Flannel Shirt

The stupidest man in Washington, DC

Louis Gohmert.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) knows that Republicans may lose some votes at first after the party kills immigration reform, but he is predicting that Hispanics will then wake up and realize that “Republicans really like me.”

In an effort to block all efforts at comprehensive immigration reform, Gohmert joined with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to explain to the conservative website World Net Daily why so-called “amnesty” would be bad for the country.

Gohmert said that Republicans needed to make it clear to immigrants that comprehensive reform was being stopped to “preserve a country that Hispanics will want to come to.”

“If we are not willing to follow the law, we’re going to lose that, and I’m afraid that people do not realize how serious things have gotten,” the Texas congressman said. “But, yeah, we could possibly pay in the polls in the short term. But just as you’ve had more and more African-Americans realizing, ‘Wow, we have one party that’s pandered to us, doled out government benefits, kept us from reaching our God-given potential.’”

Republicans, however, Gohmert said, wanted Hispanics to learn English “because we want you not to be a ditch digger because you can’t communicate. We know you are smart enough to be president of this company and to be president of this country if you’re born here.”

“And if we don’t communicate that message we could pay for it,” he warned. “We could in the short term, but in the long term, I think you will see people start waking up and go, ‘Wow, I’m Hispanic, these Republicans really like me.’”

Problems with boundaries

This guy. I'm guessing he would want some atheist commie talking to his son about things. 

A Georgia man is threatening to sue the city of Ringgold after he claims his constitutional rights were violated by police last Friday night, when officials asked him to stop bothering strangers’ children about his beliefs in the Christian deity figure Jesus Christ.

Cleveland, GA resident Daryl Banther and his 8-year-old son were reportedly handing out religious pamphlets and questionnaires at an annual celebration in Ringgold when he was confronted by the city manager and chief of police, who interrupted his proselytizing because a parent filed a police report about a strange man in the parking lot approaching children.

He left after repeated requests and was not arrested, but Banther vowed to return the next day. He then contacted the media and informed a reporter for WTVC-TV that he did just as promised, returning on Saturday night to find that he was not hassled at all.

Appearing on camera, he claimed that Christians no longer have any rights in America, then seemed aghast that an atheist could possibly file a lawsuit to force government officials to stop showing a preference for a religion.

“They were all harassing me because I have a constitutional right to do what I was doing,” Banther insisted. “If I’m anything else, I have rights,” he said. “…But as a Christian, we have rights no more. They’re taking all the Christian rights away and I’m going to stand for what’s right this time.”

The city told the station in a prepared statement that the event, the 1890s Day Jamboree, has “established procedures” for participation, like getting approval to put on any kind of exhibit. “Those exhibiting must have prior approval, and have a booth to operate the activity they are conducting,” the statement explained.

Despite the man’s insistence that America has taken all the rights away from Christians, the city-sponsored event last Friday evening was a southern gospel music festival, featuring The Heritage Quartet among others.

About 78 percent of Americans self-identified as Christian in 2012,according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

No blowjobs!

Because some people can't keep out of other people's bedrooms.

Idaho Hitler head: art or what?

I suspect this won't make to the antiques roadshow.

Why the New South is stuck in the Old South

A book by a Southerner about why it is.

Demographic shifts aside, Thompson’s analysis is most incisive—and heartfelt—when she turns to the South’s “Big Lie.” In high school, I encountered this lie from the well-meaning mouth of a history teacher (who spent his weekends as a Civil War re-enactor—go figure). Having been primed by a steady and totally disproportionate diet of “South Carolina history” (read: Civil War history) since elementary school, I was more than happy to accept the notion that the “War of Northern Aggression” was an equally valid title for the period of American history between 1861-1865 and that slavery was really only a minor issue in the decision to go to war. Abraham Lincoln was also a terrible president, constitutionally speaking (that part is somewhat true), and secession was and is a completely legal option in the toolbox of, you guessed it, states’ rights. Thompson uses fascinating archival research to show how upsettingly common my indoctrination into “Lost Cause” mythology is across the South to this day, thanks primarily to the curriculum-setting efforts of the founding members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

And I’m still not free of it, as I was reminded when I viscerally bristled at recent discussionssurrounding Spielberg’s Lincoln in which no quarter was given to the idea that some of the South’s actions after the war might be excused by vengeful treatment at the hands of the Union. Presented with that kind of response, my high-school self suffers visions of Sherman burning Columbia. And then the familiar whispers of it wasn’t really only about the slaves andmany of them were actually treated nice start to creep in. Only when my adult brain intervenes am I reminded that, oh yes, there are historical facts to contend with—like the fact that those fires may well have been set by Confederates.

But then, historical facts and historical feelings are difficult to marry. “A corollary to the lack of historical awareness is a certain lack of self-awareness,” Thompson writes. So many of us Southerners do not know—or are not willing to know—the factual truth of our own history (even as, ironically, many of us are family-Bible-obsessed with a feeling of the past), and so we do not know ourselves very well either.

The whole piece is interesting.