November 29, 2013

What's frustrating is belief that "do not always tell the truth" means "always lies with competence"

Just as "reserving some degree of skepticism of government explanations" doesn't mean everything the government says is part of a tapestry creating an orchestrated illusion of truth. The conspiracy theorists' consensus view of a supercompetent, indeed error-free, far-sighted elitist cabal planning out the Kennedy assassination, Oswald framing, and perfectly concealed multiple snipers in a crowded public square simply doesn't jibe with actual human experience.

But the most instructive argument in this thread is the uncaptioned photograph of Colin Powell making the case for WMDs in Iraq. To some people in this thread, this is confirmation that the government lies to us about important things in order to get its way and suck our tax dollars into the military-industrial complex.

Only, the context of that photograph more clearly shows that large scale conspiracies do not work. Within months of the invasion of Iraq, the whole web of lies, fabrications, manipulations, and distortions used in the conspiracy to drag America into a war with the wrong country came unraveled. A conspiracy on that high a level of government, where competing ideologies, career goals, personal ambitions, personality clashes, and emotion-laden revenge fantasies all clash in the jumble of cover-ups and marketing switcharoos, simply can not be kept in secret. Hundreds of actors would have had to be involved in the murder of Kennedy and framing of Oswald for most conspiracy theories to pan out (with the possible exception of the mafia-related conspiracies--but even then the target should've been Bobby, not Jack Kennedy). Someone would have talked; some ego would have been driven to a deathbed braggadocio. Secrets that big do not remain secret.

Now something wacky was going on in Dallas (and New Orleans) in the run up to Kennedy's murder. I don't swallow the Warren Commission report. But a concerted effort by a villainous clique, each member in turn commanding dozens of loyal, lip-locked minions, none of whom ever spilled the beans, just doesn't make a damn bit of sense.

October 23, 2013

Let us judge a man by his works

Obama Democrat



Rockefeller Republican



Johnson Democrat (cause all the other Democrats have to learn the hard way you can't bargain with Republicans)



Cheney Republican (cause unlike his boss, Dick Cheney never gave anyone an affectionately humiliating nickname)



Reagan Republican (cute story, but factually inaccurate)



Truman Democrat (big on sharing the wealth, but a little lax on policing ethnic slurs)



Kennedy Democrat



William Henry Harrison Whig


==========


Conclusion: Dude was all over the map. Probably had multiple writers putting words in his mouth, being himself an empty vessel for other people's economic aspirations. In other words, Ford Republican.

October 23, 2013

Whoa. I just fact-corrected someone on DU and, instead of digging in deeper, they agreed with me.

I'm a little taken back. I expect more hysterics and rhetorical theatrics from an internet discussion board.

Usually when I point out someone's inaccurate hyperbole, the response is to double down on their factlessness ("Well, I watch a LOT of PBS and I've seen incontrovertible evidence of alien influence on our Bill of Rights in dozens of documentaries--documentaries, might I add, with British-sounding narrators!&quot or they to try to justify their wild arguments with spurious lines of logic ("Oh really? And do you know just how many people have died of lung cancer since 1960? Far more than Hitler killed in the Holocaust, buddy-boy! And so, objectively speaking, second hand smoking is far worse than Naziism and Stalinism combined.&quot .

Instead, however, one logical DUer today defied all my predispositions and simply conceded the point when confronted with facts. Frankly, I don't know what to do with this moment.

Perhaps I'll cry.

June 1, 2013

My new Facebook page, recording instances of accidental & pointless shooting deaths

0oops, or "Sorry I Shot You" (although many stories involve "Sorry I shot myself" stories). The tone is dry and factual. The content is, and will always be, just a little heartbreaking.

I'm looking for some likes. I'm wanting to just highlight all the pointless deaths & injuries resulting from our gun culture. It can be a bit depressing, so you've been warned. But I want raise awareness.

<== This is all of us

May 20, 2013

I'm a star. I've always been a star. And I have all you motherfuckers on ignore. All of you!!!

Everyone who posts in DU, I ignore 'em. Heh-heh. Every last mother's son of 'em. Heh-heh. And now I have DU all to myself. ALL TO MYSELF!! Do you hear me world! You can't fuck with Bucky Rea any more cause all you motherfuckers are on ignore!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!



Oh shit, I stepped on my glasses! Now I can't read any of my posts anymore. NOOoooooo[font size="1"]ooo o[/font]... . . !![font size="1"]! ![/font]

May 9, 2013

I was lured into the straight lifestyle by liberal Hollywood propaganda

I've never shared this in public before, but I first started experimenting with heterosexuality in the 6th grade. I mean, I always had these feelings, this inexplicable attraction to people of the opposite sex. But I'd never actually acted on those feelings before I was 12. Then, little by little, in clandestine meetings or in back yards during friends' parties, I would occasionally find a willing partner and we would, you know, explore what it was like to act out on these impulses. But did I choose this lifestyle? Or was I programmed into it by an unrelenting barrage of media hyperganda, seducing me into becoming a straight? I'll never know. I only know I'm now trapped in this heterosexual mindset. I don't think there's any hope of any church official deprogramming me out of feeling this way.

(sob)

April 25, 2013

Pictures of plane wrecks that *everyone* aboard survived from.

http://io9.com/stunning-photos-of-plane-crashes-where-everyone-aboard-479513762

"Photos of plane crashes where everyone aboard survived"

April 9, 2013

According to Baron Montesquieu, this country doesn't want to be a republic.

You should learn a lot about Charles-Louis, Baron de Brede et Montesquieu (Chucky for short). In your civics class, he's taught as the guy who identified the three basic functions of government--legislative, executive, and judicial--and who had a powerful pull on the Founding Conventioneers in Philadelphia in 1787. He's more important for the Constitution than John Locke is. Locke more inspired the Declaration, but it was Chucky who inspired both the three branches scheme and laid the philosophical groundwork for maintaining a federal, instead of a national, structure to the Old 13. However Chucky had some other, more pertinent observations about how men & their governments interact. He identified the governments of the world as falling into three types: Republic, Monarchy, or Despotism. Yes, he always thought in threes. Like any Frenchman, he spent a good deal of time worrying about how size matters. And Chucky didn't think a country, like ours, nearly the size of a continent was quite suited for republicanism. There are dangerous signs he was rights.

In his view, a true republic requires a public and culture that has a love of virtue, that is, a society in which people (particularly leaders) put their love of country and the welfare of the community above their own personal needs. Think about everything we revere George Washington for and now compare it to, say, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, that clown from Alaska, or Rand Paul. But this character must exist among a nation as well. When a people lose virtuousness, they begin to lose their republican form of government. We pause now for this important commercial message.

Now back to Bucky's rant.

We're in post-democratic America. According to ol' Chuck Montesquieu, it's not just the character of the people, but also the size of the state itself, that encourages or prevents certain forms of government. A small state tends toward Republic because the rich and poor are neighbors; they see each other at the market or one works for the other, person to person. There is shared commonwealth because they see one another's person & thus one another's rights. A medium sized nation tends toward monarchy; when you lose neighborliness with your fellow countrymen, you lose common-feeling. You need a strong man to enforce the law so that all have an equality of (now reduced) liberty as allowed by the unifying state. But a large nation, an empire--a Russia or a China--will never be a true democracy. The size of state itself requires a despot to hold united all the conflicting interests of a vast land. Even with elections, Putin is still a strong man, a crowd manipulator and a godfather to racketeers who kill inconvenient journalists for him. An iron grasp has always unified Russia; when Gorbachev loosened that grasp, the factions tore the nation apart.

But let's look at the mote in Uncle Sam's eye. For two generations we've bemoaned the imperial presidency--tho mostly when there's a Republican in office. On the other talon, our compatriots at RedState.com only seem to gin up their love of the non-Second Amendments during the Clinton and Obama presidencies. These are two nice data points of what losing one's virtue looks like. Not as pretty as losing one's virginity, is it? When it's not the president taking over legislative functions, it's the Congress thrusting legislative decisions onto his desk. Remember all those pass-the-buck sequestration proposals the Republican caucuses came up with? They were dodging their responsibilities (just like with fobbing on the debt extension votes) because experience showed the members of Congress lacked the discipline, the capacity to compromise, in a word, the virtue, to pass a budget that split their differences.

Judges, too, demonstrate at least a check-and-balancing expression of despotism. Activist judges on the left and right assume more and more power... but this mostly happens when the most representative branch of the people, the legislative, fails to handle its core responsibilities. It is a failure of republican governance (small-r), demonstrating a failure of public virtue. Congress doesn't deliver it because the people don't demand it. And the people don't demand it because they want their MTV more than they want their communities serviced by their public servants.

We've not lost our republicanism yet. We may never lose it in full, but against Ben Franklin's possibly apocryphal advice, we're not really keeping it up lately.

April 2, 2013

A cartoon that isn't funny

See? No punchline. Not unless we get our shit together, that is.

April 1, 2013

In fact, life is a broccoli eating contest, but they don't tell you that.

When you die and go to heaven, St. Peter doesn't review a video of all you sins with you. He just has a big ledger with your name and a list of all the times you could have eaten broccoli but didn't. Then yall watch a video, and it's on BetaMax because that's where they've all gone and not because "VCR had better marketing" or some crap like that, and you and St. Peter watch you turning your nose up at broccoli when you were like 3 or 4 years old and you mom was only worried about your vitamin intake, and then when you get to the part where you gag on the first forkfull and throw the plate of broccoli onto the floor and scream "I want cake!" St. Peter says, "You know what, I'm not gonna sit through this shit any longer; you know what you did." and he turns the BetaMax off and kicks your ass down to hell.

That is the point in life. You should have listened to your mother.