I guess if you read Twain, you’re inclined to think things have always been this crazy.  Perhaps they have.   I mean most of the things he had to say are totally applicable and completely in context for and of contemporary society.

I remember this episode of Bewitched where Samantha Stevens, pre-adolescent fantasy that she was, conjured Ben Franklin up and into the then modern world.  It’s a scenario that has persisted with me since.  I still drive clogged Los Angeles freeways thinking about explaining modern life and society to someone like Benjamin Franklin.  Like I’m in my Audi doing 75 miles an hour or 25 depending on time of day and how he’d be frightened by one speed and terrified by the other.  Or how I’d discuss current affairs with him and he’d be nonplussed on one hand but full to bursting with sagacity on the other.

If I could indeed reanimate a founding father like Jefferson or Adams or Franklin, I wonder how horrified would they be.  I’m anxious about how fascinated and in awe of technology they would surely be.  I’m really enchanted by the idea of exposing them to it and explaining it.  I wonder and would obviously covet the view they would have of our world today.  I can’t shake that.  It would be so cool.

What would they have to say about a woman’s right to choose?  What would they make of the conflict between a woman being able to choose her own life over that of her unborn fetus being influenced by a physician with archaic religious beliefs?

Despite all the absolute crap fomented by the religious right to the contrary, proof in thick tapioca pudding is clear that we were not born in any sense of the word, a Christian nation.  These dudes were smart and aware of the dangers therein.  They knew beyond the endorsement or adaptation of any particular denomination or specific set of beliefs that most of it not all of it was quite likely bullshit and the biggest mistake would be to go there at all.  Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you as evidence of thus, the first amendment to the Constitution of These United States:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

So Reagan’s centennial is being championed and celebrated.  The Gipper stumbled over his own pudenda not for the first or last time.

“To those who cite the first amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The first amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.” – Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States

No shit, Ronnie got it wrong.  One of the few reasons righty zealots are so goddamn in love with him even though he wouldn’t last a day in tea bagger hell or heaven.

Reagan was wrong.  It was written to protect the people from religious tyranny.  They wrote that very thing because they’d just had their asses cheese gratered by religious tyranny and intolerance and discrimination and profoundly unfair judgment and bias and bullshit based entirely on righteous indignation and divine entitlement and the like.

Ronald Reagan was a clueless dickhead whether you’re liberal or conservative.  I don’t doubt he had Alzheimer’s in office.  I love to point out how gay the conservatives are for Reagan despite how politically incorrect it is because they all are gay for him, yet they hate homosexuals.  There’s just a chili, lime bittersweet and therefore irresistible irony there.

He raised taxes 11 times.  He presided over 10.8% unemployment after the one tax break he was so lionized for.  Government spending, deficits and over all size erupted like the bowels of a fat drunken redneck 90 minutes after a six pack of chili cheese dogs with mayonnaise, mustard and onions.  Then there was Iran contra; 14 convictions and more pardons than blow and vodka confused hookers and porn stars on Charlie Sheen’s birthday.  He vetoed comprehensive anti-apartheid legislation and was efficaciously complicit in the creation Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban, the latter casting a lethal pall over foreign relations that may yet end in nuclear nightmare.  Arguably most egregious in terms of legacy, is the culture of deregulation and dismissal of accountability on behalf of  big corporations, industry and financial institutions that ended up as catalyst for the worst global recession in history, an avaricious precipitation to power of a world plutocracy and the consignment to oblivion of the American middle class.  And by the way, he didn’t do shit for “Family Values” or social conservative causes much less those espoused by Teabagger blowhards.  They would have run Sharron Angle against him today.

The guy wasn’t just an idiot, he was an asshole.

But I digress.  Puh.

The madness continues.

Enter HR. 358.

Again the irony.  Introduced by some Republican dickhead from Pennsylvania Joe Pitts (big surprise) and called “The Protect Life Act”.

It would grant hospital emergency rooms and doctors the legal right to refuse an emergency abortion to save the life of a mother and subtract the existing obligation to send the mother to a facility that would perform the procedure to save the mother’s life as exists under current law.  They began by attempting to redefine rape as essentially only occurring if the female victim had obvious signs of having the shit beaten out of her (HR.3).  I understand that died on the vine just like some fetuses do.

But still:

The Pitts bill effectively turns all hospitals into arms of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  In other words, your health care is now fully subject to fundamentalist religious ideology.

The so-called Protect Life Act is one of a slew of pieces of legislation that seek to effectively ban abortion in the United States, establish personhood of fertilized eggs, and outlaw contraception.

In short: Fertilized eggs are people; women are not.  -RH reality check.org

Fucking Catholics are the last people who should have say in anything.  Evil hypocrites.  Phony disingenuous bastards.  Hopelessly dishonest and willfully self delusional.  I loathe Catholicism.  I’d like to think I hate all religions equally, but I hold them to a lower standard in particular.

Much of the language is based on the now infamous Bart Dickcheese “Stupak Amendment” and co-sponsored by all the usual suspects like Bachmann,  Bachus, Barton, Broun, Gohmert, McClintock, McCotter, Paul (of Ron), Pence,  and Sessions.  I doubt a more ridiculous cavalcade of stars has ever joined the national parade of mental invalids.

How much more proof do you assholes need about the difference between Democrats and Republicans?  Let me know how I can help because I’m sick to puking with your incessant whining.  Oh yeah, Democrats are fucked up too but shut the hell up.  No Democrat would ever take it upon itself to introduce or sponsor such vaingloriously abominable legislation.  Nope.  No fucking way.

Drinks for my friends.

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