I read this piece this morning and my heart just sank. I have been reading for weeks (ever since it became evident that Obama would be President) that the wing nuts were coming loose, and that ragged edges of the right side of the populace was becoming a mass of tattered flaps, blowing wildly in the breeze. The first lunacy I remember was learning that itinerant white, fundamentalist preachers in the rural south (TN, KY, WVA, AL,MS) were actually telling people that the first thing Obama would do, after taking office, would be "enslave" white men and rape all of their women. At first I laughed, and then I read it multiple times,along with murmurings about loss of firearms, absurd gun control hysteria from the NRA about the right to bear arms...and worse. I had no idea that being aMuslim was the moral equivalent to having an STD, but I soon learned that, as well.
This story on TP makes me newly aware that this wild-eyed weirdness is all too real and "in our face" and screams for some form of corrective action.
I am the first one to defend free speech, the free press and open public discourse, but the rantings (and the irrational behavior they generate) and dizzyingly idiotic proclaimations of Beck, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Coulter ( and that crazed Bachman creature from MN) cause me to stand up and loudly demand, as the say in txtng and twitter, "STFU!!!!!
The incitement to maniacal riot, civil unrest of such a destructionist nature, and the wanton taking and loss of human life, by people who have had their brains unfairly tampered with, needs to be brought under control. I cannot say that I have any immediate resolution or remedy or rectification, but perhaps calling the hate-mongers into account for the ramifications of their dangerous and pathologically corrosive speech, might well be in order.
This is the 21rst century. We have the scientific and medical resources to effect curative applications and treatments that will help prevent people from being driven to these acts of totally depraved and incoherent acts of murder and genocide. We have the ways and means to treat and care for people and not let them become so overwhelmed by their "percieved" yet non-existent villians and monsters that they are driven to run completely amok. But we need to pay attention to some of the causality, as well. Outright public lying is not a positive influence on society. (Of course, you can be the Governor of SC and refuse funds for effective public education,but that is another column).
The cadre of obscenely irritating hate-mongers of the airwaves and pulpits of America need to be put in check. It is time, perhaps, to identify a legal muzzle for this clearly detestible and insidious manipulation of people who are so easily molded and motivated to do the unthinkable. It might be arguable that there should be some form of punishment for creating such an unhealthy environment of agitation that it premeditates and promulgates horror. If hate speech prompts lunatic hate crimes and needless death, some corrective retribution may well be in order.
We let W, Cheney, Gonzalez, Ashcroft, et.al., get away with this sort of despicable rationalization for hate crimes around the world for years. They told us it was "for our own good" and that terror would overtake us if we did not act so viciously. Now the terror is all coming home "home to roost" in our own backyards, when the guy next door grabs a shotgun or an uzi and blows away portions of the nieghborhood, because some malicious blowhard on the radio tells him or her that it is "for his own good". We are supposed to be more civilized than this.
Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2009 8:16 AM
Subject: Think Progress: "Right-wing's false claims that Obama will take away guns 'has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms.'"
> Check out this post on Think Progress: > > http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/04/right-wing-guns-claim/> > "Right-wing's false claims that Obama will take away guns 'has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms.'"> >
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Jesus is not alright with me.
This is not about AIG, Prop 8, HR645 (coming to an empty field near you), gay rights, Geithner, Michelle Obama’s arms, Iraq, Ruwanda, the octo-mom, Cheney or any of that. It is about GOD, dammit.
We used to enjoy four seasons in the cycle of life: spring, summer, fall and winter (even when it was one of discontent), but now we seem to have five. Just as cyclical and predictable as the other four, the silly season of pre-occupation with “God” shows up, regularly now. Alternet had these two, just this morning:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/132781/zombie_newt_gingrich_wants_more_brains%2C_er_religion/
and
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/132775/this_week_in_god%3A_religion_costs_counties_cash%2C_%27i_believe%27_license_plates%2C_and_evolution/
Over the past few months, OpEdNews has posted “articles”, written by noted authorities like Brian Wisenheimer-Schmutz, on the importance of “God” in society, why and how religion is “subtly” re-shaping the world and why, without faith, the world will end next Tuesday afternoon. Many of these have threatened to be a “series” of articles (God help us), and when OEN runs the good ideological narcissists off, they pop up elsewhere, threatening their serial abominations, there. After many others beside me have (presumably) protested and objected, the threats and the extended, vapid and pointless diatribes mysteriously disappear (thank God).
Cyclical and periodic episodes and outbreaks such as these always prompted a flood of comments, many of them from self-proclaimed atheists, whose use of space and waste of literary oxygen are as pointless as the ones the God-people offer, these last only a day or three, and then inevitably re-surface shortly thereafter, seemingly unable to resist uninvited repeat performances. I guess pointless misery loves pointless company. The crux of my complaint and criticism is that these writings mention nothing about ethics and never address the pragmatic issues of our world. They prattle on about faith and belief and then pass the collection plate.
Born Again Crustaceans (they have the shelf-life of a shell fish), proponents of Jesusology (which has nothing to do with Christianity), adherents of Mariology and the like (which are the antithesis of any substantive theology) and the ravings of condemn-mental-ists ( who preach that anyone who is black, Muslim, Hindu, gay or not willing to swear that Jesus is lord and at least acknowledge anemic Presbyterianism, are driving me NUTS. God. Dammit.
We have a financial crisis (largely brought on by a collapse of morals and ethics), war and starvation in places like Darfur, homeless crowds, empty food pantries, no reasonable health care programs for the common man, racial and sociological iniquities and battered stem cell research programs, and yet…
We have huge numbers of people with nothing better to do, and insist upon attempting to distract everyone with palaver-like talk of the “God machine” (unintelligent design), the vengeful deity of something-or-other and meaningless gobbledygook about faith and silly thoughts of rescued fetuses flying upward towards heaven, right after the abortion doctor is murdered and his family left to pick up the pieces.
This all needs to stop. Freedom of thought and speech is one thing; ideological abuse and the routine torture of logic is another. We cannot afford to be diverted from the real agonies of the day, distracted from the urgent realities of abject poverty, murderous dictators and despots, armies that use rape as weapon (in lieu of bullets),the insipid and dangerous thinking of homophobes and racists and selfish, narrow-minded bigots who attempt to routinely deny the basic rights of life to anyone who does not fit their vision of nirvana. Anyone, that is, who does not fit comfortably behind their mysterious shields of theistically –inspired ignorance or a completely warped picture of salvation, which is manifested in a saccharine-like portrait of a Jesus figure, with (absurdly) blonde hair and blue eyes.
This is the 21rst century and we should have long-since outgrown this pseudo-mysticism by now. We should be beyond any allegiance to a papal figure or uber-ministerial, Billy Graham-like ideologue, either or both of whom may have the gall to absolve holocaust deniers, blame aids on condom use or dictate moral principles to a world they do not understand (if you don’t follow my reasoning, here, ask Sarah Palin’s daughter about abstinence). Primitive Baptist churches are primitive only in their stunted brain development, Mormon-esque restrictive thinking is a form of intellectual and spiritual slavery (human belittlement), the selling of indulgences should be as illegal as selling heroine to kids on the street and pointless anti-philosophical theosophical meanderings (done in order to bolster one’s hapless ego) should be forced to go before a jury of rational thinkers before the words are unleashed on an innocent general public, already at risk for spiritual and humanitarian starvation. Preying on the weary to pray is a really cheap shot.
To add insult to injurious behavior, the Huffington Post reports today that there is an emerging relationship between Sarah Palin (and hubby) and the scientologists. Apparently, “Jesus is just alright with me”, until you find another God machine mode which is better suited to your lifestyle and temporal convictions. This is to say that loyalty among the God-people is subject to modifications and contortions.
Ah. There’s the word I’ve been missing in all of this: Integrity. I guess that one is not in the God machine dictionary.
Stop wasting my time, god. Dammit.
We used to enjoy four seasons in the cycle of life: spring, summer, fall and winter (even when it was one of discontent), but now we seem to have five. Just as cyclical and predictable as the other four, the silly season of pre-occupation with “God” shows up, regularly now. Alternet had these two, just this morning:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/132781/zombie_newt_gingrich_wants_more_brains%2C_er_religion/
and
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/132775/this_week_in_god%3A_religion_costs_counties_cash%2C_%27i_believe%27_license_plates%2C_and_evolution/
Over the past few months, OpEdNews has posted “articles”, written by noted authorities like Brian Wisenheimer-Schmutz, on the importance of “God” in society, why and how religion is “subtly” re-shaping the world and why, without faith, the world will end next Tuesday afternoon. Many of these have threatened to be a “series” of articles (God help us), and when OEN runs the good ideological narcissists off, they pop up elsewhere, threatening their serial abominations, there. After many others beside me have (presumably) protested and objected, the threats and the extended, vapid and pointless diatribes mysteriously disappear (thank God).
Cyclical and periodic episodes and outbreaks such as these always prompted a flood of comments, many of them from self-proclaimed atheists, whose use of space and waste of literary oxygen are as pointless as the ones the God-people offer, these last only a day or three, and then inevitably re-surface shortly thereafter, seemingly unable to resist uninvited repeat performances. I guess pointless misery loves pointless company. The crux of my complaint and criticism is that these writings mention nothing about ethics and never address the pragmatic issues of our world. They prattle on about faith and belief and then pass the collection plate.
Born Again Crustaceans (they have the shelf-life of a shell fish), proponents of Jesusology (which has nothing to do with Christianity), adherents of Mariology and the like (which are the antithesis of any substantive theology) and the ravings of condemn-mental-ists ( who preach that anyone who is black, Muslim, Hindu, gay or not willing to swear that Jesus is lord and at least acknowledge anemic Presbyterianism, are driving me NUTS. God. Dammit.
We have a financial crisis (largely brought on by a collapse of morals and ethics), war and starvation in places like Darfur, homeless crowds, empty food pantries, no reasonable health care programs for the common man, racial and sociological iniquities and battered stem cell research programs, and yet…
We have huge numbers of people with nothing better to do, and insist upon attempting to distract everyone with palaver-like talk of the “God machine” (unintelligent design), the vengeful deity of something-or-other and meaningless gobbledygook about faith and silly thoughts of rescued fetuses flying upward towards heaven, right after the abortion doctor is murdered and his family left to pick up the pieces.
This all needs to stop. Freedom of thought and speech is one thing; ideological abuse and the routine torture of logic is another. We cannot afford to be diverted from the real agonies of the day, distracted from the urgent realities of abject poverty, murderous dictators and despots, armies that use rape as weapon (in lieu of bullets),the insipid and dangerous thinking of homophobes and racists and selfish, narrow-minded bigots who attempt to routinely deny the basic rights of life to anyone who does not fit their vision of nirvana. Anyone, that is, who does not fit comfortably behind their mysterious shields of theistically –inspired ignorance or a completely warped picture of salvation, which is manifested in a saccharine-like portrait of a Jesus figure, with (absurdly) blonde hair and blue eyes.
This is the 21rst century and we should have long-since outgrown this pseudo-mysticism by now. We should be beyond any allegiance to a papal figure or uber-ministerial, Billy Graham-like ideologue, either or both of whom may have the gall to absolve holocaust deniers, blame aids on condom use or dictate moral principles to a world they do not understand (if you don’t follow my reasoning, here, ask Sarah Palin’s daughter about abstinence). Primitive Baptist churches are primitive only in their stunted brain development, Mormon-esque restrictive thinking is a form of intellectual and spiritual slavery (human belittlement), the selling of indulgences should be as illegal as selling heroine to kids on the street and pointless anti-philosophical theosophical meanderings (done in order to bolster one’s hapless ego) should be forced to go before a jury of rational thinkers before the words are unleashed on an innocent general public, already at risk for spiritual and humanitarian starvation. Preying on the weary to pray is a really cheap shot.
To add insult to injurious behavior, the Huffington Post reports today that there is an emerging relationship between Sarah Palin (and hubby) and the scientologists. Apparently, “Jesus is just alright with me”, until you find another God machine mode which is better suited to your lifestyle and temporal convictions. This is to say that loyalty among the God-people is subject to modifications and contortions.
Ah. There’s the word I’ve been missing in all of this: Integrity. I guess that one is not in the God machine dictionary.
Stop wasting my time, god. Dammit.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Excuse Me While I Stay Confused
My friend, Ron, said to me yesterday, “I read Mr. XX, and then Mr. XXX, and then Mr. XXXX, and then I read the NYT and then I read the WSJ: who am I supposed to believe? Who can I trust?”You’re asking ME?
Bill Maher asks, “Why can’t we just admit that we just don’t f@#*king know?”
Barbara and I watched a talented lawyer explain, on television, about the legality or potential illegality of AIG bonus contracts, then turned and looked at me, and asked, “Can you explain that to me?”
To which I said, “Huh?”
It is very apparent that we are all consumed by AIG and the economy, right now. (Some people are so consumed that they are sending death threats to AIG executives: ouch). Ron (see the guy above) said yesterday that he thinks we are all looking for the “next big bubble” to make everything OK, again. I think most of us are looking for a nice, simple, single answer to both a simple explanation and solution to a very complex mess.
Here is what Paul Krugman had to say this morning:
March 20, 2009, 9:05 am
AIG
Preliminary thoughts on the tax bill:
1. It’s not the way you should make policy — it’s clumsy, and it will punish some innocent parties while letting the most guilty off scot-free
2. But — there wasn’t much alternative at this point. And for that I blame the Obama people.
I’ll leave to others the question of who knew or should have known that the bonus firestorm was coming; but its part of a pattern. At every stage, Geithner et al have made it clear that they still have faith in the people who created the financial crisis — that they believe that all we have is a liquidity crisis that can be undone with a bit of financial engineering, that “governments do a bad job of running banks” (as opposed, presumably, to the wonderful job the private bankers have done), that financial bailouts and guarantees should come with no strings attached.
This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism.
Then there is this, from James Galbraith, who is NOT a populist economist:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Economy--No-Return-to-by-the-web-090319-85.html
I think we should listen more closely to him and less to many others???
Or try this one:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-I-G--A-National-Embarr-by-James-Raider-090318-537.html
I keep searching for a better word than embarrassment, but I cannot find one. Obscene, maybe?
Or maybe this observation:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090319_the_geithner_problem/
This article raises the question, “What did he know and when did he know it?” Last night, on CNN, Geithner said he knew about some “things”, a few days before the bonuses became public knowledge. These “things” sound very much like the “strings” the Governor of Texas says are attached to the unemployment funds for his state in the stimulus bill. He says these strings prevent him from accepting them, but he can’t seem to say what the ‘string things” are, exactly.
Meanwhile, Governor Palin (AK…remember her?) is declining funds as well. But in her case, she is threatening to decline those ‘earmarked” only for education: she says those “strings” in the legislation that require Alaska to “grow its’ government”. I would suppose that not educating the populace is one good way to guarantee that Alaska will not grow. And Governor Sanford (SC) has asked to use the education portion of that states’ share of the stimulus to pay down debt, thereby neglecting education and laying off 7000 teachers. I think he and Gov. Palin are just stringing us along. Or perhaps they knew “things” before Geithner did? (I just heard three political pundits call for Geithner’s head and two more explain the actions of Palin and Sanford as preparatory actions for elections in 2012. I fail to see the connections, but I’m confused.
Eric Cantor (OH) has been very resolute about being the voice of “no” about almost everything having to do with TARP, TALP and AIG, but when actually pressed on MSNBC about how he would vote about the bonus legislation, would not say. Later, in order to stay center stage but ideologically impure, he went Republican-Lite and voted for the anti-bonus actions. This is something like Senator Chris Dodd saying he did not put language into the AIG-related legislation right before he said he did. This is also something like John Kerry saying he was for something before he was against it, or Mrs. Clinton being against Barack Obama for President before she was for it as soon as she was named to be the SOS.
Are you confused yet? Are you feeling just a little like an Orwellian pig? Did you bring your lipstick? Are you tempted to fly? Or at least fly off the handle? Well, add this to your plate of imponderables:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031802283.html?wpisrc=newsletter
The headline here is: “Fed to pump $1.2 trillion Into Markets”. This is, of course, another mind-boggling amount of money, coming right after a grandfatherly Bernanke told 60 Minutes that “we will not let the banks fail”. The next day the market rallied (Barbara said it was the Bernanke factor; I think it was because it was Monday and stocks [Geithnerian things] were cheap). Steven Pearlstein (WaPo) on MSNBC is just now telling me that it is obvious that “the depression is much worse than they thought” (they being the government?) and that we should be braced for much higher deficits. And the other “thing” I liked about the morning stories was this:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090319_a_government_of_men_not_laws/, wherein David Sirota sounds somewhat like Galbraith.
But this should make you uneasy as well:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/19/cnbc-rich-wall-street/. I really like this one. We are still some of us, anyway) hanging onto the notion that only the rich and greedy can manage money. But given the give-aways and short-sightedness that allowed us to give away billions of TARP funds (and now TALP…rhymes with SCALP) funds without accountability, I don’t think letting the government manage our money is such a hot idea, either. Would you give your money to Barney Frank? My father would call all of this rationalization of the rich being in charge “bass-ackwards thinking”. For once, I agree with him.
This next story is both confusing and transparent:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/19/financial-roundtable-lobbyists/. Having failed to engineer profits from attempting the defeat the stimulus bill, the lobby folks are trying to carve money out of the budget for special interests. We have no shame. Or integrity. Or logic.
All of which brings me to the congressional antics and how they all contribute to my confusion…and yours.
Over the last decade, the lasting effects of the great “uniter” have only added to our great “division” and bifurcation. The chasm between right and left, conservative and liberal, has just been growing. Beginning most recently (and openly) with the complete and total rejection of any Republican votes for the stimulus bill, and moving on from there, the most important issue being kept alive in Congress right now is NOT the welfare of the country, but whether or not you are a Democrat or a Republican and how loudly you can proclaim your allegiance.
Last week, the Republicans stated flatly, that their goal was to “bring down Democratic numbers”. Ideological purity has completely superseded the national economic welfare as the rule of the day.
Except when such ideological purity runs counter to your personal agenda (Google Maxine Waters and the President “keeping his facts straight”), your wallet or your political ambitions. Take, for example, the small group of “blue dog” democrats, deciding this week to establish a “secret” society, having joined forces to form a small sub-group in the Congress that would work closer with Republicans to thwart the economic policies of their own President and party. I wonder if they have a secret handshake? Do they understand the nature of “splinter groups”? Do they understand that splinters can get infected? This dedication to obstructive obstinacy seems endemic to, and symptomatic of, our nationally confused awareness of misplaced priorities.
(Former staffers of the Bush administration, perhaps 70% of them, have either abandoned ideological purity to write profitable tell-all books or have been unable to find jobs because of their prior devotion to that former Rovian moral ”high ground”. I can’t help but wonder if they are re-thinking their allegiances)
And then we have Sen. John McCain and other Republicans are opposing the appointment of Chris Hill to represent the U.S. in Afghanistan. General Petraeus thinks this is a good choice. Despite continued Republican calls to listen to the “generals on the ground”, because Hill is not “their boy” and not a staunch Republican, this group is opposing the appointment. This is silly and counter-productive, to say nothing of being hypocritical and not of much help in advancing the cause of peace in the region. But is all stubbornly ideologically pure. And no one in Congress seemed to care about the AIG and bank bonuses until the public got wind of it. Then, suddenly each side said it was the fault of the other (or of Bush and Paulson, or of Obama and Geithner), making a national economic crisis a political football. Then the House passed a bill (with sudden Republican participation) to eliminate, prevent or tax the bonuses. I will give them this: they finally displayed real transparency: were able to see right through their phony concern. Now that bill is off to the Senate, and I am hearing that the bill is potentially illegal, to the point of being unconstitutional. This means it may be scrapped, altogether. What a waste of time. I have called the recent behavior of Congress to be theater; Mr. Raider (in the earlier article) calls it “circus grandstanding”. In either case it has all been duplicitous or perhaps much ado about much of nothing. Except for the damn crisis.
Let’s confuse the issue, a little more:
The Congress is thinking about giving the corpse of Chryslers several more billions of dollars. Why?
Gordon E. Liddy, the AIG boss guy, is working for one dollar a year (really?) and is volunteering to sit before congress and be grilled, saying that the bonuses are distasteful but obligatory. He also says Bernanke and the Federal Reserve approved the bonus package long ago. (Geithner’s staff says the same thing).
Venerable General Electric Corp. is in trouble, having just lowered their annual dividend to pennies, to raise cash. They have also disclosed that their biggest portfolio item is the GE Capital group. And that that group has invested heavily in questionable real estate. Why? (And most of what they manufacture, they do so off-shore…except for the missile guidance systems for the DOD)
Crown Books is advancing $7M to George W Bush for a book of memoirs we don’t need or want to read. Why? (Maybe the folks in Calgary know “things” we don’t.)
J.P. Morgan and other banks, along with General Motors, is either declining further bail out monies or returning them, citing too many “strings”. After the last cash infusion, they are suddenly profitable (it makes you wonder whence came the crisis?), with Citibank claiming profits in the billions (and remodeling their executive offices).
And Michael Steele is, well…Michael Steele. Explain that one. He has even Rush stumped.
Oh, yes: Mr. Cheney, is that an assassination squad in your pocket or are you just happy to kill people?
I know full well that I have co-mingled TARP, TALP, stimulus funds, education, unemployment, economic advisors, political expediency and poor domestic policy, but I am confused. In the time it has taken to write this, I have found five or six more articles that I could have cited or quoted or referenced. But they have all been muddled and contradictory of each other. I had to turn off MSNBC. I was just getting more confused. If you think you can say all of this better, please do. I no longer know whether I should change my hopes or change my mind. I do know that a few more words of wisdom from the wise and I may lose my mind. I need a nap.
Bill Maher asks, “Why can’t we just admit that we just don’t f@#*king know?”
Barbara and I watched a talented lawyer explain, on television, about the legality or potential illegality of AIG bonus contracts, then turned and looked at me, and asked, “Can you explain that to me?”
To which I said, “Huh?”
It is very apparent that we are all consumed by AIG and the economy, right now. (Some people are so consumed that they are sending death threats to AIG executives: ouch). Ron (see the guy above) said yesterday that he thinks we are all looking for the “next big bubble” to make everything OK, again. I think most of us are looking for a nice, simple, single answer to both a simple explanation and solution to a very complex mess.
Here is what Paul Krugman had to say this morning:
March 20, 2009, 9:05 am
AIG
Preliminary thoughts on the tax bill:
1. It’s not the way you should make policy — it’s clumsy, and it will punish some innocent parties while letting the most guilty off scot-free
2. But — there wasn’t much alternative at this point. And for that I blame the Obama people.
I’ll leave to others the question of who knew or should have known that the bonus firestorm was coming; but its part of a pattern. At every stage, Geithner et al have made it clear that they still have faith in the people who created the financial crisis — that they believe that all we have is a liquidity crisis that can be undone with a bit of financial engineering, that “governments do a bad job of running banks” (as opposed, presumably, to the wonderful job the private bankers have done), that financial bailouts and guarantees should come with no strings attached.
This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism.
Then there is this, from James Galbraith, who is NOT a populist economist:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Economy--No-Return-to-by-the-web-090319-85.html
I think we should listen more closely to him and less to many others???
Or try this one:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-I-G--A-National-Embarr-by-James-Raider-090318-537.html
I keep searching for a better word than embarrassment, but I cannot find one. Obscene, maybe?
Or maybe this observation:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090319_the_geithner_problem/
This article raises the question, “What did he know and when did he know it?” Last night, on CNN, Geithner said he knew about some “things”, a few days before the bonuses became public knowledge. These “things” sound very much like the “strings” the Governor of Texas says are attached to the unemployment funds for his state in the stimulus bill. He says these strings prevent him from accepting them, but he can’t seem to say what the ‘string things” are, exactly.
Meanwhile, Governor Palin (AK…remember her?) is declining funds as well. But in her case, she is threatening to decline those ‘earmarked” only for education: she says those “strings” in the legislation that require Alaska to “grow its’ government”. I would suppose that not educating the populace is one good way to guarantee that Alaska will not grow. And Governor Sanford (SC) has asked to use the education portion of that states’ share of the stimulus to pay down debt, thereby neglecting education and laying off 7000 teachers. I think he and Gov. Palin are just stringing us along. Or perhaps they knew “things” before Geithner did? (I just heard three political pundits call for Geithner’s head and two more explain the actions of Palin and Sanford as preparatory actions for elections in 2012. I fail to see the connections, but I’m confused.
Eric Cantor (OH) has been very resolute about being the voice of “no” about almost everything having to do with TARP, TALP and AIG, but when actually pressed on MSNBC about how he would vote about the bonus legislation, would not say. Later, in order to stay center stage but ideologically impure, he went Republican-Lite and voted for the anti-bonus actions. This is something like Senator Chris Dodd saying he did not put language into the AIG-related legislation right before he said he did. This is also something like John Kerry saying he was for something before he was against it, or Mrs. Clinton being against Barack Obama for President before she was for it as soon as she was named to be the SOS.
Are you confused yet? Are you feeling just a little like an Orwellian pig? Did you bring your lipstick? Are you tempted to fly? Or at least fly off the handle? Well, add this to your plate of imponderables:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031802283.html?wpisrc=newsletter
The headline here is: “Fed to pump $1.2 trillion Into Markets”. This is, of course, another mind-boggling amount of money, coming right after a grandfatherly Bernanke told 60 Minutes that “we will not let the banks fail”. The next day the market rallied (Barbara said it was the Bernanke factor; I think it was because it was Monday and stocks [Geithnerian things] were cheap). Steven Pearlstein (WaPo) on MSNBC is just now telling me that it is obvious that “the depression is much worse than they thought” (they being the government?) and that we should be braced for much higher deficits. And the other “thing” I liked about the morning stories was this:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090319_a_government_of_men_not_laws/, wherein David Sirota sounds somewhat like Galbraith.
But this should make you uneasy as well:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/19/cnbc-rich-wall-street/. I really like this one. We are still some of us, anyway) hanging onto the notion that only the rich and greedy can manage money. But given the give-aways and short-sightedness that allowed us to give away billions of TARP funds (and now TALP…rhymes with SCALP) funds without accountability, I don’t think letting the government manage our money is such a hot idea, either. Would you give your money to Barney Frank? My father would call all of this rationalization of the rich being in charge “bass-ackwards thinking”. For once, I agree with him.
This next story is both confusing and transparent:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/19/financial-roundtable-lobbyists/. Having failed to engineer profits from attempting the defeat the stimulus bill, the lobby folks are trying to carve money out of the budget for special interests. We have no shame. Or integrity. Or logic.
All of which brings me to the congressional antics and how they all contribute to my confusion…and yours.
Over the last decade, the lasting effects of the great “uniter” have only added to our great “division” and bifurcation. The chasm between right and left, conservative and liberal, has just been growing. Beginning most recently (and openly) with the complete and total rejection of any Republican votes for the stimulus bill, and moving on from there, the most important issue being kept alive in Congress right now is NOT the welfare of the country, but whether or not you are a Democrat or a Republican and how loudly you can proclaim your allegiance.
Last week, the Republicans stated flatly, that their goal was to “bring down Democratic numbers”. Ideological purity has completely superseded the national economic welfare as the rule of the day.
Except when such ideological purity runs counter to your personal agenda (Google Maxine Waters and the President “keeping his facts straight”), your wallet or your political ambitions. Take, for example, the small group of “blue dog” democrats, deciding this week to establish a “secret” society, having joined forces to form a small sub-group in the Congress that would work closer with Republicans to thwart the economic policies of their own President and party. I wonder if they have a secret handshake? Do they understand the nature of “splinter groups”? Do they understand that splinters can get infected? This dedication to obstructive obstinacy seems endemic to, and symptomatic of, our nationally confused awareness of misplaced priorities.
(Former staffers of the Bush administration, perhaps 70% of them, have either abandoned ideological purity to write profitable tell-all books or have been unable to find jobs because of their prior devotion to that former Rovian moral ”high ground”. I can’t help but wonder if they are re-thinking their allegiances)
And then we have Sen. John McCain and other Republicans are opposing the appointment of Chris Hill to represent the U.S. in Afghanistan. General Petraeus thinks this is a good choice. Despite continued Republican calls to listen to the “generals on the ground”, because Hill is not “their boy” and not a staunch Republican, this group is opposing the appointment. This is silly and counter-productive, to say nothing of being hypocritical and not of much help in advancing the cause of peace in the region. But is all stubbornly ideologically pure. And no one in Congress seemed to care about the AIG and bank bonuses until the public got wind of it. Then, suddenly each side said it was the fault of the other (or of Bush and Paulson, or of Obama and Geithner), making a national economic crisis a political football. Then the House passed a bill (with sudden Republican participation) to eliminate, prevent or tax the bonuses. I will give them this: they finally displayed real transparency: were able to see right through their phony concern. Now that bill is off to the Senate, and I am hearing that the bill is potentially illegal, to the point of being unconstitutional. This means it may be scrapped, altogether. What a waste of time. I have called the recent behavior of Congress to be theater; Mr. Raider (in the earlier article) calls it “circus grandstanding”. In either case it has all been duplicitous or perhaps much ado about much of nothing. Except for the damn crisis.
Let’s confuse the issue, a little more:
The Congress is thinking about giving the corpse of Chryslers several more billions of dollars. Why?
Gordon E. Liddy, the AIG boss guy, is working for one dollar a year (really?) and is volunteering to sit before congress and be grilled, saying that the bonuses are distasteful but obligatory. He also says Bernanke and the Federal Reserve approved the bonus package long ago. (Geithner’s staff says the same thing).
Venerable General Electric Corp. is in trouble, having just lowered their annual dividend to pennies, to raise cash. They have also disclosed that their biggest portfolio item is the GE Capital group. And that that group has invested heavily in questionable real estate. Why? (And most of what they manufacture, they do so off-shore…except for the missile guidance systems for the DOD)
Crown Books is advancing $7M to George W Bush for a book of memoirs we don’t need or want to read. Why? (Maybe the folks in Calgary know “things” we don’t.)
J.P. Morgan and other banks, along with General Motors, is either declining further bail out monies or returning them, citing too many “strings”. After the last cash infusion, they are suddenly profitable (it makes you wonder whence came the crisis?), with Citibank claiming profits in the billions (and remodeling their executive offices).
And Michael Steele is, well…Michael Steele. Explain that one. He has even Rush stumped.
Oh, yes: Mr. Cheney, is that an assassination squad in your pocket or are you just happy to kill people?
I know full well that I have co-mingled TARP, TALP, stimulus funds, education, unemployment, economic advisors, political expediency and poor domestic policy, but I am confused. In the time it has taken to write this, I have found five or six more articles that I could have cited or quoted or referenced. But they have all been muddled and contradictory of each other. I had to turn off MSNBC. I was just getting more confused. If you think you can say all of this better, please do. I no longer know whether I should change my hopes or change my mind. I do know that a few more words of wisdom from the wise and I may lose my mind. I need a nap.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Stagecoach Driver, Economist, Bouncer
Once upon a time there was a stagecoach called “The United States of America”. The reins to the coach and the horse team were given over to a short, smirky, ex-town drunk from Texas, sometime around the year 2000. His name was Uncurious George, and he came from the town of Born Again Cistern. He and the guy riding shotgun, Dickless Dick, were supposed to get the coach through the next eight years without incident, no loss of life, no financial loss and no loss of dignity. And they were also not supposed to lose any luggage and to tell the truth about their pilgrim’s progress. They were supposed to deliver thee coach intact, in reasonably good shape and without harm to the passengers.
They were also supposed to take the coach and head west, from New York, for Los Angeles. They had about 280 million passengers in the coach, and a whole bunch of political ambulance chasers strapped up-top, who were along for the ride and slated to telegraph stories back their media folks as the coach travelled. Most of them were pretty main stream types, but there was one who was really Foxy, with bad eyesight and just a couple who wrote only with their left hands. Uncurious George would not speak to them “direkly” (in fact he could barely read or write), so he used spokespeople, who came and went through the revolving door at the rear of the stagecoach. The last one was an intellectually bleached blonde, Dana Peroxide, who served synthetic pablum laced with melamine from China for breakfast. Dickless Dick , given the slightest provocation, hid in an un-dick-closed location.
Before they could even leave NY, George and Dick got into a nasty bar fight down on Wall Street and took out two tall skyscrapers: when the cops arrived, George and Dickless denied even being there. They made lots of toxic dust, kept the NYFD busy and got their coach rates raised because they managed to ground all the airplanes.
The next several years were just more of the same. The next big event was a big bar fight in Iraq and then the two of them barely escaping with their goat skins in Afghanistan, spending like drunken sailors, ignoring the coach riders, feeding the pressers up-top bull shit, and signing checks from the surplus they got with the coach, as well as signing statements absolving themselves of any responsibilities for any calamity caused by their bad handling of the coach. They paid no attention to the passengers needs, stopped only at Chinese-owned Wal-Marts, performed no routine maintenance on the coach, the horses or the roads or bridges and told everyone that everything was OK because they had decided it was. They lost more luggage than anyone realized, and the closest they came to maintaining dignity, was the indignance they aroused in foreign countries from their lawless arrogance. They parked the stagecoach at prisons around the world, tortured the prisoners there and tortured the coach passengers with liable, lies and deceit.
After nearly eight years, with the wheels coming off the wagon, running on broken spokes and with broken down horses, the coach passengers were fed up: they had paid full fare for years and only gotten as far as Chicago. The pressers up-top were starting to discover they had a left ear as well as a right one, the check was NOT in the mail, and some guy back in the Wall St. rubble, named Paulson, had just joined the apocalyptic movement and announced that the end was perilously near, right around the corner, and everything really sucked…and he needed $700B, no questions asked. By the time the coach finally came to rest at the stop in Chicago, the passengers were looking for tar, feathers, rail and rope (they already had a jackass). They all got off the coach and stayed overnight in empty, foreclosed houses. And everyone was hoping that there might be a change in the works.
Just about everyone had decided that George would no longer be allowed to drive. In fact, some had even posited that he might be drinking again. Over the next several weeks and months, a search went underway for a new driver.
No one knows just exactly when the call came, but the rumor is that Mel Brooks called, and alerted everyone to the fact that there was dark-skinned renegade guy, staying at the bunkhouse in Chicago. He was known to be a straight-shooter and could handle a team. No one had ever had a minority driver before, but he looked so much better than George and Dickless (and nobody in the conservative camp had a Blackberry), that in almost no time (and several million dollars later) Kid Barack was given the reins and the roadmap (or what was left of it: about all that was left of the Constitution map was a few tatters. It turns out, Dickless had been using a secret paper shredder and never had any intentions of getting to Los Angeles. But that partially explained why they had always managed to find a place to stop for dinner where Dickless could get broiled Halliburton.
Eventually, some time around the middle of January, with The Kid at the reins, and a new guy riding shotgun (Big Bad Joe Bidenhammer, a former Amtrac conductor), the stagecoach left Chicago. Champagne flowed, Jesse Jackson tears flowed, everybody back in Washington balled everyone else and no one was able to tell, at least right at first, if that bright orange glow was the sun setting in the west or that it was just the radiance of Kid Barack. They had a new team of horses, new grease in the wheels and the smell of delusionary Obamanism was everywhere.
But the festivities and glee did not last long. To begin with, the old team of horses had only numbered four, and now Kid Barack had to handle eight. And three of the eight were Republicans, they pulled slowly and to the right and farted and Rushed around. Then, some of the people The Kid wanted to bring along to help, either couldn’t come along because they owed too much money to people back at Club Fed in Washington or had been sleeping around with too many stagecoach suppliers. Then the guy who was supposed to replace The Kid in the bunkhouse turned out to be a crypt keeper, and all of this meant that The Kid had to learn how to handle eight horses, keep the passengers happy (who all wanted to be in LA “yesterday”), handle his Blackberry, go find a birth certificate and get the pressers up-top top stop looking for scandals and start paying attention. That was all right after he found out that the checking account was over-drawn, the coachline’s credit limit was almost tapped out and Uncurious and Dickless had left some diplomatic, financial and foreign relations stink bombs in the back of the coach. (Did I mention that the coach had no brakes, either?)As quickly as everyone had become elated, many became deflated, just like the DOW Jones daily averages, and there was even talk of “let’s shoot the sheriff”. Mel Brooks urged patience: Blazing Saddles do not blaze forever. But the folks on the right started screaming socialistic treason and whining and the folks on the left started screaming for Kid Baracks’ head because he failed to turn water into wine. Eye of Newt was being hailed as the next millenium’s curative, to be possibly coiffed with some Alaskan mousse, and the right rang their Jindal bells but no one came to dinner except a Steele band from Jamaica, Queens. The progressives argued that there was no progress, the far out lefties, who are never satisfied how left anything gets, remained dissatisfied.
That is more or less where we are right now: the idio-ides of March. Just like we want everything else in America, instantaneously and right now and lots of it, with the help of the opportunistic pressers and the practitioners of naivite’, who have wanted to have their cake and eat it too (It doesn’t work that way),we are busily being anxious, schizophrenic children. Sooner or later, the horses will come under control and Kid Barack will learn how to better finesse them. (One or two from SC may need to be shot; they shoot horses’ asses, don’t they?), Rahm the man Emanuel, the team manager will fill out the ball team back at the office, stagecoach sales will pick up eventually and the passengers will realize they are a lot closer, perhaps, to Denver than they thought. They will learn to drink tap water and skip the Evian and the new holy trinity may well be Krugman, Reich and Galbraith. It will take awhile to know if Geithner can play ball if he ever comes out of his ivory clubhouse, and Kid Barack will learn to be a better economist. We will be able to take all of this to the bank…if we have one left.
I am very tired of the American desire for instant gratification, but I am equally tired of empty, childish, right-handed, obstructionist rhetoric. No matter how you mix up the letters from “tax cuts”, it does not spell nirvana. I am also tired of the new Obama team coming late to the party. This “after the horse is out of the barn, let’s close the AIG barn door” is ludicrous. He is the President, for crying out loud. Dickless is gone and Uncurious thumbed a ride to Dallas, where he can do us little harm. We can say anything bad about either of them we like. We paid for that with the full-fare rate we have been paying for the last decade. And maybe, once Kid Barack gets the horses under control, he will stop authorizing the use of the words “clarity” and “transparency”, since they ultimately mean nothing. That alone would make the stagecoach ride less bumpy and more comfortable. And if he will just lock Princess Pelosi up n the tower…
We could use a few good dogfights. It’s time to stop being nice. It’s time to kick some ass instead of kissing it. Obama may realize that he has the reins, but I wonder if he is also knows he is the bouncer at the entry door to this nightclub called “Reality”?
They were also supposed to take the coach and head west, from New York, for Los Angeles. They had about 280 million passengers in the coach, and a whole bunch of political ambulance chasers strapped up-top, who were along for the ride and slated to telegraph stories back their media folks as the coach travelled. Most of them were pretty main stream types, but there was one who was really Foxy, with bad eyesight and just a couple who wrote only with their left hands. Uncurious George would not speak to them “direkly” (in fact he could barely read or write), so he used spokespeople, who came and went through the revolving door at the rear of the stagecoach. The last one was an intellectually bleached blonde, Dana Peroxide, who served synthetic pablum laced with melamine from China for breakfast. Dickless Dick , given the slightest provocation, hid in an un-dick-closed location.
Before they could even leave NY, George and Dick got into a nasty bar fight down on Wall Street and took out two tall skyscrapers: when the cops arrived, George and Dickless denied even being there. They made lots of toxic dust, kept the NYFD busy and got their coach rates raised because they managed to ground all the airplanes.
The next several years were just more of the same. The next big event was a big bar fight in Iraq and then the two of them barely escaping with their goat skins in Afghanistan, spending like drunken sailors, ignoring the coach riders, feeding the pressers up-top bull shit, and signing checks from the surplus they got with the coach, as well as signing statements absolving themselves of any responsibilities for any calamity caused by their bad handling of the coach. They paid no attention to the passengers needs, stopped only at Chinese-owned Wal-Marts, performed no routine maintenance on the coach, the horses or the roads or bridges and told everyone that everything was OK because they had decided it was. They lost more luggage than anyone realized, and the closest they came to maintaining dignity, was the indignance they aroused in foreign countries from their lawless arrogance. They parked the stagecoach at prisons around the world, tortured the prisoners there and tortured the coach passengers with liable, lies and deceit.
After nearly eight years, with the wheels coming off the wagon, running on broken spokes and with broken down horses, the coach passengers were fed up: they had paid full fare for years and only gotten as far as Chicago. The pressers up-top were starting to discover they had a left ear as well as a right one, the check was NOT in the mail, and some guy back in the Wall St. rubble, named Paulson, had just joined the apocalyptic movement and announced that the end was perilously near, right around the corner, and everything really sucked…and he needed $700B, no questions asked. By the time the coach finally came to rest at the stop in Chicago, the passengers were looking for tar, feathers, rail and rope (they already had a jackass). They all got off the coach and stayed overnight in empty, foreclosed houses. And everyone was hoping that there might be a change in the works.
Just about everyone had decided that George would no longer be allowed to drive. In fact, some had even posited that he might be drinking again. Over the next several weeks and months, a search went underway for a new driver.
No one knows just exactly when the call came, but the rumor is that Mel Brooks called, and alerted everyone to the fact that there was dark-skinned renegade guy, staying at the bunkhouse in Chicago. He was known to be a straight-shooter and could handle a team. No one had ever had a minority driver before, but he looked so much better than George and Dickless (and nobody in the conservative camp had a Blackberry), that in almost no time (and several million dollars later) Kid Barack was given the reins and the roadmap (or what was left of it: about all that was left of the Constitution map was a few tatters. It turns out, Dickless had been using a secret paper shredder and never had any intentions of getting to Los Angeles. But that partially explained why they had always managed to find a place to stop for dinner where Dickless could get broiled Halliburton.
Eventually, some time around the middle of January, with The Kid at the reins, and a new guy riding shotgun (Big Bad Joe Bidenhammer, a former Amtrac conductor), the stagecoach left Chicago. Champagne flowed, Jesse Jackson tears flowed, everybody back in Washington balled everyone else and no one was able to tell, at least right at first, if that bright orange glow was the sun setting in the west or that it was just the radiance of Kid Barack. They had a new team of horses, new grease in the wheels and the smell of delusionary Obamanism was everywhere.
But the festivities and glee did not last long. To begin with, the old team of horses had only numbered four, and now Kid Barack had to handle eight. And three of the eight were Republicans, they pulled slowly and to the right and farted and Rushed around. Then, some of the people The Kid wanted to bring along to help, either couldn’t come along because they owed too much money to people back at Club Fed in Washington or had been sleeping around with too many stagecoach suppliers. Then the guy who was supposed to replace The Kid in the bunkhouse turned out to be a crypt keeper, and all of this meant that The Kid had to learn how to handle eight horses, keep the passengers happy (who all wanted to be in LA “yesterday”), handle his Blackberry, go find a birth certificate and get the pressers up-top top stop looking for scandals and start paying attention. That was all right after he found out that the checking account was over-drawn, the coachline’s credit limit was almost tapped out and Uncurious and Dickless had left some diplomatic, financial and foreign relations stink bombs in the back of the coach. (Did I mention that the coach had no brakes, either?)As quickly as everyone had become elated, many became deflated, just like the DOW Jones daily averages, and there was even talk of “let’s shoot the sheriff”. Mel Brooks urged patience: Blazing Saddles do not blaze forever. But the folks on the right started screaming socialistic treason and whining and the folks on the left started screaming for Kid Baracks’ head because he failed to turn water into wine. Eye of Newt was being hailed as the next millenium’s curative, to be possibly coiffed with some Alaskan mousse, and the right rang their Jindal bells but no one came to dinner except a Steele band from Jamaica, Queens. The progressives argued that there was no progress, the far out lefties, who are never satisfied how left anything gets, remained dissatisfied.
That is more or less where we are right now: the idio-ides of March. Just like we want everything else in America, instantaneously and right now and lots of it, with the help of the opportunistic pressers and the practitioners of naivite’, who have wanted to have their cake and eat it too (It doesn’t work that way),we are busily being anxious, schizophrenic children. Sooner or later, the horses will come under control and Kid Barack will learn how to better finesse them. (One or two from SC may need to be shot; they shoot horses’ asses, don’t they?), Rahm the man Emanuel, the team manager will fill out the ball team back at the office, stagecoach sales will pick up eventually and the passengers will realize they are a lot closer, perhaps, to Denver than they thought. They will learn to drink tap water and skip the Evian and the new holy trinity may well be Krugman, Reich and Galbraith. It will take awhile to know if Geithner can play ball if he ever comes out of his ivory clubhouse, and Kid Barack will learn to be a better economist. We will be able to take all of this to the bank…if we have one left.
I am very tired of the American desire for instant gratification, but I am equally tired of empty, childish, right-handed, obstructionist rhetoric. No matter how you mix up the letters from “tax cuts”, it does not spell nirvana. I am also tired of the new Obama team coming late to the party. This “after the horse is out of the barn, let’s close the AIG barn door” is ludicrous. He is the President, for crying out loud. Dickless is gone and Uncurious thumbed a ride to Dallas, where he can do us little harm. We can say anything bad about either of them we like. We paid for that with the full-fare rate we have been paying for the last decade. And maybe, once Kid Barack gets the horses under control, he will stop authorizing the use of the words “clarity” and “transparency”, since they ultimately mean nothing. That alone would make the stagecoach ride less bumpy and more comfortable. And if he will just lock Princess Pelosi up n the tower…
We could use a few good dogfights. It’s time to stop being nice. It’s time to kick some ass instead of kissing it. Obama may realize that he has the reins, but I wonder if he is also knows he is the bouncer at the entry door to this nightclub called “Reality”?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
I Would Like To Think
I would like to think
Like Noam Chomsky
But talk
Like Bill Maher.
If I could put
My thoughts together
The way the eastern sage
Chomsky chomps away at them,
Making finally and at last,
After too many words and paragraphs
That can leave me gasping for brain oxygen,
With the sense I need to
Make sense of what is often not,
And then at some other time,
Reconvene those thoughts,
Have them meet up
In Real Time
More Maher-like, curt,
Smarting , smart and pointed
Like bullets clearly
In the direction
Of some who then wish
They had not been in
The line of fire;
If I could coalesce like Chomsky
And reconnoiter like Maher,
If I could trap logic like the Noam
And grind up raw thought
Like the Billy gnome, gruff,
Then I would like to think
That I could write like…
I had thought to say
A Frost or a Hemmingway, but
I would probably just write
Like me
and
I would like to think
That would be
Just fine.
Like Noam Chomsky
But talk
Like Bill Maher.
If I could put
My thoughts together
The way the eastern sage
Chomsky chomps away at them,
Making finally and at last,
After too many words and paragraphs
That can leave me gasping for brain oxygen,
With the sense I need to
Make sense of what is often not,
And then at some other time,
Reconvene those thoughts,
Have them meet up
In Real Time
More Maher-like, curt,
Smarting , smart and pointed
Like bullets clearly
In the direction
Of some who then wish
They had not been in
The line of fire;
If I could coalesce like Chomsky
And reconnoiter like Maher,
If I could trap logic like the Noam
And grind up raw thought
Like the Billy gnome, gruff,
Then I would like to think
That I could write like…
I had thought to say
A Frost or a Hemmingway, but
I would probably just write
Like me
and
I would like to think
That would be
Just fine.
Social Injustice!
This should perhaps be a headline in The Onion...but it's not!
Iraqi Shoe-Thrower Gets Three Years in Prison!
Protesting journalist goes to jail for heaving a heel at a heel! Three years in prison for doing right is wrong! He should have gotten:
-Three years in the Caymans
-The use of a yacht
-At least some of those virgins I keep hearing about!
Iraqi Shoe-Thrower Gets Three Years in Prison!
Protesting journalist goes to jail for heaving a heel at a heel! Three years in prison for doing right is wrong! He should have gotten:
-Three years in the Caymans
-The use of a yacht
-At least some of those virgins I keep hearing about!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Threw the Glass darkly
The nation’s conservatives still seem to maintain an insatiable need for juvenile , pseudo-celebrity-like, temporarily spectacular diversions from the world in which the rest of us live. I think this is called “accident avoidance”: they are actually trying to accidentally avoid actually “thinking”. For instance, you have these annoying, recurrent anomalies:
-Rush ”I want Obama to fail” Limbaugh, bouncing up and down for 85 minutes in front of dazed and confused CPAC attendees; then he stayed on television, doing that for days for even more dazed and confused TV viewers;
-Karl “This economic mess is not George Bush’s fault” Rove, appearing almost everywhere on TV, almost all the time. Why is anyone still listening to him? He can do that but he can’t testify to Congress?
-Ann “I’m an anorexic asshole” Coulter, using up planetary oxygen for no discernible reason;
-Glenn “Stem cell research will lead to a master race” Beck, proving nightly that someone can repeatedly put together two sentences in the same paragraph that have nothing to do with one another. Yes, CNN really pays him to do this;
-Sarah “I can be as dumb as an Alaskan moose” Palin, who makes up both legalities and realities as she goes along, and is still seen as a heroine. I am just waiting for the revelation about heroin;
-A fourteen year-old talking ditto head who can rattle off conservative vapid talking points better and faster than
-Newt “I will run for President if it looks like it’s worth it and won’t if it don’t” Gingrich, who has not figured out that A) no one listening , B) no one gives a damn, and C) that nostalgia died with Ronald Reagan;
All of these appear to both resist and foil any attempts at serious thought. It is easier, I surmise, to pretend at thinking rather than actually do it.
Then there is the Pope: he is forgiving or excusing or absolutionizing (?) a holocaust denying priest and then says he is travelling to Israel and Palestine to pray for peace. I used to pray that pedophile priests would derail the catholic Church. That didn’t work, so maybe this obvious proof that papal infallibility is in fact complete absurdity will help the cause.
The Congress is battling over $8+B in earmarks which are “only a small %” of the total budget bill (but still $8+B, which we are not supposed to noti ce), which John McCain said he deplored during the campaign, then said were OK now that he was not the President. And of course Lindsey (“I am as dumb as a post”) Graham said they were horrible except for the ones that will fund his convention center in Myrtle Beach. And Obama and Enamuel think they are OK because they are “Bush’s earmarks” and not their fault. Maybe. Possibly.
And the fight over Prop 8 in CA is a mis-guided mal-a-prop-ism and a waste of time, money and energy. Even the venerable conservative George Will, on television, on Sunday morning, said that “homosexuality is about as interesting for most people as discovering that someone is left handed. Who cares?” That may be the only thought-provoking conservative thought I’ve heard in years. The end of times?
And “Daylight Savings Time” does not save any daylight: it is only supposed to save electricity. We can’t even freakin’ save energy in this country and get the terminology right. I only threw the glass darkly because I couldn’t see anymore…and neither could anybody else, apparently.
-Rush ”I want Obama to fail” Limbaugh, bouncing up and down for 85 minutes in front of dazed and confused CPAC attendees; then he stayed on television, doing that for days for even more dazed and confused TV viewers;
-Karl “This economic mess is not George Bush’s fault” Rove, appearing almost everywhere on TV, almost all the time. Why is anyone still listening to him? He can do that but he can’t testify to Congress?
-Ann “I’m an anorexic asshole” Coulter, using up planetary oxygen for no discernible reason;
-Glenn “Stem cell research will lead to a master race” Beck, proving nightly that someone can repeatedly put together two sentences in the same paragraph that have nothing to do with one another. Yes, CNN really pays him to do this;
-Sarah “I can be as dumb as an Alaskan moose” Palin, who makes up both legalities and realities as she goes along, and is still seen as a heroine. I am just waiting for the revelation about heroin;
-A fourteen year-old talking ditto head who can rattle off conservative vapid talking points better and faster than
-Newt “I will run for President if it looks like it’s worth it and won’t if it don’t” Gingrich, who has not figured out that A) no one listening , B) no one gives a damn, and C) that nostalgia died with Ronald Reagan;
All of these appear to both resist and foil any attempts at serious thought. It is easier, I surmise, to pretend at thinking rather than actually do it.
Then there is the Pope: he is forgiving or excusing or absolutionizing (?) a holocaust denying priest and then says he is travelling to Israel and Palestine to pray for peace. I used to pray that pedophile priests would derail the catholic Church. That didn’t work, so maybe this obvious proof that papal infallibility is in fact complete absurdity will help the cause.
The Congress is battling over $8+B in earmarks which are “only a small %” of the total budget bill (but still $8+B, which we are not supposed to noti ce), which John McCain said he deplored during the campaign, then said were OK now that he was not the President. And of course Lindsey (“I am as dumb as a post”) Graham said they were horrible except for the ones that will fund his convention center in Myrtle Beach. And Obama and Enamuel think they are OK because they are “Bush’s earmarks” and not their fault. Maybe. Possibly.
And the fight over Prop 8 in CA is a mis-guided mal-a-prop-ism and a waste of time, money and energy. Even the venerable conservative George Will, on television, on Sunday morning, said that “homosexuality is about as interesting for most people as discovering that someone is left handed. Who cares?” That may be the only thought-provoking conservative thought I’ve heard in years. The end of times?
And “Daylight Savings Time” does not save any daylight: it is only supposed to save electricity. We can’t even freakin’ save energy in this country and get the terminology right. I only threw the glass darkly because I couldn’t see anymore…and neither could anybody else, apparently.
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