Conservative Karate and the Bible-licious Belts, by Rena Silverman

The Red Belts of Conservative America

The Chastity Belt, (Southern and Middle America) where RANGE only comes in the form of abstinence.

The Saved Belt, where Middle America fears God.

The Dow Jones Belt, where financial centers hang over swollen city streets (ie, New York, Chicago, Houston).

The Locked-and-Loaded Belt - self explanatory

The Caviar-Cocaine Belt, where Old Money buys the country-club set.

The Border Belt, where it’s MAGIC! a 700-mile fence secures a 2,000-mile border!

THE BELTS OF PURPLE AMERICA

The Slot-Jockey Belt - Casino Country (Nevada, Atlantic City, Mississippi River Valley)

The Kitsch Belt, where small towns surround roadside kitsch and other tourist schlock

The Can’t-Buckle-My-Belt, where the hefty portions match the people

The Cookie-Cutter Belt, where planned, middle-class communities come to emulate a group of Desperate Housewives

The Bud Belt, where canned, flavourless beer will always be king

###

more belts on the way!
rena silverman

Iranian Head Seeks Arms, by Rena Silverman

…But Holy SMOKES! a Burning BUSH!JERUSALEM (iReport by Rena Silverman) President Bush today condemned his critics’ calls for negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as comparable to the “appeasement” of Adolf Hitler before World War Two

Bush, who spoke to the Israeli Knesset to ratchet up his rhetoric against Iran, saying Washington stood by Israel in opposing Tehran’s “nuclear weapons ambitions.” He warned that allowing Iran to obtain a atomic bomb would be “an unforgivable betrayal,” that would be “Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations,” Bush told the Israeli parliament.

The president is on his second visit to Israel in the last five months. This time, the President will travel to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Letting Iran acquire atomic arms, Bush said, “would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations.”

Bush, who has refused any contact with Ahmadinejad, said the Iranian president “dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.”

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said, once again, lumping Iran’s leader into an anti-Israel campaign cocktail, one of Bush’s favourites. The ingredients: Ahmadinejad, Hamas, Hezbollah, Osama bin Laden and now, Nazi Germany.

“As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history,” he added.

The Bush Administration also has a standing offer to talk to the Iranians about a wide range issues and to provide economic and other incentives if Tehran first agrees to suspend its uranium enrichment program. Tehran, however, claims that its nuclear program is merely aimed at the generation of electricity.

*Image: President George W. Bush stands with Dalia Itzik, Speaker of the Knesset, and Israeli President Shimon Peres on the floor of the Knesset Thursday, May 15, 2008, in Jerusalem. WHITEHOUSE.gov. Photo by Shealah Craighead.

*SWH contributed to this article.

Haiku of the day, by Rena Silverman

but don’t expect one tomorrow…

Middle East peace talks
The parties reach agreement
Falafel for Lunch

by Rena Silverman

Understanding the Federal Budget Debate, by Rena Silverman

1. For thirty-one out of the last thirty-five years, the country has spent more on government programs and services than it has collected in taxes.

2. Every year the government comes up short, it borrows money to cover the difference. We’ve now built up a very big debt—roughly $9 trillion, and yes, that is trillion with a T.

3. The country will have humongous additional expenses over the next couple of decades as the baby boomers begin to retire and need more medical care.

4. There is no realistic way government can lower taxes (or even keep them at current levels), spend money on everything people want the government to do (at least according to the polls), and still end up with a balanced budget.

5. If we keep on going the way we’re going, the debt will get bigger and begin to endanger the U.S. economy and our own personal finances and plans. And the government won’t have enough money to pay for Social Security and Medicare for the boomers and still do what most of us expect government to do.

6. A substantial portion of the country’s debt is held in foreign countries. Right now, these foreign investors consider U.S. government bonds one of the safest places in the world to put their money, but they could decide at some point that Europe or China or some other place is a better bet. This would be the global equivalent of a store clerk seizing your credit card and cutting it up.

Rena Silverman

The Withdrawal Effects of Forgetting to Wear My Necklace – a double-blind crossover efficiency trial

The effects on anginal symptoms of sudden withdrawal of large doses of Sumner-in-a-Locket were evaluated in a 22 year old, female subject in a double-blind crossover efficacy trial requiring sudden cessation of the agent. When the patient wore the Sumner-in-a-Locket, not ONCE did she experience an increase in angina, and there were no symptoms of any let’s-freak-out-and-panic attacks. After more than two hours of discontinuance of Sumner-in-a-Locket, terrifying ischemic events developed in the patient, serious Sumner-in-a-Locket withdrawal complications: stumbling-of-the-legs-while-pitted-in-panic; and a final, untethered hysteria. Thus, patients administered Sumners-in-a-Locket should NOT ever remove the agent for more than two hours.

 

 

Iranian Head Seeks Arms

…But Holy SMOKES! a Burning BUSH!

JERUSALEM (iReport by Rena Silverman) President Bush today condemned his critics’ calls for negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as comparable to the “appeasement” of Adolf Hitler before World War Two

Bush, who spoke to the Israeli Knesset to ratchet up his rhetoric against Iran, saying Washington stood by Israel in opposing Tehran’s “nuclear weapons ambitions.” He warned that allowing Iran to obtain a atomic bomb would be “an unforgivable betrayal,” that would be “Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations,” Bush told the Israeli parliament.

The president is on his second visit to Israel in the last five months. This time, the President will travel to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Letting Iran acquire atomic arms, Bush said, “would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations.”

Bush, who has refused any contact with Ahmadinejad, said the Iranian president “dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.”

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said, once again, lumping Iran’s leader into an anti-Israel campaign cocktail, one of Bush’s favourites. The ingredients: Ahmadinejad, Hamas, Hezbollah, Osama bin Laden and now, Nazi Germany.

“As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history,” he added.

The Bush Administration also has a standing offer to talk to the Iranians about a wide range issues and to provide economic and other incentives if Tehran first agrees to suspend its uranium enrichment program. Tehran, however, claims that its nuclear program is merely aimed at the generation of electricity.

*Image: President George W. Bush stands with Dalia Itzik, Speaker of the Knesset, and Israeli President Shimon Peres on the floor of the Knesset Thursday, May 15, 2008, in Jerusalem. WHITEHOUSE.gov. Photo by Shealah Craighead.

*SWH contributed to this article.

COMMON ENEMIES WE CAN ALL AGREE TO HATE

It’s been said that what divides us as a country is not nearly as strong as what unites us. That may be hard to believe with such a divide between the Liberals and Conservatives (recently, amongst the Liberals themselves). And what could unite us more than our common enemies? With that in mind, let us embark on the path to bipartisan unity by taking a moment to jointly revile some of the most odious miscre­ants, evildoers, and entities that liberals and conservatives can agree to hate.

You can, of course, never go wrong bashing the likes of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, corporate crim­inals, and pedophiles. But if you really want to bond with conservatives, try trash-talking the fol­lowing enemies of freedom, all of whom pose a more immediate threat to our collective sanity.

THE MEDIA

Conservatives complain that the media has a grotesque liberal bias. Liberals say the media prac­tically gets down on its knees to service conserva­tives. Either way, you can count on the main­stream media to botch the facts and distort the truth in the race to get the story wrong first. Sure, there are some intrepid journalists doing impor­tant work, but as a whole, the establishment media is a brainless, sensationalistic, and unstoppable force that you can rely on to saturate the airwaves with wall-to-wall coverage of the latest missing white blonde girl, ignore the current genocidal war in Africa, blindly regurgitate partisan talking points, and, occasionally, make up stories out of whole cloth.

INTERNET SPAMMERS

There’s a special molten cauldron on reserve in hell for the creators of Internet spam. These are the stalkers and perverts who sit around coming up with the radically moronic message headings that clog up your inbox, such as “Buff up your boner,” “Let Yoda refinance your house,” “Hot deals on Iraqi real estate,” and “We have located several horny women in your area!” Forget Al Qaeda. Let’s go after them.

GERALDO RIVERA

The mustachioed, sensationalistic television reporter was asked to leave Iraq after giving away U.S. troop positions, bragged about carrying a gun in Afghanistan that he wasn’t afraid to use, claimed to be at the scene of a friendly fire incident when he was actually 300 miles away, and reportedly made an elderly Hurricane Katrina victim shoot multiple takes of him heroically rescuing her. He has also cried repeatedly on camera, often with little provo­cation. You won’t find a better personification of everything that is insipid, self-aggrandizing, and soulless about celebrity journalism.

THE IRS

It’s bad enough that our tax code is incomprehensible to the average intelligent man, but what really pisses everyone off is how ineptly and inconsistently our tax laws are enforced. The IRS is more likely to pester and probe the average working stiff than the average millionaire or the corporation that’s squir­reling away money in a Cayman Islands tax shel­ter. What’s worse, every time you publicly mouth off against the IRS (say, in the pages of a book that names the IRS as an enemy of the people), you’re almost sure to be audited.

TOM CRUISE

When not jumping up and down on couches, con­vincing Katie Holmes to carry his demon spawn, angrily impugning psychiatry, or making craptacu­lar movies, Tom Cruise can be found touting a crackpot religion known as Scientology—an elab­orately disguised pyramid scam created by a sec­ond-rate science fiction writer. It’s based on the perfectly plausible belief that humans are descend­ed from aliens who were frozen by an evil galactic overlord 75 million years ago, brought to Earth in a spaceship, dropped into volcanoes, and blown up with hydrogen bombs. Cruise is not only giving his fellow intergalactic travelers a bad name, but if he is not contained, he may continue to pose a clear and present danger to nubile Hollywood starlets throughout the universe.

rena silverman

sources: about.com

Global WARNING

“The people who still say that gw isnt real are actually in the same boat with the Flat Earth Society. They get together and party on Saturday nights with the folks that believe the moon landing waws in a movie lot in Arizona.” Al Gore

Get over the myth that the Global-Warming threat is overblown and demostrate how if we keep listening to this conservative crap we could be looking at a very grim future (think mad max meets Warterworld meets apocolypse now)

The scientific debate is over. Man-made greenhouse gases are causing global temperatures to rise at an alarming rate. Liberals and progressives seek urgent and sensible solutions to head off a planetary cataclysm, while conservatives are busy twitching like oil-addicted junkies looking for a fix.

our long term natl secur, econ stabil, and possible existance as a species depends on solving the problem. that makes global warming a moral issue, a fam val issue , and in the event of severe weather change, a fashion issue.

What Kind of Liberal Are You? by Rena Silverman

Which bumper sticker would you most likely put on your car?

1. I’m Already Against the Next War
2. If you cut off my reproductive choice, can I cut off yours?
3. America: One Nation Under Surveillance
4. Of Course It Hurts, You’re Getting Screwed by an Elephant
5. Evolution Is Just a Theory . . . Kind of Like Gravity
6. May the Fetus You Save Be Gay

A second civil war has just broken out in America. Who is to blame?

1. Imperialistic neocons—for launching simultaneous wars against Iran, North Korea, and France
2. Global warming deniers—for bringing us an eco-apocalypse
3. The South—for never having gotten over the fact that they lost the first War of Northern Aggression
4. Corporate greedmongers—for outsourcing every last American job to Bangalore
5. FOX News—for fomenting a war with a flashy “March to Civil War” logo and theme music
6. Bible-thumping puritans—for banning abortion, gay people, and sex

An asteroid is headed for Earth. You have a seat on the last shuttle off the planet. If you could bring only one book with which to build a future civilization, what would it be?

1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig
2. An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore
3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
4. A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
5. Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
6. America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction, by Jon Stewart

If the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would be most appalled by which of the following?

1. The Republicans’ blatant manipulation of terror fears for partisan gain
2. America’s crack-like addiction to Saudi oil
3. President Bush’s blatant dictatorial power grab
4. Government of, by, and for corporate cronies
5. The hijacking of government by radical Christian wackjobs
6. That hemp is illegal. Come on, what wasn’t clear about the “pursuit of happiness”?

If you could time-travel back to any historical event and bring one thing with you, what would you choose?

1. The 1967 Summer of Love—with a truckload of condoms
2. The dawn of the Industrial Revolution—with a copy of the Kyoto Protocol
3. The day before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans—with FEMA
4. The day Monica Lewinsky brought Bill Clinton pizza—with a copy of the Starr Report
5. Election Day 2000 in Palm Beach County—with non-butterfly ballots
6. The night of Howard Dean’s 2004 Iowa concession speech—with a tranquilizer dart

If you were a candidate for political office, what would your theme song be?

1. “Peace Train,” by Cat Stevens
2. “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” by Kermit the Frog
3. “Fight the Power,” by Public Enemy
4. “Born in the U.S.A.,” by Bruce Springsteen
5. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” by U2
6. “Not Ready to Make Nice,” by the Dixie Chicks

7. If you could pile any three people into a naked pyramid, who would you choose?

1. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld
2. The CEOs of Exxon, Chevron, and Shell
3. Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito
4. Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, and the ghost of Ken Lay
5. Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh
6. Revs. Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Ted Haggard

scoring

If you answered mostly As, You are a Peace Patroller, aka, an anti-war liberal or neo-hippie. You believe in putting an end to American imperial conquest, stopping wars that have already been lost, and supporting our troops by bringing them home.

If you answered mostly Bs, you’re an Eco-Avenger, aka, an environmentalist or tree-hugger type. You believe in saving the planet from the clutches of air-fouling, oil-drilling, earth-raping conservative fossil fuels.

If you answered mostly Cs, you are a Social Justice Crusader, aka, a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.

If you answered mostly Ds, you are a Working Class Warrior, aka, a blue-collar Democrat. You believe that the little guy is getting screwed by conservative greed-mongers and corporate criminals, and you’re not going to take it anymore.

If you answered mostly Es, you are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, aka, a the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.

If you answered mostly Fs, you are a New Left Hipster, aka, a MoveOn.org liberal, a Netroots activist, or a Daily Show fanatic. You believe that if we really want to defend American values, conservatives must be exposed, mocked, and assailed for every fanatical, puritanical, warmongering, Constitution-shredding ideal for which they stand.

What kind of Conservative are you? by Rena Silverman

1. Which bumper sticker would you most likely put on your car?
A. In Case of Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned
B. If You’re Gonna Burn Our Flag, Wrap Yourself in It First
C. Work Harder, Millions on Welfare Depend on You
D. Another Former Fetus for Life
E. Ted Kennedy’s Car Has Killed More People than My Gun
F. No Oil for Pacifists

2. If the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would be most appalled by which of the following?
A. The fact that you can teach our kids how to make babies but Jesus is taboo
B. The fact that more anti-war protesters haven’t been thrown in Gitmo
C. The nation’s criminally high levels of taxation
D. The hijacking of our culture by Hollywood perverts
E. Big government run amok
F. The Blame America First crowd that’s pampering terrorists

3. An asteroid is headed for Earth. You have a seat on the last shuttle off the planet. If you could bring only one book with which to build a future civilization, what would it be?
A. The Bible
B. The Way Things Ought to Be, by Rush Limbaugh
C. The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
D. Culture Warrior, by Bill O’Reilly
E. The NRA Guide to Firearms Assembly
F. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

4. A second civil war has just broken out in America. Who is to blame?
A. Hell-bound heathens—for trying to ban God and for provoking his wrath
B. The liberal media—for outsourcing their foreign news coverage to Al Jazeera
C. Tax-and-spend socialists—for requiring every taxpayer to personally adopt a welfare queen
D. Activist judges—for redefining marriage as being between any person, place, or thing
E. Big government liberals—for trying to regulate everyone to death
F. Liberal freedom-haters—for helping the terrorists win

5. If you could time-travel back to any historical event and bring one thing with you, what would you choose?
A. The Immaculate Conception—with a video camera
B. September 10, 2001—with a copy of the 9/11 Commission Report
C. The beginning of the 1990s bull market—with today’s stock quotes
D. The 2004 Janet Jackson Super Bowl Halftime Show—with a roll of duct tape
E. The first lunar landing—with a Confederate flag
F. The end of the 1991 Gulf War—with a bunker-busting nuke with Saddam’s name on it

6. If you were a candidate for political office, what would your theme song be?
A. “Onward, Christian Soldiers”
B. “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American),” by Toby Keith
C. “Money for Nothing,” by Dire Straits
D. “Let the Eagle Soar,” by John Ashcroft
E. The theme song from Law & Order
F. “The Imperial March,” from Star Wars

7. If you could pile any three people into a naked pyramid, who would you choose?
A. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Monica Lewinsky
B. The Dixie Chicks
C. The heads of the AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, and Association of Trial Lawyers
D. Snoop Dog, Marilyn Manson, and Ludacris
E. Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and Howard Dean
F. Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Michael Moore

Scoring

If you chose mostly As, you are a Faith-Based Fighter, aka, a religious conservative. You believe in Judeo-Christian values, restoring God’s rightful place in the public square, and in showing all the unwashed and unsaved liberal sinners the path to salvation, or at least to the GOP.

If you chose mostly Bs, you are a Flag-Waving Everyman, aka, a patriot. You believe in freedom, apple pie, rooting for America at all times, and that God gave us a two-day weekend so we could enjoy football and NASCAR.

If you chose mostly Cs, you are a Free Marketeer, aka, a fiscal conservative. You believe in free-market capitalism, tax cuts, and protecting your hard-earned cash from pick-pocketing liberal socialists.

If you chose mostly Ds, you are a Values Guardian, aka, a social conservative. You believe in serving on the front lines of the culture wars to restore traditional values and protecting America against condom-dispensing, stem cell-sucking sodomites from Hollyweird.

If you chose mostly Es, you are an Anti-government Gunslinger, aka, a libertarian conservative. You believe in smaller government, states’ rights, gun rights, and that, as Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

If you chose mostly Fs, you are a Freedom Crusader, aka, a neoconservative. You believe in taking the fight directly to the enemy, whether it’s terrorists abroad or the liberal terrorist appeasers at home who give them aid and comfort.

rena silverman