This photo is making the rounds on Facebook with the title "What's Wrong With This Picture?" I'll tell you what's wrong with it: It's being circulated by dumb-assed, mouth-breathing, right-wing goobers who think that the burning issue of our day is which hand the President and First Lady use to salute the flag!
This photo is the basis for the altered image making the rounds:
There's a Marine at the president's bent elbow in each photo. The soldier in the top photo is either woefully out of regulation (check the location of his medals), or he's been 'shopped!
We have some serious problems to address, not only as a country, but as inhabitants of this planet: Climate change. Sustainable energy. Equitable distribution of income. Militarism. Infrastructure.
But are we talking about those problems? Are we doing anything about them? No. Why? Because the Republicans--as a party--have decided to plant their heads firmly up their anuses and offer whatever they find in there to us as policy. They've given rebuttal an updated, more pungent meaning.
When did stupidity become a virtue in the GOP?!
• Allen West [YouTube video] accused the Congressional Progressive Caucus of being "Communist" in an era when even the freakin' People's Republic of China doesn't qualify as "communist" any more (go ahead... call it a "worker's paradise"... I dare you...).
• Bill O'Reilly accused former Labor Secretary Robert Reich of being a "communist... who secretly admires Karl Marx" for Reich's radical suggestion that government foster crucial initiatives that private industry can not or will not undertake. You know... stuff like Hoover Dam or the interstate highway system or explaining the popularity of Steve Doocy [YouTube video].
• House Speaker John Boehner joined Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in stating today that the policies of the Obama Administration "may turn this country in a direction that we may never recover from!" This from two of the knuckleheads who voted for eight years worth of George W. Bush budgets--to the tune of five trillion dollars in deficit spending! That's like having your kid steal your credit card, run it up, cuss you out when it reaches the limit, and report you to child protective services for the subsequent tightness in the family budget.
Then, we have the conservative "Ignorance Is Innocence" Initiative:
• Legislatures in the states of Tennessee and Missouri are considering so-called "Don't Say Gay" bills--bills that would prohibit mention of any sexual modality other than heterosexuality in their schools. I'm sure that millions of farm animals in those states sleep easier tonight because of it.
• The State of Arizona--hands-down winner of Bill Maher's Stupidest State [YouTube video] competition--has banned ethnic studies classes in its schools because they're "divisive" (they've also passed a law mandating that life begins at the end of a woman's last period! Amazing... legislation of the rhythm method by people who can't keep a beat!).
• Tennessee--not satisfied with its "LA-LA-LA-LA-I-Can't-Hear-You-Gay-People" education policy--has its heterosexual charges in mind, as well. Not only does the legislature mandate "abstinence only" sex education; they have raised their pens against "gateway sexual activity" like "hand-holding, kissing, and cuddling." They might as well start issuing little burlap burkas to every Tennessee kid of school-age right now.
• Public school kids across the nation are taught little or nothing about evolution, and less than half are proficient in science in general [Can anyone explain to me how anti-evolution farmers or ranchers happen?]
• And when the hell did contraception come up for grabs again?! I know that there is a school of what passes for Republican Thought that says we should take government back to the dimensions it held when William McKinley was president--back when lynching, anti-suffrage, and mutton-chop whiskers were all the rage--but contraception? I don't think the demise of the IRS is worth a surfeit of clap, aborted fetuses, and shotgun weddings. Do you?
The Republicans have made it clear that they're willing to do anything to get President Obama out of office so they can resume their orgy of fiscal responsibility, even if they take the country down with him. Republicans like the late, great Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen or Nelson Rockefeller used to take into account something called "the good of the country" when it came to legislation. Now? The Republican Party, backed by a legion of fact-impaired, photo-fiddling morons, is waging all-out war on Stephen Colbert's trenchant observation that: Reality has a well-known liberal bias [Google Video].
Let's make sure they don't win. It's in our interest as a nation, as human beings, and as citizens with IQ's above room temperature to elevate the level of discourse in this country. What use do progressives have for lies when the truth is so squarely in our favor? Why resort to hyperbole when the facts will do? Why resort to doctoring photographs when you've got stuff like this?
(HBD,MFM!)