It’s Sunday morning

See you in church!

Banning guns is the only way to keep Rick Perry from firing into a crowd

[I]t’s totally bizarre for Rick Perry to want people to think he might be carrying a pistol in his trousers. I can’t imagine he really is, but if he were, wouldn’t it be stupid beyond belief? I mean, imagine he’s in the middle of a crowd, getting mobbed by supporters, shaking hands and dishing out high fives … in that scenario, how in the world is he supposed to maintain control over his weapon? Obviously, he couldn’t. As a public figure constantly surrounded by people he doesn’t know, there’s just no way for Rick Perry to safely carry a firearm. It’s one thing for him to make the case for concealed carry permits, but it’s another thing altogether if he’s actually carrying as a candidate … it’s strange and it’s reckless.

Jed Lewison, The Daily Kos

It’s true what they say: if you open your mind too far, your brain will fall out

if you are white brown black or saved or pagan, cyborg mormon or chosen here in rw, where weirdos and freaks and undesirable fat old lady folk dwell in the land of the goddess. we gather here as her domestic representatives. we are domestic goddesses. we are hundreds and hundreds and thousands of millions. we are the women who vowed at sinai to defeat the beast in the age of aquarius, and it is written in the future that we did so, as it was written in the past. we are the programmers. we ourselves!!!  women are never reincarnated as men. only men are reincarnated as women. being a woman is your last life. this is written in the kaballah. men are always men until they evolve into being women. this they can do by merely serving the mother in them.

Roseanne Barr, (quoted on) Dispatches from the Culture Wars

If you feel guilty, start a charity

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

Warren Buffett, New York Times

But it’s such yummy tyranny

A small sign reading “Go vegan” was briefly hung around an Iowa State Fair butter cow Sunday morning, and animal rights activists took responsibility.

“We took this action to bring attention to the billions of animals enslaved for their milk, eggs and flesh,” the activists said in a statement. “The butter cow represents humankind’s tyranny over defenseless animals.”

Anonymous vegans, Des Moines Register

If you Yankees hate us so much, why didn’t you just let us leave?

Not to overplay the comparison, but today’s batch of older, white, racially-insensitive conservatives also assert less government is automatically good, federal taxation suspect, the U. S. president’s a crass, oppressive dictator — and decentralization would solve all problems. Curiously, today’s insurgents want to “take back their country” (just like southern Rebels), forever waxing nostalgic about fantasy golden ages (under Reagan). Not so different from earlier delusions of pre-abolition, ante-bellum plantation golden ages where happy slaves prospered because milk and honey flowed freely.

There is, so far, one great difference: millions were killed and maimed because the Confederacy took arms against its legitimate government. The two-year old Tea Party can’t yet match those casualties in its war against the majority — and against reality. But it’s still young.

Robert Becker, Smirking Chimp

Southern man don’t need you around anyhow

[Rick] Perry’s flirtations with neo-Confederate organizations and symbols — ably documented by Justin Elliott — are so extraordinarily reprehensible that it should immediately and permanently disqualify him from being taken seriously for national office. The Confederacy was not a bunch of generally well-meaning dudes who went a little too far, it was a gang of racist traitors who launched a bloody war to defend a monstrously unjust institution. Having neo-Confederate sympathies in America should be equivalent to supporting the reconstituted Fascist party in Italy, or worse. It should not be considered something that 50 percent of the nation should be willing to look past, or even embrace.

And if that embracing happens it’ll be in part because of a press that won’t explicitly describe a disgusting sentimental attachment to a racist, brutal regime of oppression as anything other than an acceptable ploy to pick up Southern white support.

Alex Pareene, Salon.com

And Bush flew the planes into the Twin Towers personally, I hear. Both of them.

I am sorry, but if you believe the newest death of OBL, you’re stupid. Just think to yourself–they paraded Saddam’s dead sons around to prove they were dead–why do you suppose they hastily buried this version of OBL at sea? This lying, murderous Empire can only exist with your brainwashed consent–just put your flags away and THINK!

Cindy Sheehan, Facebook.com 

[In case you don’t remember, Ms. Sheehan was the public face of the leftist anti-war movement from 2005 on.]

Wow. There really is a liberal special interest group for everything

[Peggy] Howell said Obama’s campaign [against childhood obesity] marginalizes weighty children and turns them into victims.

“Well, how are they marginalized?” Howell asked. “Studies indicate that children of higher body weight are 65 percent more likely to be bullied than children of lower body weight. When our First Lady said that we have to wipeout childhood obesity in one generation, she essentially gave permission to everyone to condemn the children with higher body weights. How this translates in real life is that these children experience more ridicule, more teasing, more bullying, and the perpetrators feel justified in their actions because after all, the First Lady said these kids have to go.”

Howell said being targets — whether intended or not — causes heavy children “pain and suffering” – even depression and suicide.

“When children of higher body weight hear we have to wipeout childhood obesity in one generation, for them those words translate to: we have to eliminate obese children. They hear: your body is bad. They hear: thin equals good, fat equals bad. They hear: your body is bad,” Howell said.

Peggy Howell, National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance 

Rick Perry is looking better all the time

I guarantee you that Perry will be the nominee. He’s the right kind of ignorant, bigoted, religious nut that will attract the religious fanatics, he’s a gun loving cheerleader who speaks the secessionist code and the teabaggers will love him, he’ll talk constantly about deregulation and lower taxes and the money will be on board, and as you can see from this syrupy sweet interview with Halperin […] the only decision for the media bobbleheads is whether they will spit or swallow.

John Cole, Balloon Juice