December 1, 2015

Note the bizarre double-standard as to rhetoric.

Fiorina goes on national television and repeats a complete fabrication about PP keeping a fetus "alive so we can harvest its brain" several times, even after it's established as nonsense. She is outraged that someone appearing to have taken her at her word could be seen as having been motivated by her insane accusation which she made without qualification or any indication she did not mean it literally.

Then she compares the killer that targeted PP to Black Lives Matter protestors, who the RW has accused of fomenting violence against police officers for simply noting that some of them have murdered people.

Their outrageous stories in other words, are fine, while truthful criticism is wildly irresponsible.

This is our current, mainstream Republican Party.

December 1, 2015

Cruz has gone a bit wackier than that.

He went with the shooter being "a transgender leftist activist" based some RW claim his voter registration had him down as a female.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/ted-cruz-says-planned-parenthood-terrorist-was-transgendered-leftist-activist/

Because that makes sense.

Again, the message is that the RW can routinely argue in hyperbolic terms that if true, would call for violence, then smirk or feign confusion when someone takes them at their word.

Meanwhile, when a rational observation is made that someone has been, for example, murdered by police, they shout that it is too dangerous a thing to say, even though it is true.

November 30, 2015

So, conservatives enable real domestic terrorism,

... while insisting that we take outrageous actions to prevent imaginary foreign terrorism to the exclusion of anything else.

Of course, foreign terrorism is a genuine possibility, but we already undertake massive precautions in that regard. The refugees that so terrify Republicans (even the toddlers, apparently) undergo a rigorous, months-longing screening process and are scrutinized endlessly. We have border guards. Watch lists. Invasive quasi-legal-to-illegal government surveillance.

And still they call for more. Higher walls. Fewer civil liberties. More belligerence and endless war on Mexico and the Middle East.

Yet they also freely encourage Americans to see other Americans they disagree with as "murderers" who "sell baby parts," or that government healthcare involves "death panels." Things which, if true, would call for a violent response.

Then they affect annoyance and confusion when someone takes them at their word and commits savage violence trying to respond to whatever life-threatening specter they have raised and people point out the connection?

How dare "the left" suggest that Carly Fiorina's explicit, repeated, disclaimer-free lies about Planned Parenthood could motivate someone to act as if they believed her?

Talk about a reality bubble. What's being sold is that conservatives can tell lies that essentially call for violent political action as a matter of course, then roll their eyes at the thought that anyone took them seriously.

OF COURSE WE'RE LYING. THAT'S WHAT WE DO. IT IS OUR RIGHT, AS CONSERVATIVES, TO MAKE UP CRAZY SHIT AND IMPLY A THREAT OF VIOLENCE, THEN DISCLAIM ALL RESPONSIBILITY WHEN IT LEADS EXACTLY WHERE ONE WOULD EXPECT IT TO LEAD.

November 23, 2015

WE have become radical. Sanders has stayed the same.

Sanders is saying no more or less than FDR, who said,

"That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”

His brand of "socialism" only sounds "radical" to some because of the successful push for the idea that not only can money equate to power and control, but that it should.

Somehow a large block of our culture has been convinced that the core principal of America is the unimpeded pursuit of wealth and power. That money and guns equal speech, but speech itself is irrelevant.

It's only radical to oppose those things to the extent people are afraid to change them. It's only "revolutionary" because we have been pushed and shoved and trampled past the point of recognizing the way our democracy is supposed to work.

I am reminded of a friend who spoke to the state legislature on a women's issue, and had a state representative respond in utter confusion to the idea that she could be standing there, representing people who "wanted something," as though that was rude or inappropriate. I think she asked him whether lobbyists and campaign contributors ever came to him "wanting" something, at which point he sputtered, and said something about "young lady" to this woman who was probably five or 10 years his senior.

We have lost track of where we began. It may be a long way back, but that doesn't mean it is crazy to start off.

It just means we need to hurry.

November 22, 2015

Because atheists do good things already, but they're not a monolithic group?

You are displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of what being non-religious means here.

Not buying other people's belief systems is not a belief system. This is the core idiocy of most complaints about atheism. It's not another form of religion. There isn't a book of dogma, or a set of rules. There are no uniforms or prayers. That's kind of the POINT.

Therefore not signing on to a religious faith does not create an obligation to provide a parallel alternative. Just not believing other people's religious ideas is the entirety of atheism.

Plenty of non-believers are active in doing various good things. Probably most of them, in fact. But they don't do it somehow "in the name of" non-religion, because that doesn't make sense. You could do that, if you wanted to, I guess, and maybe someone somewhere has, but there is no reason in the world to expect that, much less demand it. All lack of religion requires is not actively buying someone else's tradition.

You make it sound non-believers supposed to wave a flag or wear or uniform or shout slogans, or something, so that religious people will accept them. An argument which sounds, by the way, very much like bigoted demands that Muslims march around decrying terrorism to prove they are "the good ones."

No one is under any obligation to reassure religious people that non-religious people are just as good as they are, or that they don't hate them or hold them in contempt. Religious people are under an obligation not to assume the contrary.

As for mockery making people "kill themselves," really?

I would be very concerned if anti-religious sentiment was driving religious teens to suicide the way religious people's anti-gay bigotry has, for example. I don't think that's a realistic danger, however, do you? Without dogma and organization and the persecution of others that goes with it, people have nothing to fear, which again, is part of the point of not subscribing to religion in the first place.

All going to the original point that individual atheists being militant or snarky may show them to be jerks, but it holds no parallel whatsoever to religious dogma used to support everything from homophobia to outright murder. People being disagreeable about not agreeing with you may be uncouth on an individual basis, but it's not a group decision by the non-believers in the world, because by definition THERE IS NO ONE GROUP OF NON-BELIEVERS.

November 17, 2015

"They will be heartened by every sign of overreaction, of division, of fear,

of racism, of xenophobia; they will be drawn to any examples of ugliness on social media."

And of course American conservatives will give them what they want. Confirm the childish belief that anyone can fight and win a religious war.

What would happen to a movement dependent on a constant influx of angry, alienated people, if there was no xenophobic rage to point to? If Chris Christie wasn't declaring five-year-old refugees enemies of the United States? If every Facebook a-hole wasn't waxing excitedly on about turning the Middle East into a plate of molten glass?

Conversely, what happens if everyone accepts the blind rage and Biblical mumbo-jumbo embraced by ISIS and Christian Dominonists alike, and decides that the world IS divided into religions which must fight each other to the death and bring about the end of the world?

November 16, 2015

A critical distinction.

The more I hear from conservatives I disagree with, whether they be Republicans "Libertarians," or conservatives within our own party, the more I see they are united in a reverence for wealth, and the idea that it is rightfully the measure of power, that runs through all of their thinking.

Republicans try their best to restrict voting to the most comfortable, most mainstream. No students, please. No minority groups. If they could establish landowning men as the only voters, they would do so. Occasionally, they actually opine that someone with more money should get more votes.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/14/investing/tom-perkins-vote/

Libertarians (American style) say government should basically just protect wealth. Police, contract enforcement; nothing else.

The recent unfortunate Supreme Court configuration believes corporations and Super PACs have "free speech" rights that include denying people basic health care or overtly trying to purchase elections.

And I keep seeing this odd take on the legitimacy of opinion in general, where efforts on behalf of the common good -- unions, activists, etc. -- are suspect, while the paid shills and lobbyists are somehow absolutely legitimate.

I saw this in a local effort to guarantee earned sick leave for all workers. Local Chamber of Commerce shills and Tea Partiers showed up to county commission meetings armed with "charts" tying the ballot initiative to unions and liberal activist groups (duh?) and essentially argued that cooperation among groups trying to better the lives of workers was inherently a dark, sinister Communist conspiracy. The fact that groups like Disney were paying lawyers and lobbyists out of pure greed was fine, of course.

Money, they think, is the only thing we should ever trust in, protect, or believe. People and principles are distant afterthoughts.

November 16, 2015

The Washington Post notes Wall Street supported Clinton before 9/11

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/16/wall-street-loved-hillary-clinton-before-911-too/

November 16, 2015

I've tried to explain this to conservatives (Dem and otherwise) before

... there is an odd misunderstanding about what kind of opinions are trustworthy or in good faith. Republicans, in particular, seem to think that arguing from a selfish pecuniary interest is fine and upstanding, but arguing from principle is suspect.

Example: Obama, I think, appointed someone to a health-related position in the federal government. Republicans screamed that there was a "conflict of interest" because the person was associated with anti-smoking groups.

Meanwhile, the oil company veterans appointed to the EPA are always fine of course.

The idea seems to be that coming from a position of interest in the common good or general principle is suspect and sinister, while shilling for whoever is paying you is exactly the way things are supposed to work.

November 16, 2015

The more you look at it, the more

calculated it starts to appear.

1. Deflects the question of why Wall Street donates so heavily to her.

2. Wraps itself in the bloody shirt of 9/11, suggesting to question it would be unpatriotic.

3. Insinuates that all of the calls for Wall Street reform are -- as you point out in the OP -- giving terrorists what they want.

4. Consciously ... or unconsciously (and which one is worse, I am not sure) draws on the raw emotions about terrorism in the wake of the Paris attacks.

5. Shows a total lack of awareness of how her own admitted poor judgment regarding our response to 9/11 via a destructive war in Iraq that actually contributed to the rise of ISIS makes her the last person on the stage who should be invoking her personal logic about 9/11.

This is not a wise or helpful approach for Ms. Clinton.