“Yes, there is. He’s invisible,” she notes.
I sigh wearily.

...

Her imaginary elf is a version of The Elf on the Shelf ™, an androgynous, rosy-cheeked elf toy that monitors children as Christmas approaches. It is available in light or dark-skinned varieties. Accessories allow families to transform the elf into a boy or girl.

The elf emerged from The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition co-authored by mother and daughter, Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell. The book alone has sold over six million copies since it was released in 2005. For $29.95, parents can purchase the book and toy to start a new tradition. The story presents a “scout elf,” who journeyed all the way from the North Pole to watch children to find out whether they are naughty or nice. The elf surveils children during the day to uncover bad behavior, then it returns to the North Pole every night to report back to jolly old St. Nick.

...

These elves are ubiquitous. They can be purchased from bookstores, Target, and online retailers. ...

...

Yep, it's a Christmas tradition, all right:

He knows when you've been sleeping,
He knows when you're awake;
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness' sake!
— "Santa Claus is coming to town", Coots and Gillespie, 1934

The EotS does not talk, but kids are encouraged by this "tradition" to talk to it, to tell it secrets, etc. I do not know if the commercial version of EotS contains a recording device or not, but with ever tinier technology, surely it's only a matter of time.

The kid is forbidden, however, to touch the EotS: it would interfere with the Elf's "magic." (That's the word in the story, certainly not my word.) Some parents move the elf around the house so that it appears in a different room every morning. This teaches children a valuable lesson for later in their intrusively surveilled American lives: Always look for the "bug" — is the mic in the A/C vent? hidden behind the toaster? in the freezer, well-positioned to hear the obese child going through items, looking for a snack? in the garage, near the home workshop to catch any stray cussing by the adolescents using it? looking over the passenger seat of the car the teen uses for dates, to "see"/"hear" any back-seat activity?

Here's a picture of the Elf:

(Sorry; the Elf is invisible (except when it isn't), remember? Otherwise, the child might think s/he is not under surveillance when s/he can't see the Elf.)

Using the EotS from birth through, say, the last year of middle school should be sufficient to acclimate the kid to a world of constant surveillance under all circumstances... ALL circumstances. The federal government's three-letter agencies appreciate every parent's assistance with their children.

The Challenges Of Small Town Life — Doggerel!

Catherine Thompson at TPM tells us about one of those challenges:

Ohio Town Orders Man To Take Down Zombie Nativity Scene

A suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio has ordered one resident to remove a zombie-themed nativity scene from his property, local TV station WLWT reported Tuesday night.

Jasen Dixon, a Sycamore Township man who manages a haunted house in Indiana, built the manger scene with zombie-like figures standing in for Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus and the three wise men.

But town officials following up on two anonymous complaints found that Dixon's handmade nativity scene violated zoning codes.

...

Yeah, right; zoning codes. It's time for a double dactyl, folks, about the...

Zombie Takedown!

Higgledy piggledy,
Zombie Nativity
Vacantly stares at our
Midwestern town;

Direly reducing our
Profitability:
Bad for our Christmas — now
Take the thing down!

— SB the YDD

Merry Christmas!

Or substitute the Winter Solstice holiday of your choice...

Baltimore Fox Affiliate Edits Video Of Protesters To Make Them Appear To Be Chanting, ‘Kill A Cop’

Where to begin. (Sigh.)

First, for lack of a better summary, yesterday's article by Brendan James at TPM. Go there; read it in order; note that at least one viral video is named "[Al] Sharpton's 'Go Kill A Cop' march in Wash DC", a rather provocative title.

So did the poster of the YouTube version that went viral make up the attribution of "Kill a Cop" to Sharpton? Um, no. The Fox station in Baltimore did that, and the Gawker article has the original video and the Fox-tampered version one right after the other.

The actual words chanted, as revealed by the unaltered tape:

We won't stop!
We can't stop!
'til killer cops are in cell blocks!

The Fox-modified version:

We won't stop!
We can't stop!
So kill a cop!

(NOTE: Gawker has inadvertently swapped "won't" and "can't" in both transcriptions. The actual chant and Fox's modification are both correctly rendered above.)

The bolded last line is the one never spoken by the protesters. But that won't matter to a RWNJ who shows up at the next protest by this group, which calls itself "Justice for All". People so stooopid they believe anything that comes via Fox won't hesitate to carry a gun and flip the sense of the alleged last line by shooting at a protester.

In short, this local Fox station's postprocessing crew suborned murder.

Ten to twenty years ago, I used to hit the streets, protesting all kinds of things with all kinds of groups... the death penalty with the local Amnesty International; Baby Bush's Iraq War with a variety of groups, etc. I even appeared on TV a couple of times. On the whole, I felt physically safe in those protests: in the good old days, all a protester needed to know is how to assert her- or himself in a nonaggressive manner, and of course what his/her rights are and how to claim them as diplomatically as possible. I was never even arrested, let alone assaulted.

Now, even if I were sufficiently recovered to resume participation in street protests, I would feel a real sense of personal risk, from the police, from agents provocateurs, from opposing protest groups (a regular feature of antiwar protests; you'd be amazed how many people don't believe Americans other than themselves have the right of free speech)... and now we can add to that list, Fox News.

Fox can go straight to Hell as far as I'm concerned.

---

UPDATE: for what it's worth, Fox 45 Baltimore has apologized and offered some minimal air time to some protesters. That really doesn't mitigate the dangerous nature of their act in falsifying, on air, what the protesters said in the first place. Protesters' lives are in danger because of the Fox station. As far as I'm concerned, there's no going back from that act.

Krugman: Voodoo Economics On Its Way Back To The Halls Of Congress

Paul Krugman explains to us what Ronald Reagan-style "voodoo" economics (I believe the term was first used seriously by, ironically, George H. W. Bush) inflicted on all aspects of the U.S. economy in its heyday... and what it will impose on all of us if (or should I say when) it comes back in the next Congress.

The short of it is this: cutting taxes to promote economic growth never worked and cannot work. But that doesn't stop conservative ideologues; they just concoct more lies in an attempt to make the bad look good and the truly terrible look even better. As one of my favorite Sixties pop musicians put it, "Lie la lie; lie la lie lie, lie la lie, lie la lie..."

AFTERTHOUGHT: As Krugman hinted and TPM's Daniel Strauss spelled out, GOPers are preparing to wreck the CBO so as to use something they call "dynamic scoring," which basically means assuming/predicting economic growth as a direct consequence of lower taxes. No evidence in practice has ever been presented demonstrating this assertion/assumption, but hey, it fits with their ideology...

The Blind Bleeding The Blind

In this case, it's the morally blind depriving the physically blind, a child no less, of his one compensation that allows him to function in the world. Via Kos again, we have WDAF TV Kansas City (yes, damn it, it's Fox):

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Two North Kansas City parents are outraged after they say their blind son’s cane was taken away from him at school by a bus driver.

Eight-year-old Dakota Nafzinger attends Gracemor Elementary School. Rachel Nafzinger said school staff took away her son’s cane as punishment for bad behavior on the bus and then gave him a swimming pool noodle to use as a substitute.

The school wouldn’t go on camera, but North Kansas City School District Spokeswoman Michelle Cronk confirmed taking away Dakota’s cane, calling it school property that was given to him when he enrolled. They said they took it away after he reportedly hit someone with it and wanted to prevent him from hurting himself or others.

His family said it was a way to humiliate him for misbehaving.

...

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore..."

I am not blind, and the good Dog willing, with today's meds, I needn't go blind the way my maternal grandmother did at an age slightly younger than I am right now. But I do walk with a cane most of the time, even around the house and especially out in public where the obstacles to safe passage are formidable even without hostile people exhibiting needless cruelty. And I am declaring emphatically right now: if you believe it is appropriate punishment, ever, to take someone's cane away, and you attempt to enforce your belief against me, I shall beat you senseless with it.

What part of the Eighth Amendment's "cruel and unusual punishments" do these butterfingers not understand?

For people too ignorant to distinguish I provide an illustration:

Walking Canes

NOT Walking Canes

Merry Xmas, Kids, Here's Your Assault Rifle...

Once again, Florida outdoes Texas... c'mon, Rick and Greg, you're falling behind!

Via Kos, from Daily Mail:

...

Machine Gun America's management claim it is an attraction, not a firing range, and customers cannot bring their own weapons to shoot. Guests must be 13 years old and no alcohol will be sold.

How looow can they goooo?
(Not from Machine Gun America...
from somebody's FB page.)

Wes Doss, Machine Gun America's safety and training officer, said it was unlike any other experience in the country.

'The live shooting experiences will include themed packages featuring some of the most famous firearms from around the world.'

General Manager Bruce Nierenberg also defended accusations the attraction was unsuitable for children.

'No one ever shoots by themselves, and no guest is ever in control of the weapon without a range safety officer next to them and participating with them,' he told WTSP.

...

Oh. Well. That makes me feel better. Um, actually, not...

Warren, Markey, Baldwin Challenge Back-Door Financial Dereg Smuggled Into TPP

Rich Uncle Pennybags,
a.k.a. Monopoly Man

There is nothing big corporations' lackeys in Congress won't do to benefit their masters at taxpayers' expense. In this case, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), challenging the lackeys, "sent a letter to US Trade Representative Michael Froman demanding answers about backdoor financial deregulation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership."

What, exactly, are the Senators challenging? These provisions inserted in the TPP bill, provisions having little if anything to do with the TPP, though they benefit the same corporate entities and wealthy individuals:

1. Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), which allows foreign companies or investors to sue governments for losses in expected profits
2. "Market access" provisions that could prohibit restrictions on predatory financial products, like risky forms of derivatives
3. Limitations on governments' ability to impose capital controls, which could stymie efforts to prevent future financial crises as well as efforts to pass a financial transaction tax

Hey, you small business owners and sole practitioners out there: who among you has the privilege of suing a government for "losses in expected profits"? Right... this is a sop to the corp's and the very wealthy, and if the provisions pass into law and Rich Uncle Pennybags sues our gummint and wins, his "losses in expected profit" come out of your taxpaying pocket. What's right about that? And the other two provisions are no better. Combined, these provisions could utterly soak you, the taxpayer, to make the wealthy wealthier.

Miscellany

 

  Health; health and politics:

• Ancient Egyptian technology may be our first line of defense from hospital infections
• GOP Leaders May Be Undermining A Core Argument In Supreme Court Case Against Obamacare
• Miscarriage Isn’t Illegal, But It’s Increasingly Treated With Suspicion

  Police; CIA; torture:

• Why Police Unions Are Lashing Out Against Cop Critics Like Never Before
• If You Thought Stop-And-Frisk Was Bad, You Should Know About Jump-Outs
• A majority of Americans support CIA torture program
• The CIA Didn’t Just Torture, It Experimented on Human Beings

  The Courts; Obama appointments:

• Filibuster reform helped President Obama re-shape the federal courts
• Obama-appointed federal judges make the courts a lot less pale and male

  Miscellaneous miscellany:

• eBookNation: Howard Zinn, Some Truths are Not Self-Evident

  (Apologies; the linked page's typesetting is atrocious, but the content for sale through this page, a selection of The Nation columns by the late great Howard Zinn, is important.)

• Walmart ordered to pay $188 million in Pennsylvania wage theft lawsuit
• Busy lame-duck session means this Congress wasn't the least productive ever. Yay?

Obama's Missed Opportunity: America's Resumption Of The Nuclear Arms Race

James Carroll, columnist at the Boston Globe and occasional writer at TomDispatch, appears mirrored at Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog, writing about the great opportunity Obama had in 2009 to turn America, and hence the rest of the nuclear-armed nations of the world, toward a path to nuclear disarmament, or at least a drastic reduction in the number of nuclear-tipped missiles armed and ready to go at any moment. The short version: ultimately, despite his grand announcement, Obama listened to the hardcore hawks, and America is on course to modernize, not decommission, its nuclear arsenal.

'Fat Man' - Nagasaki,
Aug. 9, 1945

When I was a young child, a boy in grade school, W.W. II, with its first... America's and the world's first... use of an atomic bomb in war, was recent history, and the Cold War was ratcheting up. Classrooms full of school kids learned to do duck-and-cover drills, on command from the teacher. There were lists of steps we were supposed to take when told to "drop," lists to which some wag always appended one additional step after "Place head between legs": "Kiss your a$$ goodbye." Most of us understood there was no going back from a direct nuclear attack on the City of Houston: virtually everyone would die, and we knew it.

In the 1970s, some steps were taken toward reducing the magnitude (not the direness) of the US-Soviet nuclear conflict. As a consequence, by the 1980s, the era of Saint Reagan, the hawks began to talk of "winnable nuclear war"; once again, humanity faced extinction by the crazy men in Washington and Moscow. The same nutjobs began to talk of nuclear weapons in space as well as defensive weapons in space.

Reagan himself claimed to have "won" the Cold War by arming the US to the point at which the Soviet Union could not keep up. (Gorbachev, as quoted by Peter Jennings on ABC evening news, called this claim "utter crap.") According to a chart at Wikipedia, the US peaked at more than 30,000 nuclear weapons; the Soviet Union, 40,000.

The number didn't begin to decrease until Ronald Reagan left office, replaced by his veep, George H.W. Bush. Subsequently, nuclear arms in both nations were decreased in number, leveling off at about 5000. (The number depends on what you count as a "weapon": I suspect the 5000 is a count of warheads, because I've seen counts of the number of missiles that were considerably lower.)

I do not know how much credence to give to Carroll's extremely pessimistic assumption that there's no going back once Obama decided to follow the hawks' advice and modernize the nuclear forces. There is the fact that at least four more nations have joined the nuclear "club," with more sure to follow. In addition, every terrorist group in the world will continue to do its damnedest to get its hands on one or more nukes, though all of them face delivery difficulties that may prove insurmountable (we can hope!).

But if Carroll is right, and Obama has truly abandoned his hopeful determination in 2009, then the children and grandchildren of my first cousins (cousins only a few years older than me) will learn to duck-and-cover... and kiss their a$$es goodbye. Heaven help us all.

Obama Takes First Steps Toward Normalizing US‑Cuban Relations

And it's about damned time. (More here.)

Cuba survived its unhealthy dependency on the old Soviet Union. I suppose Americans assumed when the Soviets dropped their support of Cuba that Cuba would collapse in a heap; to the apparent consternation of our Red-baiters, that did not happen. You have only to watch Michael Moore's film SiCKO to see evidence of at least one aspect in which Cuba's citizens enjoy life circumstances superior to those of lower-income Americans, namely, medical care.

But I'm not here to talk about medical care. I want to talk about the performing arts. For better or worse, I'm going to quote myself, from a post on the ancient hand-coded YDD in 2003:

...

Chucho Valdés, 2014

Tonight the youth were supposed to share the stage with Chucho Valdés, a famous jazz pianist (about whom there's more below). ...

...

So... why am I writing about this, on a mostly political blog? Simple: the concert I expected to hear was not the one presented. I went because the eminent Latin jazz pianist Chucho Valdés was scheduled to perform. Why did he not perform? Again, simple: he was stuck in the Havana airport, unable to obtain a U.S. security clearance to fly here to perform. Yes, Valdés is Cuban. He has performed so many times in the U.S. that I can't begin to count them. But apparently George W. Bush & Co. are sure that anyone from Cuba must be a terrorist. Of all Dub's flaws, raw, unmitigated ignorance... proud ignorance, often enough... must be one of his worst.

...

Fast-forward to 2014. Valdés is still alive and apparently still performing at age 73, with a backup band called The Afro-Cuban Messengers. Bush-baby is no longer president. So if Obama can manage to complete negotiations of basic diplomatic ties with Cuba while he is still in office, maybe Valdés can come to the US one last time.

On the other hand, a Rethuglican still hellbent on Commie-bashing (e.g., soft-brained Sarah Palin or madwoman Michele Bachmann) could become POTUS in 2016, and Chucho could once again be stuck in the Havana airport...

Robert Reich: Wall Street Is One Of Democratic Party's Biggest Contributors

That's right: as improbable as it may seem to rank-and-file Democrats, their party is nearly as wholly owned by Wall Street as the GOP is... and Wall Street is paid back manifold, through the carried-interest tax loophole. Read this sad truth presented by Robert Reich, if you can stand to do so.

Barenboim Plays Beethoven: Sonata Pathetique

Daniel Barenboim, pianist, one of the outstanding interpreters of our time, plays one of Beethoven's signature sonatas, Op. 13, Pathetique. Listen first, then you can decide whether to read my ramblings:

I was probably about 13 years old when I finally confronted this sonata at the other kind of keyboard. Believe me when I say that a 13-year-old is not ready for this work, physiologically or musically, but sometimes I think that a 130-year-old would not be, either. My dear parents suffered politely as I hammered my way through the work ("Hammerklavier" takes on a different meaning when a kid does it). Dad took a second job at night and bought the piano for Mom and for me; Dad himself didn't play or... if we could prevent it... sing.

Barenboim may not be today's version of a Beethoven scholar; he is 72 years old now, and people of his generation had a different idea of how Beethoven should be played than many of today's original-instruments performers. But in the case of Beethoven and Barenboim, I am not one to quibble. When one of the great interpreters of our era applies his skill and inspiration to one of the great creators of art music of all time, we all have to listen with respect and enjoyment.

Beethoven was not afraid of the future; many have remarked that when it comes to piano in particular, the instruments of his day sometimes did not survive his relentlessly aggressive attack. I am willing to concede (as I do not with most composers) that Beethoven required of his instruments things they could not provide. A concert in a sports arena with a speaker stack blaring bright and loud in every remote corner would probably have suited his personal taste. Surely Beethoven would conceive the Pathetique more the way Barenboim renders it than the performances Beethoven heard (when he could hear).

(Some say today is Beethoven's birthday. Maybe so: it is better established that he was baptized on the 17^th.)

Think About This Senator From Massachusetts — Think Long And Hard About What She Could Do

... in an office with a great deal more power.

One thing she could do is make my broker and yours sh!t their pants, and that's no bad thing...

Bachmann To Obama At White House Christmas Party: ‘Bomb, Bomb, Bomb... Bomb, Bomb Iran...’

Oh, wait, maybe it was John McCain, during his presidential campaign. But Michele Bachmann took the opportunity of the White House Christmas Party to urge Obama to order the bombing of Iran. Some folks are just full to overflowing with the Chrtistmas spirit...

Scalia: Constitution Does Not Prohibit Torture

AP, in an unsigned short article:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is joining the debate over the Senate's torture report by saying it is difficult to rule out the use of extreme measures to extract information if millions of lives were threatened.

...

Scalia says nothing in the Constitution appears to prohibit harsh treatment of suspected terrorists.

...

Well, fuck, Antonin; good job of answering... what? certainly no question anyone actually asked.

Scalia exemplifies original dyspepsia

Suppose Scalia is correct, and not one word in the Constitution prohibits torture. Does that mean that torture is peachy-keen, and every agent of every three-letter American government agency should run right out and torture the first criminal suspect or terrorist suspect s/he encounters?

In short, it does not matter whether the Constitution of the United States explicitly prohibits torture: torture is wrong anyway, from a moral AND a strategic standpoint.

Is one Texas GOP asshole who occupied the White House for eight years sufficient to overturn two centuries of moral tradition that the US does not engage in torture? And why does an ancient and far from venerable Supreme Court Justice feel compelled to advocate torture publicly?

Scalia is 78 years old and reportedly very religious. Please forgive me if I hope his God calls him home before he incites too many more zealots in the CIA, NSA, FBI and DHS (to name just a few) to grotesque acts in the name of the people of the United States of America.

You Think Religious Fundamentalists Are Harmless, As Long As They Call Themselves Christian? Fat Chance!

librarisingnsf at Kos, for LGBT Kos Community:

Anti-Gay NC Church Members Indicted For Felony Kidnapping And Assault Of Gay Man

...

From LGBTQ Nation:

... but religious bigotry
is no laughing matter

Five members of an anti-LGBT church in Spindale, N.C., were indicted on several felony charges this week, following a complaint lodged by a young gay man who says church members kidnapped him and assaulted him because of his sexual orientation.

A grand jury indicted Justin Brock Covington, Brooke McFadden Covington, Robert Louis Walker Jr. and Adam Christopher Bartley on second degree kidnapping and simple assault charges. A fifth member, Sarah Covington Anderson, was indicted on second degree kidnapping as well as simple assault and assault by strangulation.

The grand jury met on Monday, with indictment announcements released on Tuesday.

All are members of The Word of Faith Fellowship, a church which has continually come under fire for its alleged cult-like behaviors and severe treatment of members, particularly young people.

In this most recent case, 21-year-old student Matthew Fenner, a member of the church since age 16, alleges that several members targeted him because of his sexual orientation.

...

May the good Dog spare me from bigots. If this church didn't hate gays, they'd hate Blacks. If they didn't hate Blacks, they'd hate Unitarians. (No, I'm not making that up; one such person raged and raved at me for being a UU... the R&R took place over a lunch table at a music workshop. FWIW, my UU church in my young adult years had an openly gay minister, and all of us, straight, gay and otherwise, admired him greatly.)

Apparently the fundies have to hate somebody to keep the fire in their bellies going. I am not Christian, but I have serious doubts that Jesus would recognize these people as members of his flock.