Thanks to Sherran Lucas for this…
The Pope and Sarah Palin are on the same stage in Yankee Stadium in front of a huge crowd. The Pope leans towards Mrs. Palin and says, “Do you know that with one little wave of my hand I can make every person in this crowd go wild with joy?”
Palin replies, “I seriously doubt that with one little wave of your hand? Show me!”
So the Pope backhands her.
A toast to America’s soldiers, past and present, to those who avoid thuggery even in dire straits, to those who serve and die with honor even when vilely misused by their leaders, to those who fight but recognize that war is not a holy crusade.
To my conservative friends and foes, first let me say, congratulations on your win. Unlike the Democrats, you managed to fill your heads with steam and ire and get out the vote. You also got a great deal of financial support from those good folks on Wall Street who really want to continue doing things the way they have been, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue than what I want to address now.
No, what I want to address now is your tendency to create your own reality, which just doesn’t jibe with anything actually like, you know, reality. You’re the most masterful wielders of confirmation bias I think anyone can see outside a psycho ward. In fact, over the past decade, your entire political and social SOP is what some, in the first half of the last century, termed the “Big Lie.”
(Which I’ve blogged on before, for the interested.)
Now, I realize I’m likely annoying you with my somewhat insulting, patronizing tone, but I humbly ask your forbearance. In my eyes, what happened Tuesday was almost uniformly a travesty for my beloved country and its people, and the bile hasn’t settled. Just think about how long it took yours to settle after Obama won. Oh right. It hasn’t yet.
I am, sincerely, interested in your thoughts on this stuff, though. Below is a clip from The Rachel Maddow show. Wait, wait, I know you’re programmed to stick your fingers in your ears and screech like an owl with its wing stuck in a car door when that hateful liberal dyke opens her trap, but for once, please, hear her out. I challenge you to actually watch this segment and respond to it with reason.
To me, she makes her case. And though I’m on the other side of the political divide from you, I’m not prone to simple acceptance of arguments which back up my side. As Rachel usually does, she provides actual evidence for her claims. And if she’s right, you’re living in a closed circuit echo chamber that creates its own “facts” and refuses to allow evidence into the loop that would disprove those “facts.”
Your reaction to this video could well prove her point further. I’m interested in that possibility. I’m also interested in knowing if, when faced with the possibility that the awe-inspiring righteous reportage of Fox News is actually misleading you all the time, you’re able to take a step back and see that perhaps they’re not so “fair and balanced” at all.
And don’t throw MSNBC’s partisanship at me, or rail about the liberal media, as deflections. Today we’re talking about this right wing echo chamber, and whether you can step outside it long enough to even see that it exists.
If it does exist, how can you continue to let it be your primary source of “fact?”
If it doesn’t, how do you explain Rachel’s individual points of evidence?
I hope you’ll watch the video and share your thoughts in the comments below.
You’re not the president of me!
I had a custom bumper sticker of that statement printed during the first term of George W. Bush’s malodorous presidency, and the sentiment grew stronger day by day by day throughout his entire reign. That sticker, and my Re-elect Gore in 2008 sticker, decorated the back of my Trooper the whole time, and were joined by an Obama 2008 sticker only after Barack Obama sealed the deal as the Democratic candidate once and for all.
After Obama took office, I tried to remove the sticker, but the adhesive was too strong. I kept intending to take some sort of solvent to it, but didn’t get around to it. I did, however, take a black permanent marker to the word “not” as a temporary measure, making it read You’re the president of me. I didn’t want anyone seeing the sticker and thinking it was meant for Obama. He was not my first choice ( I still maintain that Gore should have run, and was the right man for the job), but I voted for him and hoped he’d do great things. He got automatic points for replacing the worst fucking president this country has ever had.
Obama’s been in office about a year now, so it’s worth appraising what he’s accomplished done so far.
God, I could go on and on, but it’s wearing me out just looking back at this man’s record thus far. There’s still time for him to step up and do some good things, but at the moment, I couldn’t vote for him again regardless of who he may be running against, because he’s taking my vote for granted in a way I just will not support. He and his staff obviously figure they can count on progressive votes because, after all, who else can we vote for?
The answer, as far as I’m concerned, is (a) anyone who gives him a primary challenge. or (b) no one. My best case scenario at the moment is a strong Democratic challenger bumping him from office next time around, and keeping Democratic majorities in Congress that that person would hopefully actually use for the good of our country. Second best, and this is something I never would have thought I’d say, would be a Republican defeating him while Congress stays Democratic enough to hopefully prevent the Republican from doing too much damage. No politician should hold themselves above accountability for their actions.
And that bumper sticker?
Well, unlike my Obama sticker, it’s still on my truck. Over the months the black ink over the word “not” has gradually washed away. Now I figure maybe I couldn’t remove it because I wasn’t meant to just yet. Listen up, Barack:
You’re not the president of me!
And you won’t be until you start doing the goddamned job you promised you were going to do.
Let’s make that
Though Obama’s better than Bush (as most people, animals, plants, or objects would be), he spent the last year mainly pissing me off. But this is supposed to be things I enjoyed, and watching Bush go the hell away was a definite high point.
BUSH'S PLAN FOR AMERICA
Great cartoon from Matt Bors:
Who decides if YOU get health care?
While our esteemed young POTUS gets all sincereish for the cameras about this wonderful Senate bill, let’s take a pause and look at what other countries are really doing with their national health care, as opposed to the scary stories woven throughout our shoddy national debate.
One of the essential arguments conservatives use against “socialized” care is that they shouldn’t be forced to pay for someone else. This principle trumps all, even down to the welfare of poor children. After all, they’re their parents’ responsibility. I guess if they die, that just gets lazy, unproductive genes out of the genetic pool.
Socialized systems vs. free market systems is a valid debate, though, well worth having. It all depends on what you think government is “for,” and how much duty American citizens owe their “greatest country on earth,” and how Darwinian you are in your concern about the welfare of other human beings.
Do Americans have a right to a good education?
Do Americans have a right to expect bridges they drive on to be well-built and maintained?
Do Americans have a right to emergency services maintained by their communities such as the fire department?
Some argue that we shouldn’t have those things, or that they should be part of the free market. That way, Paris Hilton gets the best schooling in private schools (lord knows she seems to need it), she can use a private helicopter to just fly over unsafe infrastructure, and she can use the money she would save on taxes to hire and manage her own fire department. Or maybe her condo association would handle that or something.
Meanwhile, poor people wind up with no or poor education, sometimes die in bridge collapses, and grab a bucket if their house catches on fire and they can afford a bucket.
The American way? Continue reading
Sounds about right…
“President Obama says that Congress is very close to getting a new healthcare plan, but due to compromises it ‘won’t include everything that everybody wants.’ For instance, it covers everything except trips to the doctor or the hospital.”
—Conan O’Brien
It amazes me that anyone can still proudly claim to be a Republican these days. And, indeed, a record low number of Americans make that claim, which is a good thing, because those who still do have lost all semblance of a grip on patriotism, sound policy, rational thought, or statesmanship.
We have gun-toting buffoons showing up at presidential appearances, a congressman heckling the elected president in a joint session of Congress, legions of ignorant sheep letting Beck and Hannity and Limbaugh lead them toward the Apocalypse that many of them actually desire, a set of political values that can be summed up as (a) keep anything good from happening under Democratic rule so they can’t get credit, (b) cripple Obama’s power, and (c) do anything we can to regain our dominance so we can better serve our corporate masters.
Want to see a great example of the sort of healthy debate Republicans are bringing to policy issues now? Just watch this video, in all its glory, and see how it looks when unchivalrous, dishonorable rabble with nothing to offer get into government.
Me, I get a kick out of the “What is your objection?” “I object” exchange. With debate like that, who needs morons?
Vodpod videos no longer available.
A fascinating interview with Frank Schaeffer, one of the founding members of the modern religious right in America, who has since recognized the dangers inherent in the worldview he once espoused.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
From NBC Philadelphia:
Four-year-old Paige Bennethum really, really didn’t want her daddy to go to Iraq.
So much so, that when Army Reservist Staff Sgt. Brett Bennethum lined up in formation at his deployment this July, she couldn’t let go.
No one had the heart to pull her away.
I don’t believe in hell. But I sometimes find myself hoping it exists so that George W. Bush can fucking roast for all the children in the world who are growing up without their parents because of him.
Desperate to paint their cause in epic colors, the tea baggers released this image of their protest over the weekend. Pretty impressive. Look how they swamp the national mall, like neurons in the pathways of a brain. Well, a brain possessed by someone other than a tea bagger, anyway.
Well.
PolitiFact.com (“a project of the St. Petersburg Times to help you find the truth in American politics. Reporters and editors from the Times fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups and rate them on our Truth-O-Meter…”) ran down the facts about this photo, and about the baggers’ claims of multitude:
We spoke with Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, who said that the local government no longer provides official crowd estimates because they can become politicized. That said, on the morning of Sept. 12, Piringer unofficially told one reporter that he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.
So, not quite a couple of million. And the photo?
“It was an impressive crowd,” he said. But after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol the crowd “only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street,” he said.
Yet the photo showed the crowd sprawling far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.
There’s another big problem with the photograph: it doesn’t include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn’t show the “tea party” crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.
Also worth noting are the cranes in front of the Natural History Museum (the second building from the lower left of the National Mall). According to Randall Kremer, the museum’s director of public affairs, “The last time cranes were in front was in the 1990s when the IMAX theater was being built.”
That makes the picture at least a decade old.
That means the trumpeted count, and the picture, are about as accurate as most information offered up by these people. And lying is apparently very much a right-wing value. Like greed and intolerance.
In an editorial for the Washington Post, Sen. George S. McGovern (1972 presidential candidate who lost to Nixon, and boy that worked out, didn’t it?) offers up a simple, smart, elegant solution to our national health-care nightmare:
If we want comprehensive health care for all our citizens, we can achieve it with a single sentence: Congress hereby extends Medicare to all Americans. Those of us over 65 have been enjoying this program for years. I go to the doctor or hospital of my choice, and my taxes pay all the bills. It’s wonderful. But I would have appreciated it even more if my wife and children and I had had such health-care coverage when we were younger. I want every American, from birth to death, to get the kind of health care I now receive. Removing the payments now going to the insurance corporations would considerably offset the tax increase necessary to cover all Americans.
Medicare exists. It works. It’s beloved by its beneficiaries, who are such a large voting block that it’s beloved even by most conservative politicians, who ought to despise it as the dread “socialism” they fear so much. Why not just expand it?
We know that Medicare has worked well for half a century for those of us over 65. Why does it become “socialized medicine” when we extend it to younger Americans?
…We recently bailed out the finance houses and banks to the tune of $700 billion. A country that can afford such an outlay while paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can afford to do what every other advanced democracy has done: underwrite quality health care for all its citizens.
If Medicare needs a few modifications in order to serve all Americans, we can make such adjustments now or later. But let’s make sure Congress has an up or down vote on Medicare for all before it adjourns this year. Let’s not waste time trying to reinvent the wheel. We all know what Medicare is. Do we want health care for all, or only for those over 65?
Those of us who care about our fellow citizens, rather than mostly ill-educated ideals of selfishness and short-sightedness, certainly do.
The whole piece is here. Thanks go to Betsy Burnam for making me aware of it.
Tom Tomorrow is by far one of the funniest and wisest editorialists drawing funny pictures…
After months of Republican rabble-rousing and misinformation, Congressman Joe Wilson (R-Crazytown) stepped up to the plate (with the usual batting accuracy of your modern GOP politico) during President Obama’s speech to both houses of Congress the other night and shouted “YOU LIE!!!” at the president.
Like most of the misinformation and realpolitik offered up by the Right these days, the specific information he was calling a lie (that illegal immigrants would not be eligible for free health care) is demonstrably true. It’s typed into the language of the health care bill in plain English, and should be easy to understand even for an obvious buffoon like Wilson.
In this video, Keith Olberman shows the evidence (the actual text from the bill), and points out that Wilson’s greatest sin wasn’t the awesome breach of traditional protocol that besmirched both him and his party, it was the fact that he, himself, was simply screeching a Republican lie.
A hilarious cartoon by Carolita Johnson at Huffington Post:
There’s an unfinished entry on my blog’s dashboard page called “Obama Lies!!!” in which I, a devoted progressive who despises Bush and Cheney with every fiber of my being, and who happily voted for Obama, was taking him to task for his spots of disingenuousness and his failure to stand up to the Right and do the things he said he would do and needs to do.
I wrote quite a bit, but burned out on the piece and never completed it. Now, happily, I have something to share that is much better than what I was crafting.
At TomDispatch.com, David Swanson (founder of AfterDowningStreet.org) has an essay that in great detail compares the Obama presidency thus far to what we might have expected had Bush been granted a third term. It’s sobering stuff.
It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be talking endlessly about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can’t you just picture it?…
The full piece is here. There is a short introduction by the site’s founder, Tom Engelhardt, and the actual essay by Swanson is a bit down the page.
Now don’t get me wrong. While I’m troubled (in some cases quite troubled) by much of what Swanson covers, I’m still glad to have a smart, sort-of liberal guy in office now instead of the war-mongering corporatist dullard we had. Obama may fuck up, but we’ll still be better off than we would have been with a literal continuation of Bush’s policies.
And now “David Allen C.E.O.” will give the Republican response to my earlier political rant:
Your [sic] just another sanctimonius [sic] leftist asshole thats [sic] out there painting Real Americans with a broad brush. Trouble is you [sic] paint has been proved transparent. Forgive me for painting back.
We are out there working hard to keep your type from tossing whats [sic] left of our country off the bridge.
What can I say, really, that I haven’t already in the rant? I certainly can’t argue with his logic.
Under An Outlaw Moon 