Speech coach arrives from Mars to coach Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin

New York:- His flying saucer put down at JFK International Airport at three o’clock in the morning when there were few people around to witness his arrival.

Within moments, Nictu Platu, the famed and often mysterious speech coach from Mars, had boarded a helicopter and was secretly whisked off to New Hampshire to help coach Republican presidential primary candidate Michele Bachmann with her interview appearances on television and before the public.

“Michelle needs help,” Platu explained briefly to a bleary-eyed press pool reporter who had been awakened from a gin stupor by a phone call from his editor and told to go interview the visiting Martian. Platu is said to work only for way-far-right Republicans and a few disturbed Libertarians.

“What kind of help?” the reporter asked.

“Well, she confused the press, which thinks she mixed up John Wayne, the movie actor, with John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer,” said Platu. “This was in Waterloo, Iowa, which she said was the birthplace of John Wayne. Actually, it was John Wayne Gacy’s birthplace.”

“Right, said the reporter.”

“Well, the truth is, she was thinking about John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer,” said Platu. “It’s just that the press refused to accept Michele’s word at the time and forced her to change her story.

"The truth is, she admires serial killers. That’s why she was for the pointless war in Iraq. That’s why you’ve never heard her complain in a right-to-life speech about the rights to life of an abortion doctors who was gunned down in church. Also, she loves TV serials and cowboy movies, which is how she learned about life in the first place. Not to mention history.”

“You mean the Paul Revere’s ride thing?” the reporter asked.

“Nah, now you’re talking about Sarah Palin, a different one of my students,” said Platu.

“Why do you only take Republican candidates?” the reporter asked.

“On Mars we have a saying. Only a dull knife needs a honing,” Platu said mysteriously.

And with that, he shut the helicopter door and took off for New Hampshire.

Is the AARP about to betray millions of its own dues-paying senior citizens...again?

When the AARP came out in support of the Medicare Part D "donut hole" a few years ago, it was a sellout from which millions of American seniors suffered higher drug costs that they're still paying today.

Now, from FiredogLake.com comes this communication, which I quote verbatim without further comment. Read it and draw your own conclusions:

It's time to burn your AARP card.

According to news reports this morning, the AARP will drop its opposition to cutting Social Security benefits. The huge organization wants a "seat at the table" to will decide how to void our country's social contract.

What's worse is that AARP will now use its considerable wealth and stature to advance this devastating idea in Congress. The group plans to hold town hall meetings across the country to evangelize this new stance to their millions of members.

Social Security is in grave danger. Tell the AARP that you won't back down to threats against Social Security.

As one of the largest lobbying groups in the country, AARP will likely now focus much of its $1.4 billion on providing cover for members of Congress, the administration and others seeking to cut Social Security.

AARP was instrumental in the passage of George W. Bush's disastrous Medicare Part D plan that diverted millions of dollars to private insurance companies. In the end, AARP ended up with huge profits from the corporate giveaway that passed Congress.

Now that they've decided that Social Security and the millions of seniors that depend on the program are no longer worth their time or money, you can bet that they'll use those same resources against us.

What's insidious is their attempt to paint this move as a good thing to their members, and that the death of the Social Security and Medicare programs are inevitable. Despite countless reports of their stability, AARP is now feeding the public the same lines as Alan Simpson and Obama's Deficit Commission.

Can you add your name to our letter and show your support for protecting Social Security?

The fight to protect Social Security has huge implications for future generations of Americans. Thank you for standing with us as we vehemently oppose any attempts - big or small - to kill these critical programs.

Thanks for all you do,

- Brian

Brian Sonenstein
Organizer, Firedoglake.com

PS: For more information on this story, check out this Firedoglake.com post from Eric Kingson, professor of social work at Syracuse University and former social security advisor to President Obama during the 2008 campaign.

Our disgusting news media

Watch it and puke!

Nancy Pelosi held a press conference, to talk about the economy, how to keep your job and Social Security safe, what we can do to save Medicare – the things that concern nearly every American.

She didn't want to talk aboutCongressman Anthony Weiner's resignation. And to tell you the truth, there's almost nothing left to say.

But when she announced that she would be talking about America's pocketbook issues and not Weiner's weiner, the networks cut away. They're a bunch of philistine nincompoops. May they'll all get fired in the next wave of media layoffs. Maybe there ought to be a National Switch Off The News Day to protest. Anyone?

Anyway, check out the clip from TPM.

House Republicans take food from the mouths of starving American children but feed azaleas

You can't make this stuff up.

Michelle Bachmann and the big lie that got away

I’ve been waiting – and waiting, and waiting, dudes – for some press truth squad to point out that Michelle Bachman was so full of bullpoop during the Republican candidates debate in New Hampshire the other night that she could have fertilized a 40-acre turnip field.

I’m speaking particularly of her reference to America’s roots as a Christian nation.

She caught me off guard. I wasn’t taking notes because I didn’t think any claim so bald-facedly false would emerge from the debate. But at some point she lectured us on the founding fathers’ belief in Christianity and how this make us a Christian nation.

Her proof? The line from the Declaration of Independence (Didn’t she mistakenly say the line was from the Constitution?) that “all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights ….”

She, she in effect said, the founding fathers wrote “creator” because they believed in God.

Sorry, Michelle. Once again you flunk history. The revolutionary founders used the word “creator” because they didn’t want to use the word “God.” There were quite a few deists among the founders. They believed there was something that created us, but whether it was a god or some other force they couldn’t say.

Go here and you’ll learn

Deism has no church and no official organization, hence, it is not considered a religion. It is more a reason-based view of religion in general. Deism is sometimes referred to as a religious philosophy or a religious outlook. In general, Deism did not see Christ as the Son of God, did not believe in the Trinity, had no strong belief in miracles, and had no belief in atonement or resurrection. The Bible was not considered “sacred text” among most Deists, although most Deists were (like Franklin) Christian-friendly.

Deism could fall into certain subcategories of Deist-Christian (i.e. Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson) and Deist non-Christian (i.e. Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen). Deist-Christians generally believed the Bible provided good lessons to live by and they attended church regularly. Deist non-Christians generally felt that Christianity was largely an impediment to growth and they did not attend church regularly.

In fact, in a 1796 treaty, the United States declared that the United States government “is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

So shut up, Michelle and stop spewing your bullpoop. Just…shut…up.

Take off that mask, “Public Advocate of the U.S.” Your name sounds like you’re part of the government. But you’re really a hate group.

If you got an e-mail from someone calling himself “Public Advocate of the U.S.” you might be tempted to think you were hearing from a government official.

Not a chance. You’d be hearing from a group in Falls Church, VA., the late Reverend Jerry Falwell’s old turf. According to their own website, the group is devoted to opposing same-sex marriage, prohibiting women from choosing to have an abortion, fighting against “Gay Rights” (they put the phrase in quotations marks), and a whole bunch of other early-Neanderthal ambitions. Oh, but they’re for something, too. Tax cuts.

The kind of anti-homosexual hatred the Falls Church creeps are stirring up is the kind that leads to lynchings, street assaults, bullying and harassment of kids in school and other violence.

I didn’t go looking for these goons. They found me. Here’s how it happened:

I put one of my e-mail addresses on the mailing list of a “self defense” training school some while ago. I wanted to do – and did do – a blog piece about the school because it was giving away just what the average Joe needs to blow away the neighborhood and disembowel his neighbors: free AK47s and bayonet sets.

Evidently Dr. Ignatius Piazza, the chiropractor-turned-gun-guru who runs the school traded my e-mail address to the so-called “Public Advocate.” Hey, it makes sense. If I’m really interested in owning a free AK-47 and a bayonet set, it stands to reason I’m the kind of red-blooded patriot who’s also open to bayoneting pregnant women as they try to enter abortion clinics, blowing away doctor who provide abortion services, or reducing the National Endowment of the Arts to rubble.

The Falls Church creeps wrote to me asking me to contribute money to fight The Student Non-Discrimination act, aimed at the reduction and bullying of gay and lesbian kids in classrooms around the United States. To get me fired all up with outrage, they keep calling the act “The Homosexual Classrooms Act.”

The purpose of the act, they said in a truth-twisting and sometimes outrightly lying letter, is to

Indoctrinate an entire generation of American children with pro-homosexual propaganda and eliminate traditional values from American society.

 Their ultimate dream is to create a new America based on sexual promiscuity in which the values you and I cherish are long forgotten.

I hate to admit it, but if they pass the deceptively named “Student Non-Discrimination Act,” that’s exactly what they’ll do.



The letter from the “Public Advocate of the U.S.” also lied to me that the Student Non-Discrimination Act would:

Exempt homosexual students from punishment for propositioning, harassing, or even sexually assaulting their classmates, as part of their specially-protected right to “freedom of self-expression;”

Nowhere does the act say any of this. You can read the bill yourself, S555, straight from the U.S. Government Printing Office (a real government agency) here. Warning: the text is so boring you may have to prop your eyelids open with toothpicks.

What the so-called “Public Advocate of the U.S.” really wants is your money. They’re asking for “contributions” of $30 to $200 so they can keep making a living by pumping out hate-filled, lie-laden trash.

Beware.

Here's my nomination for the best smart aleck comment of the year. So far.

"Only in America would an elected official call a press conference to confirm the identity of his penis."

(Gail Shister commenting on Weinergate at TV Newswer.)

Warning: Once Zacks.com gets your e-mail address, they might spam you forever, like they’re spamming me

At noon on May 31^st, I sent an e-mail to support@zacks.com headlined, “Get me off your database, damnit.”

My misadventure with Zacks started months before, when I made the mistake at some other financial website of clicking on an ad from Zacks.

Then the e-mail started coming in. Various come-ons to buy something I didn’t want. Day in. Day out.

Finally, I’d had enough. I clicked on a paragraph at the bottom of the spam mail that said, “If you would prefer to not receive future profit-producing emails from Zacks.com the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service, then please click here and confirm your request."

I clicked, and got a screen inviting me to unsubscribe. Which I did.

I quickly got back a message that said sorry, the e-mail address I was giving them was not in their database.

Huh? They had just e-mailed me at that address. I went through the process again. Same result. And several days later, still again, producing the same result yet another time.

Finally I wrote to the only Zacks e-mail address that seemed to apply to my problem, support@zacks.com.

My message to them – the one headlined “Get me off your database, damnit” – said:

“I keep receiving e-mail at the address [redacted]. I keep writing you to stop it. I keep getting messages back from you that this address is not in your database.

I think you are in violation of the law. If I receive one more – one more – e-mail from any Zacks entity, I will blog this all over the Internet.

Stop it! Just stop e-mailing me! Stop it!

I didn’t get a reply from the “support” people at Zacks. But since then, on two successive business days, I’ve received two more pieces of spam from Zacks.com. One offered me an “insider opportunity,” extended “but only until tonight.”

The other is trying to sell me the Zacks “Research Wizard” with the offer of a free trial. It tells me the product Zacks is selling is "like a license to steal," which sounds to me like not just poetic license, but a guarantee of investment results, in violation of FCC regulations. And it scolds, “...why haven’t you jumped on this opportunity?”

I’ll tell you why, Zacks. Because Zacks is a pain in the butt that does lousy research, that’s why. I have a Fidelity account, and whenever a list of analysts’ ratings of stocks contains the Zacks name, Zacks is almost inevitably near the bottom of the StarMine Accuracy scores.

Examples: Coca-Cola, 36 out of possible 100. Johnson and Johnson, 15 out of a possible 100. 3-M, 21 out of a possible 100. Pitney-Bowes, 21 out of a possible 100. Most of these stocks give the best analysts scores in the 90s.

The truth is, – based on their consistently pathetic StarMine accuracy ratings – Zacks couldn’t correctly guess the weather in a snowstorm, much less analyze stocks in any consistent and trustworthy way. But they can eternally pester you.

They seem to be experts at violating even the wishy-washy the CAN-SPAM act of 2003. They not only ignore your unsubscribe messages, but also lie about having you in their database while regularly sending e-mails to you on database autopilot.

What the victims of Zacks need is a law firm to launch a class action suit against the spammers at Zacks.