The Progressive Puppy

Goats on the Tower, Cats on the Roof (photos)

1. We built a tower with a climbing ramp and attached it to the goats' play table.  They enjoy high places.
2. Rowdy climbed up to the roof but he couldn't get down. That gave us an idea. Nowadays (unless it's raining and the roof is slippery) we let the kitties out the upstairs window so they can wander around the top of the house.  They love it, and when they're bored they come to the window and we let them back inside.

"Christian" Rotten Banana Awards Promote Anti-Gay Hatred

Chelsea Schilling, who like a weeping pustule oozes ultraconservative propaganda at World Net Daily, reports that Ted Baehr, self-proclaimed media critic and defender of "traditional values," has announced his "Rotten Banana Awards" for films that most offend narrow-minded bigots like himself and Ms. Schilling.

Dictionary.com bookmarked on her every online apparatus, this anemic Ann Coulter wannabe declares: 

Sex, homosexual affairs, heavy drinking, gruesome violence and anti-human and anti-God themes – it’s all featured in the film receiving the Vile, Vulgar & Anti-Christian Award and dubbed Worst Ultimate Christian Bashing Movie of the Year.  Dr. Ted Baehr, media critic and founder and publisher of Movieguide, named Kevin Smith’s “Red State” the worst movie of 2011. The film heads his list of the 20 Most Unbearable Movies of 2011, each receiving the Annual Rotten Banana Awards.  (To accompany her article, Schilling posts a vivid photo of a rotting banana so readers will know just how disgusting "real Christians" think these movies are.  Granted, the aforementioned "Red State" may not be the most subtle film you'll see this decade - but for those with a dark sense of humor and firsthand knowledge of evangelical extremists, it is entertaining.)  Other films earning the disgraceful designation include: “Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star,” which won the Slimy Pornification Award for its lewdness; “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy,” which received the Abhorrent Sexcapade Award; “The Skin I Live In,” which earned the Lurid Transgender Award; and “Happy Feet Two,” which was given the Environmentalist Hysteria Award.  (Fundie fanatics reject the idea of climate change resulting from our nation's dependence on coal and fossil fuels.  They figure their Deity would never allow that to happen.)

Things you can count on while perusing Teddy Baehr's "Rotten Banana Awards" list:  Any film that doesn't present LGBT Americans as skulking predators, sex addicts, suffering AIDS patients, child molesters, or self-loathing druggies will not find favor with Baehr and his pious posse.  (And if Rick Santorum wins the presidency, this magnate of morality could be appointed director of the FCC.  That prospect alone should send progressives running to the polls in November.) 

Baehr hated the Oscar-winning film "Beginners" because of "loud and proud homosexual activism."  (Plot: After devoting over fifty years of his life to an opposite-sex spouse, now deceased, Christopher Plummer comes out of the closet to his adult son. Scandalous!)  Teddy absolutely loathed the independent film "Pariah" due to its supposed "anti-Christian liberal perversion."  (This gem of a movie takes a sympathetic look at a black lesbian teenager coping with her judgmental Bible-thumping mother.)  He hated the sci-fi comedy  "Paul" for its "atheistic worldview" (the title character is a sentient being from another planet), and the action flick "Rampart" received his "Lying About The Police" award because the story deals with dirty cops which of course don't exist in Tea Party Universe.

You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that Christian values hypocrites hold their own version of the Academy Awards, attended by such D-List luminaries as Kirk Cameron, Pat Boone, Dean Cain, and Kevin Sorbo (shown above with his life-like wife Samantha.)  The 2012 Faith and Values Awards selected the movie "Courageous" (aka Police Who Pray) for the group's highest honor.  Although the majority of America's law enforcement officers are dedicated and compassionate, those pepper-spraying, homophobic, corrupt, sadistic, Taser-happy cops who find spiritual comfort in fundamentalism can rest assured that thanks to the FAVA, their reputation for decency is also being upheld.

(Pictured Top:  Chelsea Schilling, Ted Baehr, the Sorbos)

Pastor Steve Munsey's 'Lucky Dates,' TBN's Jan Crouch Gets Moist

ProPup's Sunday Prayer Service

1. Charismatic preacher Steve Munsey assigns "lucky dates" to worshippers. And he's NOT a false prophet, goddammit!
2. God is happy when you give Steve Munsey cash from your income tax returns, according to Steve Munsey.

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(Hat Tip: Christian Nightmares and philazzurri.)

Bonus Video: RodSerlingsGhost cleverly re-edits a clip of anti-gay televangelist Benny Hinn successfully seducing Trinity Broadcasting co-founder Jan Crouch.  (Crouch's hair is so feathered one expects it to leap from her scalp and fly away home - and you could set a tray of hors d'oeuvres on those eyelashes.  Of course this is all for the glory of God.)

“Live among wolves and you will learn to howl.” - Spanish proverb  (We live in the Texas Bible Belt.)

Pass the Salt - Republicans Eating Their Own

Matt Taibbi: Conservative Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

In an article for Rolling Stone Magazine, award-winning author Matt Taibbi eloquently describes the addictive paranoia of Republicans who paint Americans that disagree with their narrow values as The Enemy.  Conservative voters often express a desire to return to "simpler times" - simpler, certainly, for intellectually incurious and privileged heterosexual white males, times which never actually existed except in television sitcoms from the 50's and 60's.  But the GOP's "ongoing quest for orthodoxy," Taibbi observes, which started as "the finger pointing game," is "a little like drugs - you have to keep taking bigger and bigger doses in order to get the same high."  Needless to mention, within the confines of such a splintered and suspicious environment, the net of ideological unworthies has now broadened to include Republican party members who do not toe the line on social issues - and that's the mere tip of the iceberg.  Writes Taibbi:   

(A)ll liberals, gays, Hispanic immigrants, atheists, Hollywood actors and/or musicians with political opinions, members of the media, members of congress, TSA officials, animal-lovers, union workers, state employees with pensions, Occupiers and other assorted unorthodox types had already long ago been rolled into the enemies list.  Given the continued troubles and the continued failure to return to good old American values, who else could possibly be to blame? Where else could they possibly point the finger.  There was only one possible answer, and we're seeing it playing out in this race:  At themselves! ... This is the last stage in any paranoid illness. You start by suspecting that somebody out there is out to get you; in the end, you’re sure that even the people who love you the most under your own roof, your own doctors, your parents, your wife and your children, they’re in on the plot...  This is where the Republican Party is now. They’ve run out of foreign enemies to point fingers at. They’ve already maxed out the rhetoric against us orgiastic, anarchy-loving pansexual liberal terrorists. The only possible remaining explanation for their troubles is that their own leaders have failed them.  (I hope you'll take a few moments to read Taibbi's entire piece.)

How Low They Have Stooped

Do you remember those initial Tea Party demonstrations?  In every crowd, there were handmade signs and photoshopped placards showing President Obama's face with a Hitler mustache.  That's when right-wing pols and pundits first began using Nazi imagery to slander their political opponents.  Of course conservative leaders who attended college knew that das Führer's National Socialist Party had absolutely nothing to do with socialism - was in fact antithetical to the concept of socialism - but they linked them anyway, realizing that both appellations would terrify the fundie Christian Base.  It did.

These days, religious purity and "correct thinking" have become as important to ultraconservatives as racial and sexual purity were to Heinrich Himmler.  Alas, irony is wasted on the Republican Party.  

(Editorial cartoon, top right, courtesy Tom Toles.)

Former GOP Senator Criticizes Santorum Over Anti-Gay Zealotry

Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming, has called Rick Santorum "homophobic," and he says the GOP presidential hopeful is making a mistake by focusing primarily on the social issues which divide Americans.

According to The Hill, Simpson said during a CBS interview:  "I am convinced that if you get into these social issues and just stay in there about abortion and homosexuality and even mental health they bring up, somehow they're going to take us all to Alaska and float us out in the Bering Sea or something.  We won't have a prayer."  (Oh, I'm sure they'll have a few prayers left, especially those imprecatory prayers by GOP leaders and the Religious Right asking God to "Let Obama's days be few; and let another take his office,  May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow."  Did you suppose Jesus prayed for the death of others?)

Daniel Strauss observes:  Throughout his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, the former Pennsylvania senator has made social issues the centerpiece, and has championed incentivizing strong, nuclear households as a way to improve economic growth.  "He is rigid and a homophobic," Simpson, a Mitt Romney supporter, said. "He said, 'I want a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage,' and they said, 'Well, what about the people who are already married?' And he said, 'Well, they would be nullified.' I mean what is, what's human, what's kind about that? We're all human beings, we all know or love somebody who's gay or lesbian so what the hell is that about? To me it's startling and borders on disgust."  ... "And I think it will be Romney and I think he's got a good chance to be elected president simply because people vote against," Simpson said. "And if Obama keeps messing around - which is doubtful but he could - keeps messing around with contraception and the Catholics and all this stuff that they'll vote against him and that will bring Romney home."  (This is where Simpson's love for Softball Mitt blinds him.  He fails to mention that the vast majority of mainstream Catholics disagree with Roman Church hierarchy on the subject of birth control.)

In The Hill's feedback section, homobigots were out in force.  Let the Hate Fest commence ...

-  Rick is not irrationally afraid of Fags.  He simply understands they are deviant and doesn't agree with their lifestyle.  Lefties are just morons trying to always make the nut case freaks a pillar of tolerance as they continually are intolerant of normal people.  Why the heck would  any sane person vote for a liberal?
- Nothing Santorum has said can remotely be construed as racist, misogynistic, or homophobic.  Having moral standards is not an attack on a group of people.
-  Old man Simpson is a homophilic, anti-Christian, anti-Catholic has been!
-  I guess Santorum is going to lose that massive 1% homo vote.
-  *laughs*  And, let's see... the pedophile vote and the gay and lesbian and transgendered vote and uh.... the Man-Boy Love Association vote and uh...
-  And the gay Scout master vote.
-  I believe we are currently witnessing Alzheimer's terrible effects as Simpson has left the reservation!
-  Grab your ankles, Mr. Simpson.
-  Wonder how long it took them to find a RINO with Alzheimer's to bash Santorum.
-  No, he is not 'homophobic', he just calls it for what it is - sexual perversion!
-  NO ONE has a FEAR of homosexuals. This is nothing more than a term used to try and intimidate and denigrate people who believe homosexuality is immoral in order to suppress their opinion.
-  Back in the 1960's, homosexual behavior was considered a mental disorder. Look it up. An honest open discussion is impossible with bible haters.
-  This country was founded on religious freedom and my religion tells me that Homosexuality is a sin!!! Homophobe? Intolerant much? Get over it Simpson.
-  The Word of God calls same-sex couplings an "abomination" (see Sodom and Gomorrah).
-  Simpson crossed into senility a long time ago -- he's the crazy uncle in the GOP attic. He should eat his tapioca and STFU.

Ya vol, Grand Old Party members!  One must embrace the dogma of religious extremists or suffer the consequences!  (Nothing quite compares with the fervor of anti-gay fanatics.)  Over at Think Progress, Igor Volsky applies flea shampoo:  Arguing that gay relationships "destabilize" society, Santorum wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president. During his 99-country tour of Iowa, Santorum frequently compared same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people.  As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: "We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element." ...  During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in October, Santorum defended his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by arguing that gay soldiers would disrupt the military because "they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people."

"Gay marriage advocates hope to use the law to reshape the culture in exactly the same way that the law was used to reshape the culture of the old racist south."  - Maggie Gallagher of the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage, unintentionally making a pro-equality argument.

"In reality, there are no biblical literalists, only selective literalists. By abolishing slavery and ordaining women, millions of Protestants have gone far beyond biblical literalism. It's time we did the same for homophobia."  - William Sloane Coffin, progressive Christian clergyman, 1924-2006

UPDATE:  According to Politico, former Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has also declared that Rick Santorum is too rabidly anti-gay to serve as the nation's Commander-in-Chief.  (Santorum once endorsed Specter for public office, a move he no doubt bitterly regrets.)

Ringmasters in the Republican Circus

CNN commentator John Avlon describes the Republican Party's endless anti-Obama tirades as "punch-drunk pugilism, providing entertainment and some great upsets along the way," but he warns us that "there is a civic cost to the radioactive rhetoric that gets thrown out to excite the conservative crowds."

Electioneering and campaign tactics have always held a fascination for me - but during half a century of observing politics I've not heard so many bald-faced lies told and so much fearmongering spread by a political party as the effluvia that's emanating from the current crop of GOP candidates.  Today's Republican presidential wannabes behave like sleazy carnival barkers, and their supporters howl like the mobs of an Ancient Roman circus.  After noting that Ronald Reagan didn't once refer to Jimmy Carter as a socialist or communist on the stump, Avlon gets down to the red meat of things:

It's not just that the most irresponsible candidates can play to the base and get a boost in the polls, while more sober-minded candidates like Jon Huntsman fail to get attention. The real damage is to the process of running for president itself. Because when low blows get rewarded, the incentive to try to emulate Lincoln -- holding yourself to a higher standard -- is diminished.  And one barometer of this atmospheric shift is in the increasingly overheated rhetoric by candidates attacking the current president. This serial disrespect ends up unintentionally diminishing the office of president itself.

Rick Santorum raised eyebrows this past weekend for saying Obama wants to impose a "phony theology" on America. Santorum has since tried to clarify that he was not trying to raise doubts about the president's religion and I'll take him at his word. Likewise, when Santorum compares GOP primary voters to members of the "greatest generation" called to act against the rise of Nazi Germany, I'll assume that Santorum isn't intentionally comparing the president to Hitler.  (Sorry to rain on your optimism, Mr. Avlon, but that is exactly what he was doing.)  ... Here's what's most troubling about this trend:  It doesn't seem remarkable anymore. For the candidates and many in the press, it is just the new normal, the cost of doing business.

I believe in the innate decency of most American voters, and I think they will reject the outrageous slanders promulgated by right-wing pols.  Michael Tomsky at The Daily Beast writes about the GOP's chances in the 2012 general election: 

(T)here is no savior. And let us please be clear on why there is no savior. Because there is no one who can satisfy the base of the GOP - a cohort so drunk on ideology and resentment that they cheer electrocutions and boo a soldier - and be elected president of the United States. Period. The standard journalistic trope the past few months has been to say that the Republican establishment would step in at some point and not let things get too out of hand. But that’s mostly nonsense. This GOP establishment is barely less loopy than the base. If the base is driving the party into a ditch, the establishment is riding shotgun holding a shovel.

Respectfully disagreeing with President Obama's economic policies - and offering alternatives other than more tax breaks for multi-millionaires - might not send Religious Right zealots into the throes of ecstasy as will condemning contraception, calling microscopic zygotes "persons" and LGBT Americans "sinners," and cutting financial assistance for the elderly, but a less strident tone from GOP leaders would certainly appeal to moderate voters.  (As things now stand, deranged inmates are running the asylum.)   

Still, moderation is an alien concept to conservative power-brokers willing to say and do literally anything in order to regain their power and halt social progress.

(GOP elephant behind carnival barker Santorum courtesy Donkey Hotey, 1872 painting "Pollice Verso" by Jean-Léon Gérôme.)