The Big Takeaway: Young Adult brings Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman Academy Award Winning pedigree to a poorly written, blandly acted, but deliciously short semi-autobiographical character piece.
The Little Takeaway: A needless “take” on the romantic comedy. Overwrought, supposedly clever dialogue, flat characters and a general unfinished feeling to the script.
I’ll admit, I’m probably NOT the desired demographic for Young Adult. But then again, I’m not entirely sure who is. I do know it’s more for the ladies in the audience than the gentleman. That could explain the long scenes that pad out the movie, with reality shows playing in the background and Charlize Theron napping or passed out in a bed. I’m not sure a lot guys are wont to do that on any given day real or fictionalized, the reality shows in the background bit, I assure you men love the napping and sleeping.
I’ll also admit I’m not a big fan of Diablo Cody, nom de plume and all, either. I find her to be a overhyped, poor man's cynical Amy Heckerling, and not in a good way. Her plots generally go nowhere, and the characters that inhabit them are fine for younger actors who don’t know how to build a character (your Micheal Cera’s, Ellen Page’s), but stymie established actors that could actually bring that character to life. Charlize Theron sleepwalks through movies like this.
Young Adult is the story of Diablo Cody Brook Busey Mavis Gary, a ghost writer of a…young adult…series of books. From the voice over narration of the books, they seem to be glossy retellings of Mavis Gary’s teenage years: vapid, shallow, slutty and all. This is supposed to flesh out the character, but it does so laterally, keeping the character woefully one-dimensional. We get it, she was popular and mean, and so is the main character of her books, but it’s not providing the kind of depth I think Diablo Cody was going for.
Mavis, after getting an e-mail from an old beau, named Buddy Slade, announcing a new baby, gets the notion that he’s actually crying out for help and sets off on an adventure to take him away from his dour wife and hideous baby. Hilarity…ensues!?
The more curious thing, aside from the overwrought, semi-autobiographical, underpinnings, is the fact that Mavis Gary is in her mid-thirties. The lusting and longing for school days gone by doesn’t strike me as something that would compel someone in their mid-thirties to act upon. Perhaps if Mavis was in her mid to late twenties, I could suspend some disbelief. Even with the grand twist that she got pregnant with Slade’s baby when she was twenty and miscarried, did absolutely nothing to redeem the character. Again, I think that Diablo Cody figured this lazy bit of a twist would work on some level. This would be true had there been a third act of some sort. It may explain some of her latent crazy that spills out during that very uncomfortable scene, but there’s only ten minutes left in the movie by that point.
The “Oscar buzz” about Patton Oswalt’s acting in this movie needs to step back and recognize. While he does put in a great performance, if that’s what they want to call it, he’s merely another voice in the movie trying to humanize Mavis enough for the audience to care. It’s almost as if Diablo Cody couldn’t write a script that could make the audience at least empathize with Mavis and instead went with the heavyhanded magical other guy that somehow understands and relates to Mavis. If you wish to see Patton Oswalt act the shit out of something, check out 2009's Big Fan.
More to the point, the script comes across as first draft through and through. It feels like two-thirds of a movie. Perhaps this is supposed to be genre defining or a change of pace for a character driven film. Kind of like Diablo Cody’s take on a tired character driven romantic comedy. Instead of bumping in to things, falling over stuff and changing her life just in time to land the hunky guy, Mavis Gary just sort of shrugs her shoulders and maintains the fuck you attitude that she started the movie with. You’re thinking we’ll go in to Act III and something will happen, at least bring the film to some sort of satisfying conclusion. Instead, the credits start rolling.
Reitman’s directing is falling in to a familiar pattern of non-obtrusive blandness. This movie almost seems like it meant to be put on the television in the background while you do other things. Kind of like schlocky cable shows where you can follow along to them without paying much attention. Young Adult is also kind of movie that sits on your local video rental place and is unobtrusive, but frequently rented by accident. It stands out only in that Charlize Theron is in it and nothing more. You can totally pick it up for a date night, fall asleep halfway through, or pick up a pizza and not really miss anything important.
And while it seems that I didn’t really like Young Adult, it’s not really the case. The move just sort of happened at me, and it made me wonder what’s so great about Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman or this re-teaming in general? On display in this movie is the very real notion that Diablo Cody’s writing may be a tad overrated, and that Jason Reitman's talents may be better spent directing Lexus "December to Remember" commercials.
Final Verdict: A yawn and a Pass
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Profile of a Robot Politician: Mitt Romney
Mitt Romeny’s recent spread in Parade magazine December 4 issue reads a lot like what a robot commercial will look like in the future. As humans, it’s in our very nature to distrust the unknown and the new. Artificial intelligence will also be a check on our egos, and the acknowledgement of our own frailty and mortality. However, since the rise of the machines is at least a few decades off, we do have politicians to bridge the gap in the meantime.
I’ve been having a good hardy chuckle with Parade’s GOP “Meet the Candidates 2012” Presidential Candidate coverage. I loved Perry’s cover, where his jacket front is all open like he’s allowing America to suckle from his Freedom teat. I genuinely enjoyed his answers to tee-ball style questioning. I supremely enjoyed Romney’s, with the pictures of his whole mess of kids and especially the one word blurbs that associates used to describe him that fill the article.
The first one, on the very first page is: “Human”. Rocky Anderson’s blurb then follows that “He’s much funnier than he comes across. But he’s too darn handsome. You feel a bit inadequate around him.” So the blurb should’ve been “Handsome”…maybe it was a typo? Also being described as human doesn’t really explain anything. Aren’t most people “Human”?
The next blurb is much, much better. “Ambitious”, but then the following statement is more a kick in the balls to Romney’s whole article trying to sell, presumably, the moderates and independents who don’t know who to vote for yet: “When he ran for governor he told us he’d be the most effective Republican in the U.S. on choice. But after he was elected, he totally flipped positions”. This totally plays in to the problem Romney’s having with his political inconsistency. But it does nothing to describe “Ambitious”. Was he ambitious in his flip-flopping? Ambitiously able to be a politician and lie to constituents to get much needed Massachusetts liberal votes? It remains to be seen on that on. Not only is Romney inconsistent, so is this very profile on him!
There are a few other blurbs that are essentially boilerplate political bullshit. “High Energy” and “Positive” round out the blurbs and the following statements keep in line with the “One Word” followed by dissassociative sentence. I believe better blurbs could’ve been: “Virile” Romney’s fathered five children, all boys. That is some stallion virility and DNA right there. “Well-Coifed” Mitt Romney’s hair is ALWAYS perfectly in place with nary a wayward strand. Even under intense pressure, the coif stays put. We’ll move forward with the actual article.
It wouldn’t be a Parade interview without the boneheaded interview questions. I’m wondering if David Gergen is actually a real person, or these questions were submitted by a sixth grade English class. Supposedly Americans know Romney’s policy positions. That’s soundly untrue. I’ve been following this clown car GOP rally, and I actually know very little about his policy positions. I’ve seen and read “ideas” that he’s moved to and away from, but nothing substantially concrete. Keyword being substantially, he may surprise me soon. No, we get in to Romney’s father George’s influence on his life. Oh look at this, he was a CEO, but he came from nothing. This is key, especially in the current economic climate we find ourselves in. Romney is worth 250 million dollars, he is not one of us. But all through this article, he’ll be damned if he doesn’t sell the notion that’s he just a guy. Who’s father came from nothing, who somehow sent his son to Harvard. You know, like most of us, who were allowed to go to an Ivy League University for higher education.
Furthering this narrative, Romney’s interview turns to his oddly omitted Mormon mission in the 60’s. It just states he went on a “mission” and that shaped him. Clearly he’s backing away from the whole Mormon thing, because that scares evangelicals in the right wing. Even when asked about how his Mormon faith has affected his life he manages to dodge that and focus on the Ten Commandments, that in his words are “…the basis of Judeo-Christian faiths”. He then goes on to say that religious oppression, my words, are somehow liberating. That being faithful is somehow a well of passion and devotion for marriage, and that tithing makes money less important. The interviewer then surmises that he’s given million of dollars to his church. Since tithes can’t really be accounted for, I’m going to find that REALL, really hard to believe.
The money question then gets in to the very real problem that any GOP, nay, politician is running in to: How do you relate or connect to the person struggling to get by? Romney, ever studious of the political playbook, name drops FDR, Kennedy and his would be analogous figure Eisenhower (of which his grandchildren have been instructed to call him Ike) who served in similar times. He goes on to say that the middle class is struggling, blahblahblah. Problem is, the question was how does Romney, a millionaire, connect to an average American living paycheck to paycheck? He has no answer.
The recent Brett Barier interview spotlighted a major issue with this current crop of candidates: once they wander off the rhetoric/talking point farm they faulter and look stupid. While Romney has yet to do that in any of the myriad of debates, that Fox New’s interview was perilously close to pulling back the curtain to what’s really wrong with Mitt Romney. The fact that he even thinks the interview was too harsh, speaks volumes to how out of touch he is with the general voting public, which is marginally higher than the right-wing on any given day.
This interviews goal was to show people the “real” Mitt Romney. It’s an impossible task, and the interview shows that, and suffers greatly for it. Romney comes across as the political operative robot that he is, well at least this point in the race. Most of the “tough” interview questions are not answered in this article. For instance the interview talks about what he would do with a similar situation of deficit deadlock. Romney goes for a mountain climbing metaphor instead. He tiptoes the Mormon issue and comes across as any other politician would in an interview such as this. He loves him family, his God and his country. I know that you can’t spread that out over five pages but this doesn’t even begin to show the “real” Mitt Romney.
The bulk of this interview comes across as pandering to the Republican establishment and the TEA Party. Romney’s strategy of being whatever the right-wing wants at any given time isn’t working because he’s coming across as the very antithesis of what the right-wing is rejecting. It’s no mistake that the GOP Presidential front-runners at any given time got there more for being candid and less button up same old’ white guy that they’ve been foisting on the general election for the past umpteen decades. It’s the reason why, if Romney gets the nomination he will lose to Obama. Hell, most of the Democrat establishment bucked a Clinton for Obama in 2008, the waves of popular political change are strong. Most of the voting electorate have clearly established that they are done voting for the same old same old. Romney’s even keel approach is fine, if he enjoys the marginal poll numbers he’s been receiving, but he’s costing himself an election in doing so.
I’ve been having a good hardy chuckle with Parade’s GOP “Meet the Candidates 2012” Presidential Candidate coverage. I loved Perry’s cover, where his jacket front is all open like he’s allowing America to suckle from his Freedom teat. I genuinely enjoyed his answers to tee-ball style questioning. I supremely enjoyed Romney’s, with the pictures of his whole mess of kids and especially the one word blurbs that associates used to describe him that fill the article.
The first one, on the very first page is: “Human”. Rocky Anderson’s blurb then follows that “He’s much funnier than he comes across. But he’s too darn handsome. You feel a bit inadequate around him.” So the blurb should’ve been “Handsome”…maybe it was a typo? Also being described as human doesn’t really explain anything. Aren’t most people “Human”?
The next blurb is much, much better. “Ambitious”, but then the following statement is more a kick in the balls to Romney’s whole article trying to sell, presumably, the moderates and independents who don’t know who to vote for yet: “When he ran for governor he told us he’d be the most effective Republican in the U.S. on choice. But after he was elected, he totally flipped positions”. This totally plays in to the problem Romney’s having with his political inconsistency. But it does nothing to describe “Ambitious”. Was he ambitious in his flip-flopping? Ambitiously able to be a politician and lie to constituents to get much needed Massachusetts liberal votes? It remains to be seen on that on. Not only is Romney inconsistent, so is this very profile on him!
There are a few other blurbs that are essentially boilerplate political bullshit. “High Energy” and “Positive” round out the blurbs and the following statements keep in line with the “One Word” followed by dissassociative sentence. I believe better blurbs could’ve been: “Virile” Romney’s fathered five children, all boys. That is some stallion virility and DNA right there. “Well-Coifed” Mitt Romney’s hair is ALWAYS perfectly in place with nary a wayward strand. Even under intense pressure, the coif stays put. We’ll move forward with the actual article.
It wouldn’t be a Parade interview without the boneheaded interview questions. I’m wondering if David Gergen is actually a real person, or these questions were submitted by a sixth grade English class. Supposedly Americans know Romney’s policy positions. That’s soundly untrue. I’ve been following this clown car GOP rally, and I actually know very little about his policy positions. I’ve seen and read “ideas” that he’s moved to and away from, but nothing substantially concrete. Keyword being substantially, he may surprise me soon. No, we get in to Romney’s father George’s influence on his life. Oh look at this, he was a CEO, but he came from nothing. This is key, especially in the current economic climate we find ourselves in. Romney is worth 250 million dollars, he is not one of us. But all through this article, he’ll be damned if he doesn’t sell the notion that’s he just a guy. Who’s father came from nothing, who somehow sent his son to Harvard. You know, like most of us, who were allowed to go to an Ivy League University for higher education.
Furthering this narrative, Romney’s interview turns to his oddly omitted Mormon mission in the 60’s. It just states he went on a “mission” and that shaped him. Clearly he’s backing away from the whole Mormon thing, because that scares evangelicals in the right wing. Even when asked about how his Mormon faith has affected his life he manages to dodge that and focus on the Ten Commandments, that in his words are “…the basis of Judeo-Christian faiths”. He then goes on to say that religious oppression, my words, are somehow liberating. That being faithful is somehow a well of passion and devotion for marriage, and that tithing makes money less important. The interviewer then surmises that he’s given million of dollars to his church. Since tithes can’t really be accounted for, I’m going to find that REALL, really hard to believe.
The money question then gets in to the very real problem that any GOP, nay, politician is running in to: How do you relate or connect to the person struggling to get by? Romney, ever studious of the political playbook, name drops FDR, Kennedy and his would be analogous figure Eisenhower (of which his grandchildren have been instructed to call him Ike) who served in similar times. He goes on to say that the middle class is struggling, blahblahblah. Problem is, the question was how does Romney, a millionaire, connect to an average American living paycheck to paycheck? He has no answer.
The recent Brett Barier interview spotlighted a major issue with this current crop of candidates: once they wander off the rhetoric/talking point farm they faulter and look stupid. While Romney has yet to do that in any of the myriad of debates, that Fox New’s interview was perilously close to pulling back the curtain to what’s really wrong with Mitt Romney. The fact that he even thinks the interview was too harsh, speaks volumes to how out of touch he is with the general voting public, which is marginally higher than the right-wing on any given day.
This interviews goal was to show people the “real” Mitt Romney. It’s an impossible task, and the interview shows that, and suffers greatly for it. Romney comes across as the political operative robot that he is, well at least this point in the race. Most of the “tough” interview questions are not answered in this article. For instance the interview talks about what he would do with a similar situation of deficit deadlock. Romney goes for a mountain climbing metaphor instead. He tiptoes the Mormon issue and comes across as any other politician would in an interview such as this. He loves him family, his God and his country. I know that you can’t spread that out over five pages but this doesn’t even begin to show the “real” Mitt Romney.
The bulk of this interview comes across as pandering to the Republican establishment and the TEA Party. Romney’s strategy of being whatever the right-wing wants at any given time isn’t working because he’s coming across as the very antithesis of what the right-wing is rejecting. It’s no mistake that the GOP Presidential front-runners at any given time got there more for being candid and less button up same old’ white guy that they’ve been foisting on the general election for the past umpteen decades. It’s the reason why, if Romney gets the nomination he will lose to Obama. Hell, most of the Democrat establishment bucked a Clinton for Obama in 2008, the waves of popular political change are strong. Most of the voting electorate have clearly established that they are done voting for the same old same old. Romney’s even keel approach is fine, if he enjoys the marginal poll numbers he’s been receiving, but he’s costing himself an election in doing so.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that Kathleen Parker would defend Mitt Romney’s flippity floppity-ness with her recent article. Flip floppers must circle the wagons and protect one another, don’t you know. Ms. Parker takes a presumptive presidential candidates fatal flaw and attempts to humanize him. What’s becoming a trademark theme with Ms. Parker’s columns is an inability to multitask an article and have a nuanced prose. In other words, she can’t help but funnel down Romeny’s rhetorical inconsistency to a wedge issue change of heart, because she herself cannot write in anything but the singular.
My issue with this article is two fold. First issue, The attempt to humanize a politician is laughable. To then attempt to humanize Mitt Romney is Sisyphean in it’s endeavor. To then also approach it with same simplistic mindset that dictates that the federal government is a business, and therefore must be run by a businessman is the other issue. So of course Romney can be inconsistent morally and ethically. Aren’t we all? Issue one first.
People change, I get that. A lot of world views are shaped by just simply living ones life. To tie in to the whole abortion issue, my take on it was informed by a loved one being raped when I was a teenager. It had a profound impact on me and shaped my views on not only abortion, but women’s (and a larger degree everyone’s) rights to their bodies. I could even argue that if a right-winger ever made a nuanced enough argument about abortion, I could probably at least engage with it, and maybe change my mind, if it made sense. Typically their only argument is:
“It’s Wrong!”
But Why? Do you have a personal problem against it?
“No. ‘cuz God!”
The End
But a politician is not of this world. They are an amalgamation of everything that’s unholy and unkind to every man, woman and child. They will do anything to grab the brass ring of public office, and that mentality does not alter or change no matter the office. They will dance for the highest bidder, and they will do so unashamedly and with gusto.
As an aside, it’s also nice to see a bit of their own medicine washing up on the GOP in terms of this flip flop bullshit. How often during the 04 Presidential run did Kerry have to deal with that nonsense.? Any person with the dearth of publicity is going to be awash in inconsistencies. The same argument being supplied for Romney’s inconsistency.
The idea that a politicians ethics and morality are purely personal is purely bullshit. When Romney wanted to get elected in Massachusetts, he had to out Kennedy a Kennedy. That’s not something that’s done easily, especially on their home field. But Romney did it. Now that he wants to win a GOP nomination he’s going to out republican, out TEA Party, out crazy every single person up on the dais. Right now, all he has to do is sit back and let the also rans fly too close to the sun, which explains the even keel of his poll numbers. To keep with the mythological bent, his inconsistency is the Achilles heel keeping him from getting on top and staying there.
Ms. Parker's argument is that Romney is a man who’s growing and changing as he learns. Not that he’s changing stripes and colors as is politically advantageous to him at any one time, or that his inconsistency as a political figure is on full display for scrutiny. The thing is, sure he can change his mind. But the argument against Romney isn’t just random bouts of flip flop, it’s the full blown outbreak of it that springs up at every turn. For example one day he’s standing outside promoting states rights and that they should handle their own issues, then the very next day saying oh no perhaps some federal oversight is needed here and there. To say that corporations are people one day, and then try and relate to Occupy Wall Street when he’s the kind of person they’re protesting, is just a taste of one of the flavors you can enjoy from the Romney ice creamery and malt Shoppe.
Column size, status quo and protecting like minded inconsistency aficionados, not to mention her inability to craft a nuanced article about a politicians tack-less politicianship is what propels Ms. Parker to provide a singular example of how Romney flipped flopped on abortion. When he was governor he was under intense scrutiny to end a law protecting embryos from that awful “science” stem cell research. Since all politics are local, it was mostly about Harvard striking out as the beacon of all stem cell research (and all that pharmaceutical/federal research cheddar that would flood the state). But did Romney stick to his deeply (supposedly secret) conservative roots and uphold the law? No, but he did have a lunch with a professor of biomedical ethics and was told the birds and the bees. The conversion of a man who was pro-choice, of which Ms. Parkers provides no real proof, to an entrenched pro-life candidate is now proof that Romney isn’t inconsistent at all! Because, here’s the “Aha!” moment, it was a flip flop of the "highest order".
There you go again, Ms. Parker and every evangelically patronizing right-winger. Because, in the end, God and Religion is ALWAYS on the right side of things, this was merely a Saul/Paul revelation to the almighty and not Romney/Romney doing what was politically expedient as a Massachusetts governor who maintained MA pro-choice stance, instead of doing the “right thing” and not doing the will of his states people. But then years later say he’s always been pro-life all along. This isn’t textbook inconsistency? No ma’am this is a politician, through and through.
The lizard brain that dictates the right-wing and most of Ms. Parker’s articles is that there’s a one to one corollary between the general public and public figures. At the end of the day, yes we’re all the same. But public figures have the power to do things that mere mortals cannot, and will not, ever do. They have the power to shape the narrative, change the conversation, and make the world in their own image, if they so choose. If we’re going to lampoon one public figure for perceived inconsistency then every public figure is going to be allowed the same scrutiny in the future. Just because you have an excuse for why it shouldn’t be doesn’t make it any less applicable now. Higher order or no.
Romney is a political operative through and through. Once the GOP circus clowns go away, one by one, the general public will realize this too. Isn’t there a phrase in the bible about a person’s faith being found to be lukewarm would be spat from the mouth God? Inconsistency held no water in ancient times and it holds none now.
My issue with this article is two fold. First issue, The attempt to humanize a politician is laughable. To then attempt to humanize Mitt Romney is Sisyphean in it’s endeavor. To then also approach it with same simplistic mindset that dictates that the federal government is a business, and therefore must be run by a businessman is the other issue. So of course Romney can be inconsistent morally and ethically. Aren’t we all? Issue one first.
People change, I get that. A lot of world views are shaped by just simply living ones life. To tie in to the whole abortion issue, my take on it was informed by a loved one being raped when I was a teenager. It had a profound impact on me and shaped my views on not only abortion, but women’s (and a larger degree everyone’s) rights to their bodies. I could even argue that if a right-winger ever made a nuanced enough argument about abortion, I could probably at least engage with it, and maybe change my mind, if it made sense. Typically their only argument is:
“It’s Wrong!”
But Why? Do you have a personal problem against it?
“No. ‘cuz God!”
The End
But a politician is not of this world. They are an amalgamation of everything that’s unholy and unkind to every man, woman and child. They will do anything to grab the brass ring of public office, and that mentality does not alter or change no matter the office. They will dance for the highest bidder, and they will do so unashamedly and with gusto.
As an aside, it’s also nice to see a bit of their own medicine washing up on the GOP in terms of this flip flop bullshit. How often during the 04 Presidential run did Kerry have to deal with that nonsense.? Any person with the dearth of publicity is going to be awash in inconsistencies. The same argument being supplied for Romney’s inconsistency.
The idea that a politicians ethics and morality are purely personal is purely bullshit. When Romney wanted to get elected in Massachusetts, he had to out Kennedy a Kennedy. That’s not something that’s done easily, especially on their home field. But Romney did it. Now that he wants to win a GOP nomination he’s going to out republican, out TEA Party, out crazy every single person up on the dais. Right now, all he has to do is sit back and let the also rans fly too close to the sun, which explains the even keel of his poll numbers. To keep with the mythological bent, his inconsistency is the Achilles heel keeping him from getting on top and staying there.
Ms. Parker's argument is that Romney is a man who’s growing and changing as he learns. Not that he’s changing stripes and colors as is politically advantageous to him at any one time, or that his inconsistency as a political figure is on full display for scrutiny. The thing is, sure he can change his mind. But the argument against Romney isn’t just random bouts of flip flop, it’s the full blown outbreak of it that springs up at every turn. For example one day he’s standing outside promoting states rights and that they should handle their own issues, then the very next day saying oh no perhaps some federal oversight is needed here and there. To say that corporations are people one day, and then try and relate to Occupy Wall Street when he’s the kind of person they’re protesting, is just a taste of one of the flavors you can enjoy from the Romney ice creamery and malt Shoppe.
Column size, status quo and protecting like minded inconsistency aficionados, not to mention her inability to craft a nuanced article about a politicians tack-less politicianship is what propels Ms. Parker to provide a singular example of how Romney flipped flopped on abortion. When he was governor he was under intense scrutiny to end a law protecting embryos from that awful “science” stem cell research. Since all politics are local, it was mostly about Harvard striking out as the beacon of all stem cell research (and all that pharmaceutical/federal research cheddar that would flood the state). But did Romney stick to his deeply (supposedly secret) conservative roots and uphold the law? No, but he did have a lunch with a professor of biomedical ethics and was told the birds and the bees. The conversion of a man who was pro-choice, of which Ms. Parkers provides no real proof, to an entrenched pro-life candidate is now proof that Romney isn’t inconsistent at all! Because, here’s the “Aha!” moment, it was a flip flop of the "highest order".
There you go again, Ms. Parker and every evangelically patronizing right-winger. Because, in the end, God and Religion is ALWAYS on the right side of things, this was merely a Saul/Paul revelation to the almighty and not Romney/Romney doing what was politically expedient as a Massachusetts governor who maintained MA pro-choice stance, instead of doing the “right thing” and not doing the will of his states people. But then years later say he’s always been pro-life all along. This isn’t textbook inconsistency? No ma’am this is a politician, through and through.
The lizard brain that dictates the right-wing and most of Ms. Parker’s articles is that there’s a one to one corollary between the general public and public figures. At the end of the day, yes we’re all the same. But public figures have the power to do things that mere mortals cannot, and will not, ever do. They have the power to shape the narrative, change the conversation, and make the world in their own image, if they so choose. If we’re going to lampoon one public figure for perceived inconsistency then every public figure is going to be allowed the same scrutiny in the future. Just because you have an excuse for why it shouldn’t be doesn’t make it any less applicable now. Higher order or no.
Romney is a political operative through and through. Once the GOP circus clowns go away, one by one, the general public will realize this too. Isn’t there a phrase in the bible about a person’s faith being found to be lukewarm would be spat from the mouth God? Inconsistency held no water in ancient times and it holds none now.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
If you want to talk class warfare I think you can look no further than the recent turns in the media with the Penn State scandal laden Sandusky making the news show rounds, and 60 Minutes interviews Bernie Madoff’s family. This is how rich white people take care of their problems. They are allowed a “benefit of the doubt”, they are allowed a podium with which to proclaim nonsense. The word “alleged” is heavily used as well, in the case of Sandusky. Really? Someone witnessed the man raping a boy, allegedly, but he proclaims in the media that he’s not a pedophile. Sure he showered with children, hugged them, and touched their legs, but it wasn’t sexual. Okay, I guess I you aren’t a pedophile, you’re just a creepy old man who’s inappropriate at the very least with children, allegedly.
Where is this societal empathy for the moral gray areas of pedophilia? For example the 17 year old boy dating the 16 year old girl. He turns 18 and suddenly consenting sex partners becomes molestation and rape, if the parents choose to press charges. He’s carted off to jail, and his entire life is ruined. He is never afforded the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to registering as a sex offender. The consenting partner isn’t taken in to consideration, since she’s a victim, her word is shaky at best. Where’s the allegedly there? Where’s the benefit of the doubt for some of these sticky, pardon the pun, situations? We are quick, and justifiably so, at demonizing all inappropriate behaviors with children. So much so that I, as a grown man, am fearful of engaging with children on any level. Even a smile, wave or laughing at their antics in a public space could be mistaken for bad intentions, especially in this day and age of hyper stranger danger.
Yet with the staggering amount of evidence showing Sandusky to be the , allegedly, utmost sick bastard, he’s allowed to defend himself. If his allegations are so bad that it has the shaken the foundation of a popular public university, and the ripple effect to everything Sandusky touches, how can the general public tolerate the media’s attitude at giving this man any sort of airtime to say anything!
The 60 Minutes waste of time, entitled “Bernie Madoff’s Family Speaks Out” attempted to put a clown suit on the public at large. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that I don’t give a shit about what “devastation”, “heartache” and other first world bullshit this family suffered from Bernie Maddoff’s shenanigans. The fact that it drove his wife to attempt suicide and fail doesn’t do anything for me, and I am simply astonished she didn’t try harder or succeed, as again, no one should really give a shit. Your husband ruined the lives of countless people, and he is now being served due justice, and 60 Minutes dares to shove this in our face and say “Look, this rich person has feelings too!”.
This, if anything, proves as a justifiable fact that the corporate media is no longer out to serve the public or the greater good. Humanizing criminals and failing to do anything journalistic in the face of some of the most unbelievable criminality in our economic system, let alone our public universities that serve our youth, is astounding! How the nightly news can explain in great detail what Emma Stone had for lunch today, yet never explain how banks can foreclose on houses they don’t even own, or have no clue if they even own it, should be added to the grievances the public should have against what’s being put in front of it.
To tie this in to the bread and butter of this blog: punditry bashing: enough with the wedge issue fake outs. Cal Thomas’ recent article surmises that the Penn State debacle is wholly our fault because we tolerate homosexuals and general moral decay. He even says:
“The message at Penn Sate was that we live in a culture that forbids almost nothing. Jerry Sandusky apparently believed that and crossed one of the few reaming lines of morality in our culture. But even that line might soon be erased if the pressure groups and their campaign contributions grow large enough.”
Guess what Mr. Thomas, that's not even on the table and, alleged pedophilia is still, as of today and the foreseeable future, seen as something horrible…to everyone! It’s akin to the lizard brain argument that if we allow same sex marriage, suddenly everyone’s going to think it’s okay to marry an animal. While I could give them credit for maybe being prophetic of future moral decay, I hardy doubt that overnight we as a society will suddenly find animal sodomy appropriate behavior.
Have people so easily forgotten the young lives shattered by Sandusky and his alleged actions? Mr. Thomas' article is just a version of the same monied class circling their wagons around one of their own.
The idea that all our social mores have been under attack since the hippies in the 60’s as Mr. Thomas posits, is utter nonsense. Of course, the argument could be made that our society is becoming increasingly hedonistic. But this is also born from the fact that America is a Puritanical society. Not center right, not Christian, not born of anything other than we our fundamentally shamed of sexuality of any sort, yet revel in barbarism and violence against ourselves and others. It’s woven in to the subconscious of America, regardless of where we stand on anything.
I take great pride in the fact that for the most part we no longer view homosexuality as a mental illness. I am ashamed that lizard brain people, like Mr. Thomas, have a forum in which to portend that they are speaking for a majority, when they are not. They are the last vessels of a fever dream, born in the Cold War machinations of ignorance and bore fruit in every single entity labeled the enemy since. They are theological creatures that need to be persecuted by everything. They will always have an enemy in the popular culture.
It’s maddening the smug attitude of these people, who since they perceive themselves as submitting to a ineffable higher power, are never in the wrong. To even try to get them to be reasonable is out of the question. However, if you look at history you can see how much on the wrong side of it they have been. The fact that we have to wait them out is absurd.
As with all things, some ideas that worked in the past, should stay in the past. Progress and failure are more character building than maintaining a status quo. If the right wing and evangelicals have a problem with homosexuality and science now, what about in the future when we’re replacing body parts with electronics? What about artificial intelligence, bipedal robots? They’ve already tried to put the kibosh on cloning and stem cell research, which would reap untold benefits. To marginalize human progress for the sake of maintaining lizard brain theology is only going to make progress harder, but it will happen, no matter what.
A lot of this is fanciful science fiction. Luckily a lot of the regressive punditry is old white men that will soon die off and stop heeding progress. Just as there were probably some old ass apes that refused to stand up and walk around on two legs and fashion weapons for killing larger game, or building fires and finding resourceful shelter. We as a society will always leave the regressive behind and move forward, we just have to shake the branches.
That doesn’t mean we will become mindless rampaging lunatics who have lost all sense of humanity.
Where is this societal empathy for the moral gray areas of pedophilia? For example the 17 year old boy dating the 16 year old girl. He turns 18 and suddenly consenting sex partners becomes molestation and rape, if the parents choose to press charges. He’s carted off to jail, and his entire life is ruined. He is never afforded the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to registering as a sex offender. The consenting partner isn’t taken in to consideration, since she’s a victim, her word is shaky at best. Where’s the allegedly there? Where’s the benefit of the doubt for some of these sticky, pardon the pun, situations? We are quick, and justifiably so, at demonizing all inappropriate behaviors with children. So much so that I, as a grown man, am fearful of engaging with children on any level. Even a smile, wave or laughing at their antics in a public space could be mistaken for bad intentions, especially in this day and age of hyper stranger danger.
Yet with the staggering amount of evidence showing Sandusky to be the , allegedly, utmost sick bastard, he’s allowed to defend himself. If his allegations are so bad that it has the shaken the foundation of a popular public university, and the ripple effect to everything Sandusky touches, how can the general public tolerate the media’s attitude at giving this man any sort of airtime to say anything!
The 60 Minutes waste of time, entitled “Bernie Madoff’s Family Speaks Out” attempted to put a clown suit on the public at large. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that I don’t give a shit about what “devastation”, “heartache” and other first world bullshit this family suffered from Bernie Maddoff’s shenanigans. The fact that it drove his wife to attempt suicide and fail doesn’t do anything for me, and I am simply astonished she didn’t try harder or succeed, as again, no one should really give a shit. Your husband ruined the lives of countless people, and he is now being served due justice, and 60 Minutes dares to shove this in our face and say “Look, this rich person has feelings too!”.
This, if anything, proves as a justifiable fact that the corporate media is no longer out to serve the public or the greater good. Humanizing criminals and failing to do anything journalistic in the face of some of the most unbelievable criminality in our economic system, let alone our public universities that serve our youth, is astounding! How the nightly news can explain in great detail what Emma Stone had for lunch today, yet never explain how banks can foreclose on houses they don’t even own, or have no clue if they even own it, should be added to the grievances the public should have against what’s being put in front of it.
To tie this in to the bread and butter of this blog: punditry bashing: enough with the wedge issue fake outs. Cal Thomas’ recent article surmises that the Penn State debacle is wholly our fault because we tolerate homosexuals and general moral decay. He even says:
“The message at Penn Sate was that we live in a culture that forbids almost nothing. Jerry Sandusky apparently believed that and crossed one of the few reaming lines of morality in our culture. But even that line might soon be erased if the pressure groups and their campaign contributions grow large enough.”
Guess what Mr. Thomas, that's not even on the table and, alleged pedophilia is still, as of today and the foreseeable future, seen as something horrible…to everyone! It’s akin to the lizard brain argument that if we allow same sex marriage, suddenly everyone’s going to think it’s okay to marry an animal. While I could give them credit for maybe being prophetic of future moral decay, I hardy doubt that overnight we as a society will suddenly find animal sodomy appropriate behavior.
Have people so easily forgotten the young lives shattered by Sandusky and his alleged actions? Mr. Thomas' article is just a version of the same monied class circling their wagons around one of their own.
The idea that all our social mores have been under attack since the hippies in the 60’s as Mr. Thomas posits, is utter nonsense. Of course, the argument could be made that our society is becoming increasingly hedonistic. But this is also born from the fact that America is a Puritanical society. Not center right, not Christian, not born of anything other than we our fundamentally shamed of sexuality of any sort, yet revel in barbarism and violence against ourselves and others. It’s woven in to the subconscious of America, regardless of where we stand on anything.
I take great pride in the fact that for the most part we no longer view homosexuality as a mental illness. I am ashamed that lizard brain people, like Mr. Thomas, have a forum in which to portend that they are speaking for a majority, when they are not. They are the last vessels of a fever dream, born in the Cold War machinations of ignorance and bore fruit in every single entity labeled the enemy since. They are theological creatures that need to be persecuted by everything. They will always have an enemy in the popular culture.
It’s maddening the smug attitude of these people, who since they perceive themselves as submitting to a ineffable higher power, are never in the wrong. To even try to get them to be reasonable is out of the question. However, if you look at history you can see how much on the wrong side of it they have been. The fact that we have to wait them out is absurd.
As with all things, some ideas that worked in the past, should stay in the past. Progress and failure are more character building than maintaining a status quo. If the right wing and evangelicals have a problem with homosexuality and science now, what about in the future when we’re replacing body parts with electronics? What about artificial intelligence, bipedal robots? They’ve already tried to put the kibosh on cloning and stem cell research, which would reap untold benefits. To marginalize human progress for the sake of maintaining lizard brain theology is only going to make progress harder, but it will happen, no matter what.
A lot of this is fanciful science fiction. Luckily a lot of the regressive punditry is old white men that will soon die off and stop heeding progress. Just as there were probably some old ass apes that refused to stand up and walk around on two legs and fashion weapons for killing larger game, or building fires and finding resourceful shelter. We as a society will always leave the regressive behind and move forward, we just have to shake the branches.
That doesn’t mean we will become mindless rampaging lunatics who have lost all sense of humanity.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
The Opposite of Adults
I don’t afford myself too many anecdotes on this platform, so you’ll excuse this small rant.
There’s nothing I hate more than adults with arrested development. I can’t quite pinpoint an exact time one should stop dealing with their adult problems in a childish manner, but I’m fairly certain you should be about done with it when you’re edging 30.
It’s pathetic at any age, but I find when my contemporaries think that because they have the career, and life pretty much buttoned up, that they’re adults; and therefore cannot be challenged on the manner in which they choose to treat the surrounding people in their life. Not only do they not learn by the repetitious nature or their actions, they are content to do it again and again. Dare you say anything about it, and you find yourself battling a wild animal backed in to a corner, they have lost all sense of humanity in thought or action. There’s a lot of “how dare you”’s and “You have no say”…blah blah blah.
While they may have a point on a certain level, namely that hypocrisy abounded everywhere really affords no one the wiser higher ground in approaching the way one deals with life, to disengage because you’re being confronted with your own moral and ethical degradation is defeating. Hence, you will continue the vicious cycle, warm and cozy in your own delusion.
To my main point. Just because you have a lot of adult trappings, it doesn’t make you an adult. If you refuse to deal with your problems as an adult, you are a child, and deserve the loneliness you are sure to obtain. I think it’s less that these people are saddened with the way they’re treating people and more that they are simply running out of time, and cannot in reality afford to act this way.
The arrested development is born out of selfishness and arrogance. The belief that actions don’t have the same consequences and that “the right time” will come and somehow that window will be more a bubble to shield them from the very real feelings they are hurting. They fail to see that actions and consequences are a fine stew, that left unattended will surely make a thicker, richer meal. That every moment left to simmer, it will take on a more complex flavor profile. So that when it is eaten, the fullness of the situation at hand with be full broth.
There’s only so much room at the back burner for things to simmer, to continue my stew analogy. To deal with things as an adult, is to possess a fortitude, that one lacks as a child. To see various lies as varying degrees of color is a childish thought. To hide things away from view is that of a child. The essence of not being caught is the core of arrested development. Children find ways of buying themselves time, thinking there to always be a perfect time to shed light on a moral and ethical decay.
Problem is, there is never a good time to shed light on the failure of self. There’s never going to be a soft focused light with which to lay your burden. If anything it’s a constant buzzing fluorescent tube that casts even harsher shadows on the failure, giving it a ghastly hue and ugly complexion. The longer you wait, the uglier it becomes.
Perhaps it’s less arrested development and more piety that reigns supreme for these “adults”. We often allow ourselves some childlike wonderment and pleasure when it comes to the finer things in life. It all can’t be harsh tones and hushed demeanor. There’s a balance to be sure. But I think when it comes to dealing with fellow adults, some respect must be paid, on the ground level at least.
Acting out is a childish trait. To find some sort of blame in which to couch your odious behavior, likewise. Failing to realize the ebb and flow of life, this childish notion to lash out at someone for a perceived slight. To act out, not to get attention, but to magnify a perceived lack of emotional fidelity. To not understand another person’s trepidation, and to confuse it with ignorance. Because life is mundane, you MUST feel something. Better to instigate than to be the dullard.
To be an adult is to understand these things, and try to maintain your humanity in the face of the utter uselessness of it all. If you fail to respect those you say you love, you’re cheating everyone involved. When the voice of reason is twisted and confused for authoritarian, you have lost your way and have become the child, who hear’s nothing but chiding, and refuses the see the growth. You fail to understand that pain and growth often go hand in hand, and sometimes at great loss.
There is no perfect way to treat a moral and ethical decay of character. If you embody these things for any length of time, you are bound to become them, and you WILL continue to repeat a very nasty cycle. The point of growing up, and becoming an adult is to recognize these failings are try to space them out if at all possible, and at best never repeat them. You learn from them…and grow.
But don’t let your delusion fool you. Because you look old in body, does not mean the mind is equally matched, the mind can and does degrade in time and with misuse.
On the other hand, is it less arrested development, and more one being emotionally tone deaf? Dare I say one could be soulless in their undertaking of a life? If inside of their heart resides nothing but plateaus and recessive valley’s, is this because they are immature, or was this particular character never tilled. They are similar to a robot. A puppet of unknown machination? Unblinking in the “Who I am” and not “Who am I”, therefore they can act as they please, because they’re not really hurting anyone, if they chose not to confront it.
I am waxing too poetically hard on the simple point that these kind of people are selfish cunts. If they hurt us, we must simply pay them no mind. They are perfectly content with burning their own bridges and blaming the matchmaker instead. They are paper tigers who mask their immaturity in a career, college degrees, fanciful daydreams, bills, loans and relationships. They have to posses these things, if they do not, they may fail to exist to anyone else. That is why we must pay them no heed, and let them collect their cats. If they will not even meet you half way, they are not worth saving to begin with. If you try to reach out to them and fail, they will only blame you for not trying hard enough. Let them be.
Let them be.
There’s nothing I hate more than adults with arrested development. I can’t quite pinpoint an exact time one should stop dealing with their adult problems in a childish manner, but I’m fairly certain you should be about done with it when you’re edging 30.
It’s pathetic at any age, but I find when my contemporaries think that because they have the career, and life pretty much buttoned up, that they’re adults; and therefore cannot be challenged on the manner in which they choose to treat the surrounding people in their life. Not only do they not learn by the repetitious nature or their actions, they are content to do it again and again. Dare you say anything about it, and you find yourself battling a wild animal backed in to a corner, they have lost all sense of humanity in thought or action. There’s a lot of “how dare you”’s and “You have no say”…blah blah blah.
While they may have a point on a certain level, namely that hypocrisy abounded everywhere really affords no one the wiser higher ground in approaching the way one deals with life, to disengage because you’re being confronted with your own moral and ethical degradation is defeating. Hence, you will continue the vicious cycle, warm and cozy in your own delusion.
To my main point. Just because you have a lot of adult trappings, it doesn’t make you an adult. If you refuse to deal with your problems as an adult, you are a child, and deserve the loneliness you are sure to obtain. I think it’s less that these people are saddened with the way they’re treating people and more that they are simply running out of time, and cannot in reality afford to act this way.
The arrested development is born out of selfishness and arrogance. The belief that actions don’t have the same consequences and that “the right time” will come and somehow that window will be more a bubble to shield them from the very real feelings they are hurting. They fail to see that actions and consequences are a fine stew, that left unattended will surely make a thicker, richer meal. That every moment left to simmer, it will take on a more complex flavor profile. So that when it is eaten, the fullness of the situation at hand with be full broth.
There’s only so much room at the back burner for things to simmer, to continue my stew analogy. To deal with things as an adult, is to possess a fortitude, that one lacks as a child. To see various lies as varying degrees of color is a childish thought. To hide things away from view is that of a child. The essence of not being caught is the core of arrested development. Children find ways of buying themselves time, thinking there to always be a perfect time to shed light on a moral and ethical decay.
Problem is, there is never a good time to shed light on the failure of self. There’s never going to be a soft focused light with which to lay your burden. If anything it’s a constant buzzing fluorescent tube that casts even harsher shadows on the failure, giving it a ghastly hue and ugly complexion. The longer you wait, the uglier it becomes.
Perhaps it’s less arrested development and more piety that reigns supreme for these “adults”. We often allow ourselves some childlike wonderment and pleasure when it comes to the finer things in life. It all can’t be harsh tones and hushed demeanor. There’s a balance to be sure. But I think when it comes to dealing with fellow adults, some respect must be paid, on the ground level at least.
Acting out is a childish trait. To find some sort of blame in which to couch your odious behavior, likewise. Failing to realize the ebb and flow of life, this childish notion to lash out at someone for a perceived slight. To act out, not to get attention, but to magnify a perceived lack of emotional fidelity. To not understand another person’s trepidation, and to confuse it with ignorance. Because life is mundane, you MUST feel something. Better to instigate than to be the dullard.
To be an adult is to understand these things, and try to maintain your humanity in the face of the utter uselessness of it all. If you fail to respect those you say you love, you’re cheating everyone involved. When the voice of reason is twisted and confused for authoritarian, you have lost your way and have become the child, who hear’s nothing but chiding, and refuses the see the growth. You fail to understand that pain and growth often go hand in hand, and sometimes at great loss.
There is no perfect way to treat a moral and ethical decay of character. If you embody these things for any length of time, you are bound to become them, and you WILL continue to repeat a very nasty cycle. The point of growing up, and becoming an adult is to recognize these failings are try to space them out if at all possible, and at best never repeat them. You learn from them…and grow.
But don’t let your delusion fool you. Because you look old in body, does not mean the mind is equally matched, the mind can and does degrade in time and with misuse.
On the other hand, is it less arrested development, and more one being emotionally tone deaf? Dare I say one could be soulless in their undertaking of a life? If inside of their heart resides nothing but plateaus and recessive valley’s, is this because they are immature, or was this particular character never tilled. They are similar to a robot. A puppet of unknown machination? Unblinking in the “Who I am” and not “Who am I”, therefore they can act as they please, because they’re not really hurting anyone, if they chose not to confront it.
I am waxing too poetically hard on the simple point that these kind of people are selfish cunts. If they hurt us, we must simply pay them no mind. They are perfectly content with burning their own bridges and blaming the matchmaker instead. They are paper tigers who mask their immaturity in a career, college degrees, fanciful daydreams, bills, loans and relationships. They have to posses these things, if they do not, they may fail to exist to anyone else. That is why we must pay them no heed, and let them collect their cats. If they will not even meet you half way, they are not worth saving to begin with. If you try to reach out to them and fail, they will only blame you for not trying hard enough. Let them be.
Let them be.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
I’ve been struggling to come up with a way to write about religion as objectively as possible. Since I don’t really harp on the other parts of the opinion page, I though I’d tackle the letters to the editor today.
This is where the real good meat is at, but you can’t really spend a lot of time raging against the staid, tired, bullshit that sort of is the bulk of the body opinion page. You’ll read your typical right wing blowhard spout nonsense in one editorial. You’ll wait a few days, then some doofus will write in and say the same thing, but he’s from around these parts, he gets published. Typically these are coupled with another viewpoint saying the exact opposite, but using sources, which the right-winger writer never ever does. So it’s more a microcosm of the right wing left wing bologna thrown in with some “someone needs to check themselves” and a little “we need more bike lanes” or something.
Even rarer is the community voice who somehow gets a diatribe published bi-weekly where the nonsense hose gets turned on full blast then dropped in the yard, but that’s another article for another day.
This particular letter to the editor covers the well worn road of what’s causing the crumblization of our morals and society as a whole. Mr. Elmore, starts his letter in the fashion that you know it will surely be followed with an amazing amount of hyperbole and….well…horeseshit:
“Is the United States under attack?
You bet!”
I imagine the space between the sentences is to give you that “Well, gee, I don’t know if…” Then the “You bet!” is someone all up in your face with their best panic inducing tone. Mr. Elmore continues:
“We are under attack on five major fronts and these attacks are being led from within.”
Aww man! Not from within! It’s amazing how much mileage people try to get out of the post 9/11 world. You would think by now that well would be tapped, at least those with enough common sense to rub a couple of brain cells together. Nah. Mr. Elmore isn’t alone in this ages old fear that “one of them” is “one of us” and they’re winning with this ultimate evil plot.
This letter is the very definition of boilerplate right-wing, fear mongering, church loving, ignorance that assails our communities papers. Since most people don’t really care enough to write anything, let alone know what their towns newspaper address is, it’s any wonder other people may get the misguided idea that we’re a center-right nation.
These letters always have this definitive answer to what ails the world. They’re typically enumerated, mixed with bible verses, dictionary definitions. It’s the whole idea that they’re being divinely inspired to met out justice via a letter to the editor.
The first major front, and to Mr. Elmore’s mind the most devastating, is the deterioration of our churches. He goes on to paste the definition of complacency after his first sentence, and rightly blames his brothers and sisters of the church. “We as a nation have chosen to believe in man and government instead of our church and God.” Whoa, wait a minute there Mr. Elmore, I thought we had grown complacent? I guess there’s no better place to put the whole “Obama/Christ” analogy to good use here. Now, I haven’t been to church in a while, but I have read about schools doing the whole worshipping Obama, I even wrote an article about it last year. But churches, Mr. Elmore? I don’t really think that’s possible, and I certainly hope that you aren’t being racist and leading me to believe that black churches just have that giant “HOPE” poster hung up over the pulpit somewhere? Mr. Elmore continues:
“We allow churches to proclaim fake doctrine and distort the Word because we aren’t involved: Why? Because many of us no longer believe the Word.” Man, it’s really hard to keep capitalizing “Word”, it comes out of no where. It’s hard to tell if Mr. Elmore is more literal when it comes to the Word, or does he mean the fundamental values supposedly in the Word? He mentions that we have allowed our churches to become soiled, and by that soiling have allowed more disaster in to the church.
It’s like I was saying a few weeks ago about the lack of specificity. I know it’s a letter to the editor so word count is premium, but he could’ve omitted those bible verses and let some real facts in, or some other hyperbole in there. But oh how he turns over the hyperbole gravy boat on his next points.
“The decline in our moral values has opened the door for homosexuality and the gay rights movement. This group of people not only perverts themselves but our nation along with them.” Mr. Elmore fails to make the connection that this kind of attitude is polarizing. Maybe this is why the church is in decline. Outside of just the “homosexuals”, what about normal people that don’t feel the need to justify judging others? This may make some churchgoers uncomfortable, and it’s definitely out of bounds with much of what Jesus taught in the New Testament. More importantly it’s a waste of church resources to go around chasing straw men and windmills, when the could be performing outreach to those very same “homosexuals”, instead of constantly demonizing them from a bully pulpit.
“Our lack of understanding has led us to seek other gods including Islam,” Mr. Elmore, Islam isn’t a god. It’s another religious viewpoint. It’s kind of like switching to Lutheran, Methodist or Catholicism beliefs. Yet another clue in the decay of the modern church. He continues, “…a religion based on a false prophet demanding the death of all that don’t believe in Mohammed.” The fact that people like Mr. Elmore’s main leaning is making people read the bible to understand where he’s coming from, I’m shocked that these people like him, systematically fail to bone up on other religions. You don’t have to like it, or take it to heart, but I think you can at least glean a perspective and other points of view. Has Mr. Elmore read the Old Testament of the Bible? There’s some heavy shit in there, and a lot of that has to do with smiting and destroying civilizations for “non-belief” in their appointed god.
Sensing he’s running out of room, Mr. Elmore shapes up an old talking point. “We should close our borders to illegal’s and quit rewarding them when they have broken our laws,” yet he goes on “I am happy to welcome legal immigration and work visas.” How very Christian of you Mr. Elmore. We can help Mexico, which has a staggering problem, which I can’t tell is it illegal drugs, money or child slavery? By making immigration from Mexico legal we can wrap that up how Mr. Elmore?
Of course I’m being a bit obtuse, but I fail to see any specificity in fixing problems. This is the problem with a society that fails to engage on a personal level. The great thing about Fox News, their punditry is so out of touch, and it spreads to like minded lizard brained people who fail to engage on a personal level. It’s all regional. Mr. Elmore most likely lives in the whitest town in America, and has seen maybe 6 brown people in his entire life.
This is where the real good meat is at, but you can’t really spend a lot of time raging against the staid, tired, bullshit that sort of is the bulk of the body opinion page. You’ll read your typical right wing blowhard spout nonsense in one editorial. You’ll wait a few days, then some doofus will write in and say the same thing, but he’s from around these parts, he gets published. Typically these are coupled with another viewpoint saying the exact opposite, but using sources, which the right-winger writer never ever does. So it’s more a microcosm of the right wing left wing bologna thrown in with some “someone needs to check themselves” and a little “we need more bike lanes” or something.
Even rarer is the community voice who somehow gets a diatribe published bi-weekly where the nonsense hose gets turned on full blast then dropped in the yard, but that’s another article for another day.
This particular letter to the editor covers the well worn road of what’s causing the crumblization of our morals and society as a whole. Mr. Elmore, starts his letter in the fashion that you know it will surely be followed with an amazing amount of hyperbole and….well…horeseshit:
“Is the United States under attack?
You bet!”
I imagine the space between the sentences is to give you that “Well, gee, I don’t know if…” Then the “You bet!” is someone all up in your face with their best panic inducing tone. Mr. Elmore continues:
“We are under attack on five major fronts and these attacks are being led from within.”
Aww man! Not from within! It’s amazing how much mileage people try to get out of the post 9/11 world. You would think by now that well would be tapped, at least those with enough common sense to rub a couple of brain cells together. Nah. Mr. Elmore isn’t alone in this ages old fear that “one of them” is “one of us” and they’re winning with this ultimate evil plot.
This letter is the very definition of boilerplate right-wing, fear mongering, church loving, ignorance that assails our communities papers. Since most people don’t really care enough to write anything, let alone know what their towns newspaper address is, it’s any wonder other people may get the misguided idea that we’re a center-right nation.
These letters always have this definitive answer to what ails the world. They’re typically enumerated, mixed with bible verses, dictionary definitions. It’s the whole idea that they’re being divinely inspired to met out justice via a letter to the editor.
The first major front, and to Mr. Elmore’s mind the most devastating, is the deterioration of our churches. He goes on to paste the definition of complacency after his first sentence, and rightly blames his brothers and sisters of the church. “We as a nation have chosen to believe in man and government instead of our church and God.” Whoa, wait a minute there Mr. Elmore, I thought we had grown complacent? I guess there’s no better place to put the whole “Obama/Christ” analogy to good use here. Now, I haven’t been to church in a while, but I have read about schools doing the whole worshipping Obama, I even wrote an article about it last year. But churches, Mr. Elmore? I don’t really think that’s possible, and I certainly hope that you aren’t being racist and leading me to believe that black churches just have that giant “HOPE” poster hung up over the pulpit somewhere? Mr. Elmore continues:
“We allow churches to proclaim fake doctrine and distort the Word because we aren’t involved: Why? Because many of us no longer believe the Word.” Man, it’s really hard to keep capitalizing “Word”, it comes out of no where. It’s hard to tell if Mr. Elmore is more literal when it comes to the Word, or does he mean the fundamental values supposedly in the Word? He mentions that we have allowed our churches to become soiled, and by that soiling have allowed more disaster in to the church.
It’s like I was saying a few weeks ago about the lack of specificity. I know it’s a letter to the editor so word count is premium, but he could’ve omitted those bible verses and let some real facts in, or some other hyperbole in there. But oh how he turns over the hyperbole gravy boat on his next points.
“The decline in our moral values has opened the door for homosexuality and the gay rights movement. This group of people not only perverts themselves but our nation along with them.” Mr. Elmore fails to make the connection that this kind of attitude is polarizing. Maybe this is why the church is in decline. Outside of just the “homosexuals”, what about normal people that don’t feel the need to justify judging others? This may make some churchgoers uncomfortable, and it’s definitely out of bounds with much of what Jesus taught in the New Testament. More importantly it’s a waste of church resources to go around chasing straw men and windmills, when the could be performing outreach to those very same “homosexuals”, instead of constantly demonizing them from a bully pulpit.
“Our lack of understanding has led us to seek other gods including Islam,” Mr. Elmore, Islam isn’t a god. It’s another religious viewpoint. It’s kind of like switching to Lutheran, Methodist or Catholicism beliefs. Yet another clue in the decay of the modern church. He continues, “…a religion based on a false prophet demanding the death of all that don’t believe in Mohammed.” The fact that people like Mr. Elmore’s main leaning is making people read the bible to understand where he’s coming from, I’m shocked that these people like him, systematically fail to bone up on other religions. You don’t have to like it, or take it to heart, but I think you can at least glean a perspective and other points of view. Has Mr. Elmore read the Old Testament of the Bible? There’s some heavy shit in there, and a lot of that has to do with smiting and destroying civilizations for “non-belief” in their appointed god.
Sensing he’s running out of room, Mr. Elmore shapes up an old talking point. “We should close our borders to illegal’s and quit rewarding them when they have broken our laws,” yet he goes on “I am happy to welcome legal immigration and work visas.” How very Christian of you Mr. Elmore. We can help Mexico, which has a staggering problem, which I can’t tell is it illegal drugs, money or child slavery? By making immigration from Mexico legal we can wrap that up how Mr. Elmore?
Of course I’m being a bit obtuse, but I fail to see any specificity in fixing problems. This is the problem with a society that fails to engage on a personal level. The great thing about Fox News, their punditry is so out of touch, and it spreads to like minded lizard brained people who fail to engage on a personal level. It’s all regional. Mr. Elmore most likely lives in the whitest town in America, and has seen maybe 6 brown people in his entire life.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Nien Nien Nien to Herman Cain!
Since Jack Krier’s favorite empty headed right wing tart, Sarah Palin, announced that she wasn’t running for president, he’s been in a bit of a scramble. To find a candidate that’s just as vacuous in their rhetoric, will allow him to get away with veiled racism, and ultimately, to never ever be able to land the nomination. He can continue to prattle on during Obama’s reelection about how this one person could’ve saved the world from Muslim based, Sharia Law-ed, socialism. Jack Krier’s pick: Herman Cain. Mr. Krier even takes inspiration from The American Spectator's Aaron Goldstein's Nine Reasons Why Republicans Ought to Nominate Herman Cain. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Krier may in fact not be writing much of anything these days, just pulling a Mad Libs style Dave Barry writing ethic. I’ve only been reading Mr. Krier for the past year, and I’m finding a LOT of e-mail forwards disguised as editorials or other articles being gussied up and pasted in his opinion section. But naturally I take great inspiration from Mr. Krier’s idiocy so I have retorts to these bullets points. The bullet points in bold are from The American Spectator article, then followed by me ramblings.
1. Herman Cain has no sense of entitlement. You need a lot of ego to think you can run for president. To think that you can be that guy for four years. Especially in this day and age when it’s pretty much available to the highest bidder and not the most qualified. Herman Cain wasn’t born in to privilege and seized moments throughout his life? That sounds like Obama, and wouldn’t’ you know that this was one of those things that made him NOT electable to Mr. Krier and his ilk.
2. Herman Cain worked for Burger King. Oh, like 89% of people who worked some form of restaurant job? Herman Cain was as a CEO (quick reminder before the other bullet points) “assigned to manage some of the least successful (read ghetto neighborhood) Burger King restaurants and turned them in to the most profitable”. Here again is this failed idea that a business and the federal government are so similar that they can be run the same way. Do you now how Herman Cain may have turned some of those Burger King’s around? By firing most of the staff, and only paying minimum wage, with little to no raises, no ability for promotion, and the eventual epic turn around of employees that do stay, you too can turn around a struggling business!
3. Herman Cain has never held elected office. The article foments that never holding elected office is a good thing, yet again the antithesis to the entire argument against Obama. “He doesn’t know how it works, so he will fail!” Yet, this whole “outsider” bent that every politician from the past few decades have used to get elected in to office, is here again! For some reason this sentence is thrown in there too: “…Cain thinks outside the box, as evidence by his success in the business world…” Again, this is written by someone who has to have no idea how business’s run themselves, and how this isn’t even applicable to running a government. Never mind the fact that the president in only in charge of one branch of government. The Executive branch does not make laws or pass budgets, much to the chagrin of the right-wing.
4. Herman Cain is a mathematician. As evidenced by his idiotic at best, cynical class warfare at worst, 9-9-9 tax plan. That in the plainest of terms would bring about revenue on the backs of the poor and old. If Herman Cain thinks this is going to win him over with the minority crowd his is mistaken. However, I don’t think Herman Cain is looking for the minority vote anyways. This also kind of similar to the “Obama is a constitutional lawyer/professor” argument that proffered the mistaken idea that Obama would not just be an extension of W.’s with policy and the like. Clearly, having degrees in the mathematics has little to do with executive economic competency.
5. Herman Cain was a CEO. It's vaguely mentioned in the Burger King bullet point, but not focused on which is why this bullet point is so odd. I get the feeling The American Spectator article was really stretching for 9 things worth noting about Herman Cain. These next few points are kind of one in the same. So "managing" Burger King’s and being a CEO of another company is different…how? Well on this level “he learned first-handed (sic), how the business worlds works. He knows that the federal government is a hindrance when it comes to private enterprise creating jobs…[he would] relax some of the stringent government rules that have tied the hand of business…” Because, as we all know, deregulation is the key to our past economic glory days!
6. Herman Cain is the adult in the room. Ahh, this new nugget of idiotic deliciousness. Since Herman Cain is black, he could take Obama to task without being called racist? This doesn’t make any sense and should probably be included in the next bullet point. But nope, it’s here. How does that make Herman Cain the adult in the room? Time and again this “so and so is the adult in the room” talking point got a lot of mileage during the deficit “crisis” over the summer. In an Obama/Cain debate, as prophesied in this article, Obama would take Herman Cain to task for not even being remotely realistic, and would break done his idiotic 9-9-9 plan for the class crushing bullshit it is. Herman Cain only has charisma to stand on, and while it would be a lively debate, of that there is no doubt, it would be a shallow pool of rhetoric for Herman Cain (See Palin/Biden vice presidential debate). Obama would have to be on his best behavior so the corporate media wouldn’t think he was patronizing Herman Cain and actually taking him seriously.
7. Liberal charges of racism would look really, really stupid. For decades, “the liberals” have been calling conservatives racist? No, how shocking! Maybe because Conservatives pander to these people and have been since Nixon? The article speculates this tired notion that if republican nominate another black person to a spotlight position that that culls the racism? Does anyone remember Michael Steele’s appointment as RNC Head right after Obama got elected? Yup, that sure didn’t look suspicious or anything, Or the fact that you can count on ONE hand the number of minorities representing the Republicans. But it’s about the person's character, not the color of their skin right (wink wink)? No, nominating a black man doesn’t mean you stopped being racist, just as voting a ½ black man president did not make America suddenly post racial and wipe away decades of history.
8. Character Content. Again, they should’ve maybe just wrote paragraphs instead of spreading a short sentence about Herman Cain to 9 bullet points. It reads like one on of those staid business profiles on a corporations website. Herman Cain is a man “who carries himself with a sense of humor, dignity, modesty, responsibility and gratitude towards his country,” Wow, this guy has it all! I don’t think I know anyone who does this on a daily basis. Do you fair reader? What I don’t get is the gratitude part. Gratitude for allowing him to become Herman Cain? To bilk clueless right-wingers out of money by pushing an catchy jingle in the guise of tax reform? Not to mention Koch/Americans for Prosperity financial backing. The last part of this bullet pint tickled me as well: “He doesn’t know everything, but he is a quick study.” Like most of this article, it doesn’t even scratch the surface on who Herman Cain is. This honestly does read like a repurposed “This is why you should elect Obama president” twisted around with Herman Cain for the right-wing crowd. Hell, I’d even go far as to say this covers a majority of people running for president at any one time. But the “he doesn’t know everything, but he is a quick study” is a bit unnerving because in a recent Bloomberg Magazine interview he prefaced with a piece of rhetoric with “I don’t have the facts to back this up,”. Is this something you want your president saying to you during a state of the union address “I don’t have the facts to back this up, but Iran is a dick and we must invade them.”? If you do, you’re probably a right-wing idiot.
9. 9-9-9. Finally! We got to 9! Let’s dovetail that in to this 9-9-9 plan that cannot stand up to real world application. The American Spectator article is correct that would represent the biggest change to our tax system. But it comes off the backs of the middle and lower class, it railroads the progressive nature of our tax code. It gets rid of the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare and dismisses that FICA is a federal tax! According to Bloomberg News it would‘ve generated $200 billion less in 2010 than the governments $2.2 trillion in collections for that year. The article supports 9-9-9 because it would be significant first step in reducing the size of government. Not fixing our debt “crisis”, doing anything to stem the tide of more wasteful spending, or even beginning to bring in more revenue to pay for the stuff we’ve already demarcated. No, this is plain and simply to shrink the government, right in line with the current right-wing ideology. It doesn’t have to make sense, or withstand a litmus test of feasibility, it just has to do what the great Grover Norquist wishes.
1. Herman Cain has no sense of entitlement. You need a lot of ego to think you can run for president. To think that you can be that guy for four years. Especially in this day and age when it’s pretty much available to the highest bidder and not the most qualified. Herman Cain wasn’t born in to privilege and seized moments throughout his life? That sounds like Obama, and wouldn’t’ you know that this was one of those things that made him NOT electable to Mr. Krier and his ilk.
2. Herman Cain worked for Burger King. Oh, like 89% of people who worked some form of restaurant job? Herman Cain was as a CEO (quick reminder before the other bullet points) “assigned to manage some of the least successful (read ghetto neighborhood) Burger King restaurants and turned them in to the most profitable”. Here again is this failed idea that a business and the federal government are so similar that they can be run the same way. Do you now how Herman Cain may have turned some of those Burger King’s around? By firing most of the staff, and only paying minimum wage, with little to no raises, no ability for promotion, and the eventual epic turn around of employees that do stay, you too can turn around a struggling business!
3. Herman Cain has never held elected office. The article foments that never holding elected office is a good thing, yet again the antithesis to the entire argument against Obama. “He doesn’t know how it works, so he will fail!” Yet, this whole “outsider” bent that every politician from the past few decades have used to get elected in to office, is here again! For some reason this sentence is thrown in there too: “…Cain thinks outside the box, as evidence by his success in the business world…” Again, this is written by someone who has to have no idea how business’s run themselves, and how this isn’t even applicable to running a government. Never mind the fact that the president in only in charge of one branch of government. The Executive branch does not make laws or pass budgets, much to the chagrin of the right-wing.
4. Herman Cain is a mathematician. As evidenced by his idiotic at best, cynical class warfare at worst, 9-9-9 tax plan. That in the plainest of terms would bring about revenue on the backs of the poor and old. If Herman Cain thinks this is going to win him over with the minority crowd his is mistaken. However, I don’t think Herman Cain is looking for the minority vote anyways. This also kind of similar to the “Obama is a constitutional lawyer/professor” argument that proffered the mistaken idea that Obama would not just be an extension of W.’s with policy and the like. Clearly, having degrees in the mathematics has little to do with executive economic competency.
5. Herman Cain was a CEO. It's vaguely mentioned in the Burger King bullet point, but not focused on which is why this bullet point is so odd. I get the feeling The American Spectator article was really stretching for 9 things worth noting about Herman Cain. These next few points are kind of one in the same. So "managing" Burger King’s and being a CEO of another company is different…how? Well on this level “he learned first-handed (sic), how the business worlds works. He knows that the federal government is a hindrance when it comes to private enterprise creating jobs…[he would] relax some of the stringent government rules that have tied the hand of business…” Because, as we all know, deregulation is the key to our past economic glory days!
6. Herman Cain is the adult in the room. Ahh, this new nugget of idiotic deliciousness. Since Herman Cain is black, he could take Obama to task without being called racist? This doesn’t make any sense and should probably be included in the next bullet point. But nope, it’s here. How does that make Herman Cain the adult in the room? Time and again this “so and so is the adult in the room” talking point got a lot of mileage during the deficit “crisis” over the summer. In an Obama/Cain debate, as prophesied in this article, Obama would take Herman Cain to task for not even being remotely realistic, and would break done his idiotic 9-9-9 plan for the class crushing bullshit it is. Herman Cain only has charisma to stand on, and while it would be a lively debate, of that there is no doubt, it would be a shallow pool of rhetoric for Herman Cain (See Palin/Biden vice presidential debate). Obama would have to be on his best behavior so the corporate media wouldn’t think he was patronizing Herman Cain and actually taking him seriously.
7. Liberal charges of racism would look really, really stupid. For decades, “the liberals” have been calling conservatives racist? No, how shocking! Maybe because Conservatives pander to these people and have been since Nixon? The article speculates this tired notion that if republican nominate another black person to a spotlight position that that culls the racism? Does anyone remember Michael Steele’s appointment as RNC Head right after Obama got elected? Yup, that sure didn’t look suspicious or anything, Or the fact that you can count on ONE hand the number of minorities representing the Republicans. But it’s about the person's character, not the color of their skin right (wink wink)? No, nominating a black man doesn’t mean you stopped being racist, just as voting a ½ black man president did not make America suddenly post racial and wipe away decades of history.
8. Character Content. Again, they should’ve maybe just wrote paragraphs instead of spreading a short sentence about Herman Cain to 9 bullet points. It reads like one on of those staid business profiles on a corporations website. Herman Cain is a man “who carries himself with a sense of humor, dignity, modesty, responsibility and gratitude towards his country,” Wow, this guy has it all! I don’t think I know anyone who does this on a daily basis. Do you fair reader? What I don’t get is the gratitude part. Gratitude for allowing him to become Herman Cain? To bilk clueless right-wingers out of money by pushing an catchy jingle in the guise of tax reform? Not to mention Koch/Americans for Prosperity financial backing. The last part of this bullet pint tickled me as well: “He doesn’t know everything, but he is a quick study.” Like most of this article, it doesn’t even scratch the surface on who Herman Cain is. This honestly does read like a repurposed “This is why you should elect Obama president” twisted around with Herman Cain for the right-wing crowd. Hell, I’d even go far as to say this covers a majority of people running for president at any one time. But the “he doesn’t know everything, but he is a quick study” is a bit unnerving because in a recent Bloomberg Magazine interview he prefaced with a piece of rhetoric with “I don’t have the facts to back this up,”. Is this something you want your president saying to you during a state of the union address “I don’t have the facts to back this up, but Iran is a dick and we must invade them.”? If you do, you’re probably a right-wing idiot.
9. 9-9-9. Finally! We got to 9! Let’s dovetail that in to this 9-9-9 plan that cannot stand up to real world application. The American Spectator article is correct that would represent the biggest change to our tax system. But it comes off the backs of the middle and lower class, it railroads the progressive nature of our tax code. It gets rid of the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare and dismisses that FICA is a federal tax! According to Bloomberg News it would‘ve generated $200 billion less in 2010 than the governments $2.2 trillion in collections for that year. The article supports 9-9-9 because it would be significant first step in reducing the size of government. Not fixing our debt “crisis”, doing anything to stem the tide of more wasteful spending, or even beginning to bring in more revenue to pay for the stuff we’ve already demarcated. No, this is plain and simply to shrink the government, right in line with the current right-wing ideology. It doesn’t have to make sense, or withstand a litmus test of feasibility, it just has to do what the great Grover Norquist wishes.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Hopefully, what with all these protests and movements, we might shake up the status quo around here. While I doubt it’s true reach, we can always be rest assured that the elites will continue acting as if nothing is going wrong. Your friendly neighborhood newspaper will go ahead and keep pushing that agenda because they need the readership. I often wonder if editors or publishers read half the shit they publish on a daily basis.
I say this because it’s become rather apparent that the days of “blank v. blank” are getting behind us. I can’t help but cringe when the old conservative v. liberal article whips around to kick a hot soupy pile of what used to be the dead horse. Tom Purcell becomes our focus today, he’s writing of Barry Manilow maybe not being a liberal democrat, you know because 120% of Hollywood is bleeding heart liberal.
It’s funny the straw men of each respective “side” if you want to get down to the nitty-gritty. The right-wing seems to think that Michael Moore represents all of Hollywood, and the left wing seems to think Darth Vader is real and pours tons of his galactic space bucks in to the TEA Party (who is also, as you know, racist). There’s evidence to the contrary readily available, but then, where would all these hack pundits go when trying to maintain the status quo?
Tom Purcell seems to be under the impression that conservatives are “logical and analytical about issues” and liberals “tend to react with their hearts and emotions” which is parlance for “liberals = pussies” in my opinion. I had to step back when reading this article, because I couldn’t believe that’s 2011 and people are STILL pulling this bullshit. It’s somehow not apparent to Mr. Purcell that our country has been pretty divided as of late, and it has nothing to do with conservative/liberal nonsense! America is experiencing real pain, and he wants to whip out ideas that were stale on delivery in 2004!
But then, I got to thinking, he’s only half right. The problem is he’s not distinguishing between big “C” conservative and little “c” conservative. If he did, this article would be more cogent. I can see a Conservative perhaps being analytical and logical, I mean they had William Buckley, who hated ignorance amongst the right wing, and feared that it would tear the conservative argument asunder had they been given root. Today’s Conservative powerhouses of thought are NOT logical and analytical, no matter how hard they try to prove otherwise. Ann Coulter and Charles Krauthammer can support these supposed definitions? I scoff at this notion! Both are peddlers in the hyperbole and flat out wrongitude! Ann Coulter is an expert at crafting the longest book titles known to man, over loading Lexus searches, and fucking Bill Maher. There’s nothing substantive to anything she says. It’s part of the reason the right wing gets so much shit from the left wing, it’s shrill non stop harping, with nothing to anchor it with. She’d be more compelling if 2% of what she said was marginally true. When her and Laura Ingham broke down Sarah Palin a few weeks back, they came across as mean girls finally unleashing the cat claws. It was pitch perfect! This doesn’t necessarily help my argument, but it boils down that just she alone has near vaporous grasp of anything analytical or logical.
Analytical and logical people, I think, are more adaptive than the conservative. Big “C” conservatives, if they’re worth their salt wouldn’t harp on the same bullet points day in and day out. Any length of time studying conservative outlets proves this lack of logical and analytical basis. The ONLY approach to fix the debt “crisis” is the same thing: cut, cut, cut! “Don’t look at it too long, your face will melt“-like dealings with anything difficult to grasp? If conservatives were logical and analytical they’d be able to parse their argument down so that the masses could understand, and maybe, join their side. But no, THEY deal in hearts and emotions. Like tugging on evangelicals with moral and social issues to buoy a vote. I cannot believe that yet again, and even in the state level, that conservatives yet again get voted en masse in to office proclaiming to fix joblessness and the economy, yet mostly pass laws regarding abortion clinics, voter fraud, and all those wedge issues that as of right now, need no more clarification or dealings. If anything more heavy handedness is going to cost more jobs. That was your mandate?
What of all these current republican mouthpieces flapping about in the media. Your Sarah Palin’s, Herman Cain’s, Rick Perry’s. What exactly is so logical and analytical here? Does a logical person use prayer as a campaign decision tool? What about prefacing a pile of horseshit rhetoric with “I don’t have the facts to back this up but…” that’s analytical and logical where? If Mr. Purcell’s argument that most conservatives are engineers and businessman then how do you explain the Conservatives that lead the party? Most of them are not engineers or businessmen, most are failed actors, writers and radio shock jocks who share the more common predilection of money grubbing like the prostitutes of yesterday and today. I’m sure one day that a multi-millionaire liberal interest could get them to change their tune. It’s obvious that most of them could be easily swayed.
I think the biggest sign of any modern conservative is the ability to yell over someone making a point, and being able to weave any talking point in to a discussion. I guess some care could be made that it’s logical/analytical in some way.
The ultimate point of all this is to rebuke Mr. Purcell’s aged notion of a left and right at the bottom level. That these conservative v. liberal trivialities only exist in the imaginations of writer’s looking to maintain a tired status quo. Party affiliation’s fall out of favor once you and your neighbor realize that you’re both part of the party of fucked, whose only resolve is to somehow get unfucked in this current economic situation. So the Liberal vs. Conservative while still white hot on the 24 hour “news” networks, is essentially a first class problem to the liberals and conservatives who share much more in common. In the face of all that, to say that one side solely possess a superior trait over the other is not only illogical but devoid of any analytic thought, much like Tom Purcell’s editorial.
I say this because it’s become rather apparent that the days of “blank v. blank” are getting behind us. I can’t help but cringe when the old conservative v. liberal article whips around to kick a hot soupy pile of what used to be the dead horse. Tom Purcell becomes our focus today, he’s writing of Barry Manilow maybe not being a liberal democrat, you know because 120% of Hollywood is bleeding heart liberal.
It’s funny the straw men of each respective “side” if you want to get down to the nitty-gritty. The right-wing seems to think that Michael Moore represents all of Hollywood, and the left wing seems to think Darth Vader is real and pours tons of his galactic space bucks in to the TEA Party (who is also, as you know, racist). There’s evidence to the contrary readily available, but then, where would all these hack pundits go when trying to maintain the status quo?
Tom Purcell seems to be under the impression that conservatives are “logical and analytical about issues” and liberals “tend to react with their hearts and emotions” which is parlance for “liberals = pussies” in my opinion. I had to step back when reading this article, because I couldn’t believe that’s 2011 and people are STILL pulling this bullshit. It’s somehow not apparent to Mr. Purcell that our country has been pretty divided as of late, and it has nothing to do with conservative/liberal nonsense! America is experiencing real pain, and he wants to whip out ideas that were stale on delivery in 2004!
But then, I got to thinking, he’s only half right. The problem is he’s not distinguishing between big “C” conservative and little “c” conservative. If he did, this article would be more cogent. I can see a Conservative perhaps being analytical and logical, I mean they had William Buckley, who hated ignorance amongst the right wing, and feared that it would tear the conservative argument asunder had they been given root. Today’s Conservative powerhouses of thought are NOT logical and analytical, no matter how hard they try to prove otherwise. Ann Coulter and Charles Krauthammer can support these supposed definitions? I scoff at this notion! Both are peddlers in the hyperbole and flat out wrongitude! Ann Coulter is an expert at crafting the longest book titles known to man, over loading Lexus searches, and fucking Bill Maher. There’s nothing substantive to anything she says. It’s part of the reason the right wing gets so much shit from the left wing, it’s shrill non stop harping, with nothing to anchor it with. She’d be more compelling if 2% of what she said was marginally true. When her and Laura Ingham broke down Sarah Palin a few weeks back, they came across as mean girls finally unleashing the cat claws. It was pitch perfect! This doesn’t necessarily help my argument, but it boils down that just she alone has near vaporous grasp of anything analytical or logical.
Analytical and logical people, I think, are more adaptive than the conservative. Big “C” conservatives, if they’re worth their salt wouldn’t harp on the same bullet points day in and day out. Any length of time studying conservative outlets proves this lack of logical and analytical basis. The ONLY approach to fix the debt “crisis” is the same thing: cut, cut, cut! “Don’t look at it too long, your face will melt“-like dealings with anything difficult to grasp? If conservatives were logical and analytical they’d be able to parse their argument down so that the masses could understand, and maybe, join their side. But no, THEY deal in hearts and emotions. Like tugging on evangelicals with moral and social issues to buoy a vote. I cannot believe that yet again, and even in the state level, that conservatives yet again get voted en masse in to office proclaiming to fix joblessness and the economy, yet mostly pass laws regarding abortion clinics, voter fraud, and all those wedge issues that as of right now, need no more clarification or dealings. If anything more heavy handedness is going to cost more jobs. That was your mandate?
What of all these current republican mouthpieces flapping about in the media. Your Sarah Palin’s, Herman Cain’s, Rick Perry’s. What exactly is so logical and analytical here? Does a logical person use prayer as a campaign decision tool? What about prefacing a pile of horseshit rhetoric with “I don’t have the facts to back this up but…” that’s analytical and logical where? If Mr. Purcell’s argument that most conservatives are engineers and businessman then how do you explain the Conservatives that lead the party? Most of them are not engineers or businessmen, most are failed actors, writers and radio shock jocks who share the more common predilection of money grubbing like the prostitutes of yesterday and today. I’m sure one day that a multi-millionaire liberal interest could get them to change their tune. It’s obvious that most of them could be easily swayed.
I think the biggest sign of any modern conservative is the ability to yell over someone making a point, and being able to weave any talking point in to a discussion. I guess some care could be made that it’s logical/analytical in some way.
The ultimate point of all this is to rebuke Mr. Purcell’s aged notion of a left and right at the bottom level. That these conservative v. liberal trivialities only exist in the imaginations of writer’s looking to maintain a tired status quo. Party affiliation’s fall out of favor once you and your neighbor realize that you’re both part of the party of fucked, whose only resolve is to somehow get unfucked in this current economic situation. So the Liberal vs. Conservative while still white hot on the 24 hour “news” networks, is essentially a first class problem to the liberals and conservatives who share much more in common. In the face of all that, to say that one side solely possess a superior trait over the other is not only illogical but devoid of any analytic thought, much like Tom Purcell’s editorial.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
I was reading Kathleen Parker’s recent column about Ron Suskind’s blazing new book Confidence Men, and her take on the quote from some ladies in the Obama administration about not feeling welcomed in the economic team’s boys club. While most of the article is of the utmost pedestrian prose (as this Kathleen Parker we’re talking about), a revelation was levied that framed everything Ms. Parker has based her career on. The admission is probably nothing to those who could care less, but being that I am frequently exposed to her, for lack of a better phrase, “brain farts”, it made me want to find a window and scream out of it “Aha! It totally makes sense now!”
Ms. Parker admits that she’s worked from home some 20 odd years and really has no understanding of dynamics in a workplace. Be that gender politics, or other. It made sense why she failed as a co-host on her CNN show. It explains how every article she writes seems to have the common theme of someone who’s lived in a cave for decades trying to act like she’s got a modern grasp on the issues at hand. She has no real world experience to glean a constructive critique of reality from. That’s why she constantly appears to be alien on a lot of topics outside her grasp of mere flip flop-ness.
On one hand, I don’t blame her. If I could work from home and not have to deal with conflict that would arise from my buffoonish meanderings fronting as hard hitting editorials, I’d do it too. Mail those checks directly to me, and let me bark at the world from a 10 foot poles distance from anything resembling conflict.
The great thing about this is that Ms. Parker is smart enough to see that now there’s enough room to flip flop on this topic of gender politics. Whereas before she would just shrug it off and tell women to “grow a pair”, she now see’s that her ignorance was short sighted, so she can now understand where women may be coming from with the whole inequality thing. Especially now that it serves some purpose to her.
Being a Ms. Parker column, about half way through she runs out of gas and relates the tale of Mika Brzezinksi of Morning Joe fame and her inability to get a leg up on the show until she wrote a book about being mistreated. Of course this leads to a switch up at the show and a “deference toward the lady of the house is the new rule…but the show could use a lot more women.” Does Ms. Parker not realize that maybe they’re just humoring Mika? That maybe that book did more damage to that “Aw shucks guffaw we‘re one big huggy family” garbage that most morning shows project? For instance, if Ann Curry wrote a book slamming the way she’s treated at the Today Show, do you not think things would change around there?
That’s the problem with civil rights of any nature. There’s that razor fine line where you’re perilously close to patronizing the wounded party and not elevating their cause. Wouldn’t our society be a much different place had we not taken woman’s suffrage and black civil rights seriously? I mean no one’s taking a hose to Mika Brzezinkski or anything, but you get my gist. Ms. Parker is failing to see that line, and in fact does what most of our society does when confronted with issues like race and gender inequality: “Oh I thought we took care of that like years ago already, right?” It’s not a set in stone and done forever, it’s a constant battle of gains and losses, and no amount of book writing to change one person’s place on a morning show of gas bags is going to correct DECADES of malfeasance towards an entire subset of people!
Ms. Parker argues a remedy against the boys club mentality is “more women, more women, more women!” Obviously on top of living in a cave the past couple of decades, she doesn’t seem to see that more women would only STRENGTHEN the resolve of a boys club, and just lead to the “more women” feeling marginalized. This editorial reads less and less a veiled feminist tinged rant (go girls!) and more a veiled republican hit piece coming from a “democrats DO hate women” angle. However, Ms. Parker lacks the balls to out and out say that, she might alienate readers!
The change of true feminist progress is going to come from the bottom up, not from the top down. Most of the heads of corporations and business are old white doods that believe, although subconscious it may be, that a woman is to be seen and not heard. It’s not rampant or anything, but it sill bubbles underneath the surface. It’s why a woman still makes less than her male counterparts in the this day and age! It’s just that the only light shown on this issue is never a serious light, and it instigates nothing. It’s going to take a lot more than “nutting up” as Kathleen Parker suggests to get any real change done. Also, she’s not looking to change anything either, there’s more fodder for future writing here, she thrives on perpetuating the status quo.
Ms. Parker admits that she’s worked from home some 20 odd years and really has no understanding of dynamics in a workplace. Be that gender politics, or other. It made sense why she failed as a co-host on her CNN show. It explains how every article she writes seems to have the common theme of someone who’s lived in a cave for decades trying to act like she’s got a modern grasp on the issues at hand. She has no real world experience to glean a constructive critique of reality from. That’s why she constantly appears to be alien on a lot of topics outside her grasp of mere flip flop-ness.
On one hand, I don’t blame her. If I could work from home and not have to deal with conflict that would arise from my buffoonish meanderings fronting as hard hitting editorials, I’d do it too. Mail those checks directly to me, and let me bark at the world from a 10 foot poles distance from anything resembling conflict.
The great thing about this is that Ms. Parker is smart enough to see that now there’s enough room to flip flop on this topic of gender politics. Whereas before she would just shrug it off and tell women to “grow a pair”, she now see’s that her ignorance was short sighted, so she can now understand where women may be coming from with the whole inequality thing. Especially now that it serves some purpose to her.
Being a Ms. Parker column, about half way through she runs out of gas and relates the tale of Mika Brzezinksi of Morning Joe fame and her inability to get a leg up on the show until she wrote a book about being mistreated. Of course this leads to a switch up at the show and a “deference toward the lady of the house is the new rule…but the show could use a lot more women.” Does Ms. Parker not realize that maybe they’re just humoring Mika? That maybe that book did more damage to that “Aw shucks guffaw we‘re one big huggy family” garbage that most morning shows project? For instance, if Ann Curry wrote a book slamming the way she’s treated at the Today Show, do you not think things would change around there?
That’s the problem with civil rights of any nature. There’s that razor fine line where you’re perilously close to patronizing the wounded party and not elevating their cause. Wouldn’t our society be a much different place had we not taken woman’s suffrage and black civil rights seriously? I mean no one’s taking a hose to Mika Brzezinkski or anything, but you get my gist. Ms. Parker is failing to see that line, and in fact does what most of our society does when confronted with issues like race and gender inequality: “Oh I thought we took care of that like years ago already, right?” It’s not a set in stone and done forever, it’s a constant battle of gains and losses, and no amount of book writing to change one person’s place on a morning show of gas bags is going to correct DECADES of malfeasance towards an entire subset of people!
Ms. Parker argues a remedy against the boys club mentality is “more women, more women, more women!” Obviously on top of living in a cave the past couple of decades, she doesn’t seem to see that more women would only STRENGTHEN the resolve of a boys club, and just lead to the “more women” feeling marginalized. This editorial reads less and less a veiled feminist tinged rant (go girls!) and more a veiled republican hit piece coming from a “democrats DO hate women” angle. However, Ms. Parker lacks the balls to out and out say that, she might alienate readers!
The change of true feminist progress is going to come from the bottom up, not from the top down. Most of the heads of corporations and business are old white doods that believe, although subconscious it may be, that a woman is to be seen and not heard. It’s not rampant or anything, but it sill bubbles underneath the surface. It’s why a woman still makes less than her male counterparts in the this day and age! It’s just that the only light shown on this issue is never a serious light, and it instigates nothing. It’s going to take a lot more than “nutting up” as Kathleen Parker suggests to get any real change done. Also, she’s not looking to change anything either, there’s more fodder for future writing here, she thrives on perpetuating the status quo.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Political Fiction
Americans for Limited Government HAS to be a publishing arm of a science fiction writer. It’s as if they have a draconian embellished dart board with various topics, then a smaller wheel with various names for the characters and worlds that inhabit their fictions. Today, the story is of German Morales, small business owner and painter of houses and such.
The great thing about these short stories provided by the Americans for Limited Government, is that they always start out with a vaguely connected topic to the fiction at hand. The writer, Bill Wilson, starts the tale with the meager “controversy” of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer who closed it doors a few weeks ago to bankruptcy. Also, China produces a better solar panel, so it loses on the battlefield of the “competitive marketplace” that Mr. Wilson so proudly supports. Sadly, Solyndra laid off 1,000 workers, which is in turn, tied to another “green energy initiative” in Seattle which only created 14 jobs. The thing to note when reading a lot of this right wing bologna is the specificity of some of the writing versus the near lack of anything other than “This one thing that one time in Somewhereachussetts”. It sets off my bullshit alarm every single time. Why can’t there be constant specifics? Your omission only leads me to believe that your argument is already faulty to start at best, or the point your striving for moot at worst.
I think Americans for Limited Government would have a point, say 30 years ago, before the overreach of Government reached a fever pitch under Reagan. Not that he was the first to begin the overreach, but merely to frame the modern problems we faced today. The seeds of our economic decline were sown during this time, to be sure. But Americans for Limited Government’s point is rendered obsolete by the fact that Ma and Pa Public have, nor have the ever, possess the ability to put the entire society on their backs and jump start the economy. They have at most the ability to toil and sweat for their own sake, and the lives of their kin. But they do not posses any larger power than that of voting for representative government, which has largely been taken away from them by corporate lobbyists and their interests.
The German Morales short story paints the average American as grateful for the suffering it is currently being put through. He wakes up every day with “hope” of doing a good job, so he can continue to struggle. Mr. Wilson believes that Mr. Morales is a great example of the entrepreneurial spirit that’s so waning in America. Sacrificing and cutting back, risking his security for a better life. You’ve got to be kidding me.
The next couple of sentences really hit home the general derision that the right wing elite have for this country:
“The genius of the American economic system is that there are no guarantees. The Declaration of Independence says Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, no a guarantee of happiness.”
In other words, go fuck yourself the poors! This is why people like German Morales should rise up and strike these people from their perches. Not only for looking down their nose at over half of American society, but for talking behind the working American’s back to those who fancy themselves “not one of the poor’s” with bullshit like this editorial.
I can guarantee that most of the right wing blowhards/punditry did not pull themselves up by the boot straps, as they are wont to preach to everyone. When people like Bill O’Reilly threaten to stop employing people if he’s taxed anymore, when the truth is Bill O’Reilly’s taxes are the lowest they’ve been since the Great Depression, we have a problem here. There’s a dishonesty being peddled to the masses as fact, and it’s not going to get any better.
The “competitive marketplace” as Mr. Wilson puts it simply does not exist on the ground floor of the economy any more. Not since the days of the horse and buggy has the individual been in command of anything beyond the macro level of employer and a group of like minded employees. Success is however a great side effect to this thinking. But it is the exception and not the rule. If it was in fact as simple as that, everyone who met a need would be millionaires.
The real threat of the think tanks like Americans For Limited Government is that they always look inward to cut the public off at the knees instead of say the unending cash water flow that goes in to our defense spending. America has yet to shake this the bitter winters of the Cold War and continues to build and amass a giant army, of which a LOT of monetary waste is the order of the day. Lest I remind you that a 6 billion dollar pallet of money just up and disappeared in Iraq. How does a giant stack of cash just go MISSING? The no bid military contracts, the failure of said contractors in providing usable infrastructure to our soldiers or even civilians. Yet you never ever read a think tank piece saying “You know, that defense budget is kind of out of whack.” No, you will get the obligatory “Oh no, if you cut just one dollar from defense, we will be annihilated!!” Never mind the 700 odd military bases all around the world, and America’s station as the “Police of the World”. Americans For Limited Government can’t even look in that direction to suggest some useful in the way of spending far far less. Hell, their fiction would prove more useful, in that Tom Clancy sort of way. People would eat that up!
Finally, a nasty trend of the right wing sound machine has been steadily catching my attention. Mr. Wilson’s article reminded me of it. The Declaration of Independence is indeed not part of the constitution. I don’t know how this thought came to be or why this is being tirelessly bandied by the right wing, but increasingly I’ve been seeing this denial to the middle class in general that they aren’t “guaranteed” anything. The Declaration of Independence has no real modern application other than our society’s unwritten rule not to be assholes to one another, a reminder to not be a tyrant to our common man like the British Empire was to the colonists, who penned the Declaration in order to tell the King what for. It is NOT a part of the Constitution. The Constitution, however, does give us rights and freedoms (and rules and law). The only thing the Declaration and the Constitution share is the fact that they are historical documents.
The great thing about these short stories provided by the Americans for Limited Government, is that they always start out with a vaguely connected topic to the fiction at hand. The writer, Bill Wilson, starts the tale with the meager “controversy” of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer who closed it doors a few weeks ago to bankruptcy. Also, China produces a better solar panel, so it loses on the battlefield of the “competitive marketplace” that Mr. Wilson so proudly supports. Sadly, Solyndra laid off 1,000 workers, which is in turn, tied to another “green energy initiative” in Seattle which only created 14 jobs. The thing to note when reading a lot of this right wing bologna is the specificity of some of the writing versus the near lack of anything other than “This one thing that one time in Somewhereachussetts”. It sets off my bullshit alarm every single time. Why can’t there be constant specifics? Your omission only leads me to believe that your argument is already faulty to start at best, or the point your striving for moot at worst.
I think Americans for Limited Government would have a point, say 30 years ago, before the overreach of Government reached a fever pitch under Reagan. Not that he was the first to begin the overreach, but merely to frame the modern problems we faced today. The seeds of our economic decline were sown during this time, to be sure. But Americans for Limited Government’s point is rendered obsolete by the fact that Ma and Pa Public have, nor have the ever, possess the ability to put the entire society on their backs and jump start the economy. They have at most the ability to toil and sweat for their own sake, and the lives of their kin. But they do not posses any larger power than that of voting for representative government, which has largely been taken away from them by corporate lobbyists and their interests.
The German Morales short story paints the average American as grateful for the suffering it is currently being put through. He wakes up every day with “hope” of doing a good job, so he can continue to struggle. Mr. Wilson believes that Mr. Morales is a great example of the entrepreneurial spirit that’s so waning in America. Sacrificing and cutting back, risking his security for a better life. You’ve got to be kidding me.
The next couple of sentences really hit home the general derision that the right wing elite have for this country:
“The genius of the American economic system is that there are no guarantees. The Declaration of Independence says Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, no a guarantee of happiness.”
In other words, go fuck yourself the poors! This is why people like German Morales should rise up and strike these people from their perches. Not only for looking down their nose at over half of American society, but for talking behind the working American’s back to those who fancy themselves “not one of the poor’s” with bullshit like this editorial.
I can guarantee that most of the right wing blowhards/punditry did not pull themselves up by the boot straps, as they are wont to preach to everyone. When people like Bill O’Reilly threaten to stop employing people if he’s taxed anymore, when the truth is Bill O’Reilly’s taxes are the lowest they’ve been since the Great Depression, we have a problem here. There’s a dishonesty being peddled to the masses as fact, and it’s not going to get any better.
The “competitive marketplace” as Mr. Wilson puts it simply does not exist on the ground floor of the economy any more. Not since the days of the horse and buggy has the individual been in command of anything beyond the macro level of employer and a group of like minded employees. Success is however a great side effect to this thinking. But it is the exception and not the rule. If it was in fact as simple as that, everyone who met a need would be millionaires.
The real threat of the think tanks like Americans For Limited Government is that they always look inward to cut the public off at the knees instead of say the unending cash water flow that goes in to our defense spending. America has yet to shake this the bitter winters of the Cold War and continues to build and amass a giant army, of which a LOT of monetary waste is the order of the day. Lest I remind you that a 6 billion dollar pallet of money just up and disappeared in Iraq. How does a giant stack of cash just go MISSING? The no bid military contracts, the failure of said contractors in providing usable infrastructure to our soldiers or even civilians. Yet you never ever read a think tank piece saying “You know, that defense budget is kind of out of whack.” No, you will get the obligatory “Oh no, if you cut just one dollar from defense, we will be annihilated!!” Never mind the 700 odd military bases all around the world, and America’s station as the “Police of the World”. Americans For Limited Government can’t even look in that direction to suggest some useful in the way of spending far far less. Hell, their fiction would prove more useful, in that Tom Clancy sort of way. People would eat that up!
Finally, a nasty trend of the right wing sound machine has been steadily catching my attention. Mr. Wilson’s article reminded me of it. The Declaration of Independence is indeed not part of the constitution. I don’t know how this thought came to be or why this is being tirelessly bandied by the right wing, but increasingly I’ve been seeing this denial to the middle class in general that they aren’t “guaranteed” anything. The Declaration of Independence has no real modern application other than our society’s unwritten rule not to be assholes to one another, a reminder to not be a tyrant to our common man like the British Empire was to the colonists, who penned the Declaration in order to tell the King what for. It is NOT a part of the Constitution. The Constitution, however, does give us rights and freedoms (and rules and law). The only thing the Declaration and the Constitution share is the fact that they are historical documents.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
The Rise of the Planet of the Knuckle Draggers
If Shithead Hall of Fame Inductee™ Kathleen Parker is to be believed, Americans “don’t really want an egghead elite”, well, tell that to the 202 lawyers in congress. For some odd reason, we fail to vote in plumbers, janitors, and that guy that sleeps on your couch to higher political office (However 28 Congresspeople do not have a college degree, so there's hope yet!). Ms. Parker, the elegant headmistress of flip flopping finishing school says we’d rather prefer a state educated corporate money fueled cad over an Ivy league educated corporate money fueled cad.
For some reason, and of all people it seems, “independents” are a very forgetful bunch. If, as Ms. Parker suggests, this is a brain vs. gut situation, did we not have that “gut” mindset during the W. years? Also, claiming that some of the GOP dumb themselves down should more appropriately be called pandering. As this is to Ms. Parker's bread and butter to her readers.
More to the point, and I think it will become more clear in the coming election year, is that there’s really no discernible difference between anyone who represents the two major political parties anymore. If Mitt Romney wins the Republican Clown Car Rally, my case will be made in it’s entirety. The wrench in the works is this goddamned American love affair with the “cowboy” mythology that will continue to bite this country in the ass and give us the go ahead push over the waterfall. Rodeo Rick Perry is yet another character yee-hawing his way on stage for the bottom feeding know nothing voters to latch on to. If there is some truth to the idea that most voters spend about 15 minutes researching a candidate or issue to vote on, then yea, we have a lot to be worried for.
But that’s par for the course when it comes to the voting public, it’s a sad fact, but it’s preferred to the know-nothing political operative who would be given the power to shape society itself via political office. It’s one thing for your right leaning aunt to hear “something” from “someone”, it’s quite another Michelle Bachmann was told by “someone” in a crowd about adverse side affects to a vaccine. Really Michelle, you couldn’t be bothered to grab (or make up) a name for that?
I’m talking about the idiocy that most of these current crop of GOP possess, not word gaffes, which seems to be the only rebuttal the right wing has to this argument. Obama claiming that there are 53 states is no where near comparable to Palin not knowing what newspapers she reads, to quote a classic example. If Obama had one-millionth of the word buffet power that Palin had, he wouldn’t have even been able to sniff the front lawn of the White House.
Happily, there are websites such as Politifact.com, that do cover a lot of this nonsense from all sides of the government. Sadly, these sites never make it to the unwashed masses, which is where it is most problematic.
In addition to that, the fact that corporations now have the infinite ability to contribute to campaigns and super PAC’s means that the inundation of misinformation from television and radio ads during the next election year will be at a fever pitch. Recall the pain train from 2010? Yeah, that was nothing.
Now, before you try to pull off my tin foil hat, there has to be some acknowledgement that having an even keeled, pragmatic person run a branch of government is something we should strive for. Our ability to have a beer with him is not. There’s lots of talk lately of class warfare, of which there is no doubt to it’s existence. But before that began there’s been a constant battle over intellectualism versus I-know-what-I-know aka ignorance.
If there’s one thing you could boil the TEA party down to is a strong desire to not be told what to do. Sure, that’s inherent in most people, but as a movement the TEA party embodies this revulsion to authority with gusto.
And make no mistake, I’m not saying common sense and ignorance are one in the same. Ignorance can be fixed with knowledge, stupidity cannot. Stupid can be confused for ignorance, and hence we have all these non-players actually having a shot in the GOP Clown Car Rally to the White House. Sure, some can run a business, be a governor, but we all know a lot of dumbasses in our very lives that run things they probably shouldn’t be to varying degrees of success. What these people excel at is patronizing and pandering to lower common denominators. The eerie simplicity of “this bill is 100 pages, I would cut it like 5 paragraphs” ideal and the fact that the presenter wouldn’t be laughed off the planet should make people reconsider.
Further, these people are vying to be the face of our nation, sure we can’t hide all our soft headed population under the floorboards forever, but we do need to have some sort of global respect. Walking around with your chest puffed out and trying to strike fear in anyone is not great foreign policy.
To sound far more elitist than I should be allowed, haven’t we done enough for our knuckle dragging brethren in society? We have warnings on plastic bags to not put them over your head, secure lids on hot beverages that explain that said beverage is very hot, on and on. We now have to entertain their notions of higher political office out of what, fairness to all? Would you get into someone’s car if it looked like it had had it’s fair share of scrapes and dings? Go hunting with someone who shot off their own foot? Seriously though, it’s only an entire nation right? What could possibly go wrong letting the short bus rider’s think they’re people?
Sure, lets let them entertain themselves by playing in the shallow end of the political pool. Let them be comptrollers and mayors of 234 person towns. But handing them the keys to the world? No fucking way!
For some reason, and of all people it seems, “independents” are a very forgetful bunch. If, as Ms. Parker suggests, this is a brain vs. gut situation, did we not have that “gut” mindset during the W. years? Also, claiming that some of the GOP dumb themselves down should more appropriately be called pandering. As this is to Ms. Parker's bread and butter to her readers.
More to the point, and I think it will become more clear in the coming election year, is that there’s really no discernible difference between anyone who represents the two major political parties anymore. If Mitt Romney wins the Republican Clown Car Rally, my case will be made in it’s entirety. The wrench in the works is this goddamned American love affair with the “cowboy” mythology that will continue to bite this country in the ass and give us the go ahead push over the waterfall. Rodeo Rick Perry is yet another character yee-hawing his way on stage for the bottom feeding know nothing voters to latch on to. If there is some truth to the idea that most voters spend about 15 minutes researching a candidate or issue to vote on, then yea, we have a lot to be worried for.
But that’s par for the course when it comes to the voting public, it’s a sad fact, but it’s preferred to the know-nothing political operative who would be given the power to shape society itself via political office. It’s one thing for your right leaning aunt to hear “something” from “someone”, it’s quite another Michelle Bachmann was told by “someone” in a crowd about adverse side affects to a vaccine. Really Michelle, you couldn’t be bothered to grab (or make up) a name for that?
I’m talking about the idiocy that most of these current crop of GOP possess, not word gaffes, which seems to be the only rebuttal the right wing has to this argument. Obama claiming that there are 53 states is no where near comparable to Palin not knowing what newspapers she reads, to quote a classic example. If Obama had one-millionth of the word buffet power that Palin had, he wouldn’t have even been able to sniff the front lawn of the White House.
Happily, there are websites such as Politifact.com, that do cover a lot of this nonsense from all sides of the government. Sadly, these sites never make it to the unwashed masses, which is where it is most problematic.
In addition to that, the fact that corporations now have the infinite ability to contribute to campaigns and super PAC’s means that the inundation of misinformation from television and radio ads during the next election year will be at a fever pitch. Recall the pain train from 2010? Yeah, that was nothing.
Now, before you try to pull off my tin foil hat, there has to be some acknowledgement that having an even keeled, pragmatic person run a branch of government is something we should strive for. Our ability to have a beer with him is not. There’s lots of talk lately of class warfare, of which there is no doubt to it’s existence. But before that began there’s been a constant battle over intellectualism versus I-know-what-I-know aka ignorance.
If there’s one thing you could boil the TEA party down to is a strong desire to not be told what to do. Sure, that’s inherent in most people, but as a movement the TEA party embodies this revulsion to authority with gusto.
And make no mistake, I’m not saying common sense and ignorance are one in the same. Ignorance can be fixed with knowledge, stupidity cannot. Stupid can be confused for ignorance, and hence we have all these non-players actually having a shot in the GOP Clown Car Rally to the White House. Sure, some can run a business, be a governor, but we all know a lot of dumbasses in our very lives that run things they probably shouldn’t be to varying degrees of success. What these people excel at is patronizing and pandering to lower common denominators. The eerie simplicity of “this bill is 100 pages, I would cut it like 5 paragraphs” ideal and the fact that the presenter wouldn’t be laughed off the planet should make people reconsider.
Further, these people are vying to be the face of our nation, sure we can’t hide all our soft headed population under the floorboards forever, but we do need to have some sort of global respect. Walking around with your chest puffed out and trying to strike fear in anyone is not great foreign policy.
To sound far more elitist than I should be allowed, haven’t we done enough for our knuckle dragging brethren in society? We have warnings on plastic bags to not put them over your head, secure lids on hot beverages that explain that said beverage is very hot, on and on. We now have to entertain their notions of higher political office out of what, fairness to all? Would you get into someone’s car if it looked like it had had it’s fair share of scrapes and dings? Go hunting with someone who shot off their own foot? Seriously though, it’s only an entire nation right? What could possibly go wrong letting the short bus rider’s think they’re people?
Sure, lets let them entertain themselves by playing in the shallow end of the political pool. Let them be comptrollers and mayors of 234 person towns. But handing them the keys to the world? No fucking way!
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Life Through Sepia Colored Glasses
Say what you will about him, but Old Man Jack Krier does have one consistent theme throughout his writings: blamelessness. It’s always someone else’s doings no matter the topic of the day. It makes you begin to wonder if it’s in the DNA of baby boomers, or just a really specific generational tick shared amongst a LOT of old people.
It’s also why I’m not surprised that the TEA party is predominantly old white people. Regardless of party, selfishness holds no real political party. But I’m fairly certain it’s a majority republican held ideal. Like the old adage “as a youngster I was democrat until I had something to lose then I became republican“.
What I cannot truly fathom is Mr. Krier’s staunchly held belief that things were better in the olden days. I’d honestly like to take the sepia colored glasses from his face, but I think there are superimposed in some sort of fever induced face/glasses melding. In a recent “column” (read: email forward) How wasteful the older generation Mr. Krier relates the tale of a little old lady being admonished by an probably young cashier that the older generation “did not care enough to save our environment”. This “column” then goes on to explain how things were in the olden times, before someone/something/probably the illegal’s dumped tons of trash in large piles, then called them landfills and walked away. How someone filled our rivers, oceans are air with manufacturing pollutants, which was probably fish poop and cow farts right? But oh no, back in the olden times people returned glass bottles to the stores, hung up clothes to dry and didn’t drive two blocks to get something.
It’s utter…to use olden time parlance…hogwash! How much of this attitude was actually dictated by the times and how much is actual mythical brainwashing? Before the mainstream use of plastics for bottling, wouldn’t it be prudent to return recyclable glass items? Especially since they were often BOUGHT BACK, you know that little cash value 5 cent/10 cent redemption on your bottles that resides there to this day? I have even bought milk in a glass container and had to pay a $5 deposit on the bottle, this was two weeks ago people? Am I now too doing my part in the whole “green thing”? Where’s my olden time medal of excellence in the face of political correctness/green police?
Cars have always been prohibitively expensive items. Not quite luxury items, but still every single person does not own a vehicle now, and more importantly didn’t in the past either. However, olden time cities are made predominantly for and cater to foot traffic. Compare New York City to Kansas City. You can bike or subway most places in the NYC without need for a car. Kansas City….well, not so much. It’s so spread out in KC that a car is a necessity to get to most business’s, and seeing as they’re cutting a lot of their mass transit budgets, doesn’t look to get any better. And biking? Forget about it! While there is an intuitive to get more back paths around town, it’s going to take a long while, and a lot of that is mostly just carving up existing not made for bike lane roads with a little “bike lane” paint.
Joining Mr. Krier on this TEA Party bandwagon is another old white man editor of newspapers Rolf Yunglas. In recent memory has been advocating that the TEA Party is just like the rest of us. Does anyone else get the feeling that “us” is inclusive? He talks about “some poll” (good journalism right there) that says that 51% of Americans think unfavorably of the TEA Party. He then goes on to explain that the TEA Party IS America, so why is it getting “co-equal” blame for the debt crisis theatre experience? Well, Mr. Yunglas, let me share something with you. You see, the TEA Party mistakenly believed that the soft head ambivalence of independents was actually a mandate to take part in a bigger regressive GOP agenda. Most of America, dare I say 49% or so, don’t give two shits about government until either tax time or election years. They don’t pay attention to the machinations going on in the beltway, and they sure a shit have no idea what their state assemblies are doing. So when the “other” party doesn’t get it done, they naturally just flip to the other side to see if that will work. Problem is, independents lack any fortitude to stick with a plan to see it through, that’s why it’s so appalling that many people just assume that one branch of government can somehow turn the tides of an economy in 18 months. It’s foolishness, and that foolishness leads to ever increasing poor decisions, and thus the TEA Party was given a small foothold in the House of Representatives.
Again, this wasn’t a mandate. But when that small group of small minded people took a chunk of the House hostage during the debt crisis theatre revue, they exposed themselves. Do you really think the GOP is going to let itself be burned alive by the likes of a “astro-turf” roots based corporate fueled “movement”? No sir! Naturally, they’re going to, pardon my analogy, throw that TEA Party nonsense overboard.
On top of this, it’s becoming ever so clear that the TEA Party has no real ideas, and the ones they do have are regressive and bad for the country. Also what may have worked two centuries ago with far less states and citizens cannot even begin to bridge the cap of a modern society made up of millions of people with various needs. It cannot fly in the face of the globalization this country fosters and it cannot turn it’s back on deals brokered in the past, regardless of party affiliation.
The idea to play chicken with our economy was a GOP idea. The TEA Party was sitting at that table, thumping along in time with the rest of the GOP Carnival side show band. I surely didn’t see any “left leaning socialist spend more tax more” liberals saying “Hey, lets just do nothing and see what happens,”. This wasn’t future debt that the beltway was fighting over, these were bills that we promised to pay, the money was already spoken for. The TEA Party and the right were ostensibly saying “Hey, don’t pay your bills…nothing’s going to happen,”. So the bottom of that argument not only looks insane, it paints a horrible picture to the independents that this “side” of the coin, doesn’t have the general best interests at heart. Therefore, they’re not so high up on these so called “patriots”.
If anything this could be a lesson to those of the TEA Party. As with most uninvolved participants to the game politic, they got had. To some of their credit, they realize this. At a recent Sarah Palin tour stop a fan asked her if she came to hock books or announce her candidacy. If she wasn’t going to run she needs to get out of the way. Good on you, Mr. Patriot.
Mr. Krier, Mr. Yunglas, and the rest of those right wing buffoons have a limited memory, or at least one for the truth. Sure, the olden times were full of simple things with simple people, but simple doesn’t mean stupid or unreasonable.
It’s also why I’m not surprised that the TEA party is predominantly old white people. Regardless of party, selfishness holds no real political party. But I’m fairly certain it’s a majority republican held ideal. Like the old adage “as a youngster I was democrat until I had something to lose then I became republican“.
What I cannot truly fathom is Mr. Krier’s staunchly held belief that things were better in the olden days. I’d honestly like to take the sepia colored glasses from his face, but I think there are superimposed in some sort of fever induced face/glasses melding. In a recent “column” (read: email forward) How wasteful the older generation Mr. Krier relates the tale of a little old lady being admonished by an probably young cashier that the older generation “did not care enough to save our environment”. This “column” then goes on to explain how things were in the olden times, before someone/something/probably the illegal’s dumped tons of trash in large piles, then called them landfills and walked away. How someone filled our rivers, oceans are air with manufacturing pollutants, which was probably fish poop and cow farts right? But oh no, back in the olden times people returned glass bottles to the stores, hung up clothes to dry and didn’t drive two blocks to get something.
It’s utter…to use olden time parlance…hogwash! How much of this attitude was actually dictated by the times and how much is actual mythical brainwashing? Before the mainstream use of plastics for bottling, wouldn’t it be prudent to return recyclable glass items? Especially since they were often BOUGHT BACK, you know that little cash value 5 cent/10 cent redemption on your bottles that resides there to this day? I have even bought milk in a glass container and had to pay a $5 deposit on the bottle, this was two weeks ago people? Am I now too doing my part in the whole “green thing”? Where’s my olden time medal of excellence in the face of political correctness/green police?
Cars have always been prohibitively expensive items. Not quite luxury items, but still every single person does not own a vehicle now, and more importantly didn’t in the past either. However, olden time cities are made predominantly for and cater to foot traffic. Compare New York City to Kansas City. You can bike or subway most places in the NYC without need for a car. Kansas City….well, not so much. It’s so spread out in KC that a car is a necessity to get to most business’s, and seeing as they’re cutting a lot of their mass transit budgets, doesn’t look to get any better. And biking? Forget about it! While there is an intuitive to get more back paths around town, it’s going to take a long while, and a lot of that is mostly just carving up existing not made for bike lane roads with a little “bike lane” paint.
Joining Mr. Krier on this TEA Party bandwagon is another old white man editor of newspapers Rolf Yunglas. In recent memory has been advocating that the TEA Party is just like the rest of us. Does anyone else get the feeling that “us” is inclusive? He talks about “some poll” (good journalism right there) that says that 51% of Americans think unfavorably of the TEA Party. He then goes on to explain that the TEA Party IS America, so why is it getting “co-equal” blame for the debt crisis theatre experience? Well, Mr. Yunglas, let me share something with you. You see, the TEA Party mistakenly believed that the soft head ambivalence of independents was actually a mandate to take part in a bigger regressive GOP agenda. Most of America, dare I say 49% or so, don’t give two shits about government until either tax time or election years. They don’t pay attention to the machinations going on in the beltway, and they sure a shit have no idea what their state assemblies are doing. So when the “other” party doesn’t get it done, they naturally just flip to the other side to see if that will work. Problem is, independents lack any fortitude to stick with a plan to see it through, that’s why it’s so appalling that many people just assume that one branch of government can somehow turn the tides of an economy in 18 months. It’s foolishness, and that foolishness leads to ever increasing poor decisions, and thus the TEA Party was given a small foothold in the House of Representatives.
Again, this wasn’t a mandate. But when that small group of small minded people took a chunk of the House hostage during the debt crisis theatre revue, they exposed themselves. Do you really think the GOP is going to let itself be burned alive by the likes of a “astro-turf” roots based corporate fueled “movement”? No sir! Naturally, they’re going to, pardon my analogy, throw that TEA Party nonsense overboard.
On top of this, it’s becoming ever so clear that the TEA Party has no real ideas, and the ones they do have are regressive and bad for the country. Also what may have worked two centuries ago with far less states and citizens cannot even begin to bridge the cap of a modern society made up of millions of people with various needs. It cannot fly in the face of the globalization this country fosters and it cannot turn it’s back on deals brokered in the past, regardless of party affiliation.
The idea to play chicken with our economy was a GOP idea. The TEA Party was sitting at that table, thumping along in time with the rest of the GOP Carnival side show band. I surely didn’t see any “left leaning socialist spend more tax more” liberals saying “Hey, lets just do nothing and see what happens,”. This wasn’t future debt that the beltway was fighting over, these were bills that we promised to pay, the money was already spoken for. The TEA Party and the right were ostensibly saying “Hey, don’t pay your bills…nothing’s going to happen,”. So the bottom of that argument not only looks insane, it paints a horrible picture to the independents that this “side” of the coin, doesn’t have the general best interests at heart. Therefore, they’re not so high up on these so called “patriots”.
If anything this could be a lesson to those of the TEA Party. As with most uninvolved participants to the game politic, they got had. To some of their credit, they realize this. At a recent Sarah Palin tour stop a fan asked her if she came to hock books or announce her candidacy. If she wasn’t going to run she needs to get out of the way. Good on you, Mr. Patriot.
Mr. Krier, Mr. Yunglas, and the rest of those right wing buffoons have a limited memory, or at least one for the truth. Sure, the olden times were full of simple things with simple people, but simple doesn’t mean stupid or unreasonable.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Shithead Hall of Fame Nominee: Rebekah Rast (The Americans for Limited Government)
I’ll never understand the right’s obsession, nay fear, of socialism “sneaking” in to our lives. It’s readily apparent that America has been picking and choosing chunks of governance philosophy for most of its existence. They fear this socialist uprising, yet bat no eyelash to the bulldozing of separation of church and state. For some reason, to top all of this off is the mystifying, stymieing, protection of the wealthy that most of the right is embracing with open arms.
Unfortunately, our media is helping push this bologna along with the objective eye that news has two sides. Typically, an opinion piece in the paper will be festooned with a writers affiliations (if there are any). It’s a great way to tell a buzzword, dog whistle laden, think tank hit piece from your neighbor down the street’s Fox News, buzzword, dog whistle laden bile explosion. Problem is, not that many newspapers or websites will run these credits with the words, and just lay them out there as fact. Hence, we get the old fashioned “Well I heard, that in the one place, they do (insert evil Liberal overreach)” or the fast belief that Sharia law is somehow invading our court system. You know, that silly tin foil hat bullshit that somehow is given credence because it’s run nonstop of 24 hour “news” networks, then picked up by major networks as a “B-Side” to the other side of a story.
Rebekah Rast, from The Americans for Limited Government (is there really any other?), writes about how a school in Detroit is doing the socialist bricklaying by allowing ALL children to get free lunch. This is done as to not shame the poor kids, who “…would skip important meals to avoid being identified as low income”. She goes on to further twist that this would then lead to the rich believing they should be privy to welfare checks, food stamps and government assisted housing.
It’s bullshit to assume that “rich” people would just start taking government subsidies, when wealth provides you with the hubris to turn your nose up at those who are living below you. There’s a pride in it, and you can see it every day if you look hard enough. Even those with barely a leg up over their more impoverished neighbors still cast a dejecting eye at those perceived below them.
As a child, I consumed a fair amount of free and reduced meals. I was never shamed of it, as I was a growing boy and constantly hungry. I was not ill care for at home, however. But my parents, who worked full time, did not have the time to brown bag me a frou-frou bagged lunch. Did I feel like a got the short of the stick sometimes, especially when friends would pull out warm wishing little notes with their sandwiches and puddings? Of course. But I was being fed and taken care of, with the tax dollars my parents put in to make sure of it.
Ms. Rast also mistakes, as I assume she NEVER ate a free lunch, that the stigma is wrought from consumption of free lunch. If you are poor, people know it. Kids are insanely keen and harsely judge, from an early age and probably learned from their parents, on appearance and in the rough and tumble world they roam, eating a free lunch is the least of your worries. It’s not like you can hide your ratty clothes, or lack of general hygiene.
To top this all of the “Healthy-Hunger Free Kids Act” will not even be put in place until 2014! It’s not even set in stone, yet we have groups like The Americans for Limited Government up in arms about it’s societal implosion and road paving to Russia fear baiting horseshit. It’s the same with “Obamacare” most of what that bill does doesn’t even come in to real action until 2014 and already it’s safe to say its impact will be negligible, in fact I’m sure the health care companies, who run on and for profit are so saddened by the sudden influx of new cash cows! The horror, America!
While the newspaper I found this appalling garbage in rightfully credited it to a writer from the very think tank she represented, many will not. They will post this up in the opinion section as if it were written by someone from town, or just another side of a story that’s patently false in every sense of the word. Even more disgusting is the fact that Ms. Rast quotes the president of the very think tank she’s writing for. Are you rewarded with head pats for a job well done Ms. Rast?
It’s been proven that a well fed child performs better in school, is more alert, and functions better in the classroom. It is also entire reason that the school provides food for children, and expanded it to include breakfast. There is a general societal/cultural awareness to make sure we take care of our children, as it a cornerstone for the supposed “future” these right wing buffoons are always going on about.
Most discouraging of all is this backhanded methodology in dealing with any of the societal woes facing American today. That if we took this twisted think tank logic and applied it elsewhere the kind of howls would erupt from the right wingers. For example, what about farm subsidies? Why should taxpayers have to prop up farmers when they lose their crops to drought, malfeasance or lack of forethought? Doesn’t that create a stigma when a poor farmer needs government assistance to help replenish his drought ridden farmland. Or the copious tax breaks to Agriculture monoliths like Monsanto, who are continually punitive to small farmers who will not use their products?
There’s always going to be an element of selfishness cloaked in piety, it’s (mostly) the American way for the upper class of this society. Ms. Rast is one of many think tank stooges that continues to fan the flame of class warfare in this country that has been brewing for some time. Though it is disguised as the classic “oh no they’re trying to get socialism in our America” nonsense, it is indeed a dog whistle for those among the right wing to avoid doing their part to help their neighbors and communities. Because what is not told is that these “lesser” people if they cave and fall, they take everything with it. The crime rate explodes, house values already at precarious levels fall even further. Look no further than the fanciful fever dream Detroit Ms. Rast and her think tank provided in her column. It’s STILL being ravaged by this recession and it’s decline didn’t start nearly three years ago when Obama became president as you are lead to believe.
It’s going to be a sad day when using our taxpayer dollars to repair and propel our great societal net is viewed as anything less as the least we can do for those less fortunate than the rest of us. I personally am perfectly fine in paying more taxes to keep every child who hungers fed. This is our future we’re talking about here, do we wish to set a good example, or a poor one? You’d think that the great societies who brought us these programs, who laid out a plan, would be inspiration enough. Sadly, wealthy people out there seem to think you can take it with you when you go, or are more than happy to pour taxpayer money down their corporate whore holes to continue to spread buffoonery much on par with Ms. Rast and her think tank overlords.
Unfortunately, our media is helping push this bologna along with the objective eye that news has two sides. Typically, an opinion piece in the paper will be festooned with a writers affiliations (if there are any). It’s a great way to tell a buzzword, dog whistle laden, think tank hit piece from your neighbor down the street’s Fox News, buzzword, dog whistle laden bile explosion. Problem is, not that many newspapers or websites will run these credits with the words, and just lay them out there as fact. Hence, we get the old fashioned “Well I heard, that in the one place, they do (insert evil Liberal overreach)” or the fast belief that Sharia law is somehow invading our court system. You know, that silly tin foil hat bullshit that somehow is given credence because it’s run nonstop of 24 hour “news” networks, then picked up by major networks as a “B-Side” to the other side of a story.
Rebekah Rast, from The Americans for Limited Government (is there really any other?), writes about how a school in Detroit is doing the socialist bricklaying by allowing ALL children to get free lunch. This is done as to not shame the poor kids, who “…would skip important meals to avoid being identified as low income”. She goes on to further twist that this would then lead to the rich believing they should be privy to welfare checks, food stamps and government assisted housing.
It’s bullshit to assume that “rich” people would just start taking government subsidies, when wealth provides you with the hubris to turn your nose up at those who are living below you. There’s a pride in it, and you can see it every day if you look hard enough. Even those with barely a leg up over their more impoverished neighbors still cast a dejecting eye at those perceived below them.
As a child, I consumed a fair amount of free and reduced meals. I was never shamed of it, as I was a growing boy and constantly hungry. I was not ill care for at home, however. But my parents, who worked full time, did not have the time to brown bag me a frou-frou bagged lunch. Did I feel like a got the short of the stick sometimes, especially when friends would pull out warm wishing little notes with their sandwiches and puddings? Of course. But I was being fed and taken care of, with the tax dollars my parents put in to make sure of it.
Ms. Rast also mistakes, as I assume she NEVER ate a free lunch, that the stigma is wrought from consumption of free lunch. If you are poor, people know it. Kids are insanely keen and harsely judge, from an early age and probably learned from their parents, on appearance and in the rough and tumble world they roam, eating a free lunch is the least of your worries. It’s not like you can hide your ratty clothes, or lack of general hygiene.
To top this all of the “Healthy-Hunger Free Kids Act” will not even be put in place until 2014! It’s not even set in stone, yet we have groups like The Americans for Limited Government up in arms about it’s societal implosion and road paving to Russia fear baiting horseshit. It’s the same with “Obamacare” most of what that bill does doesn’t even come in to real action until 2014 and already it’s safe to say its impact will be negligible, in fact I’m sure the health care companies, who run on and for profit are so saddened by the sudden influx of new cash cows! The horror, America!
While the newspaper I found this appalling garbage in rightfully credited it to a writer from the very think tank she represented, many will not. They will post this up in the opinion section as if it were written by someone from town, or just another side of a story that’s patently false in every sense of the word. Even more disgusting is the fact that Ms. Rast quotes the president of the very think tank she’s writing for. Are you rewarded with head pats for a job well done Ms. Rast?
It’s been proven that a well fed child performs better in school, is more alert, and functions better in the classroom. It is also entire reason that the school provides food for children, and expanded it to include breakfast. There is a general societal/cultural awareness to make sure we take care of our children, as it a cornerstone for the supposed “future” these right wing buffoons are always going on about.
Most discouraging of all is this backhanded methodology in dealing with any of the societal woes facing American today. That if we took this twisted think tank logic and applied it elsewhere the kind of howls would erupt from the right wingers. For example, what about farm subsidies? Why should taxpayers have to prop up farmers when they lose their crops to drought, malfeasance or lack of forethought? Doesn’t that create a stigma when a poor farmer needs government assistance to help replenish his drought ridden farmland. Or the copious tax breaks to Agriculture monoliths like Monsanto, who are continually punitive to small farmers who will not use their products?
There’s always going to be an element of selfishness cloaked in piety, it’s (mostly) the American way for the upper class of this society. Ms. Rast is one of many think tank stooges that continues to fan the flame of class warfare in this country that has been brewing for some time. Though it is disguised as the classic “oh no they’re trying to get socialism in our America” nonsense, it is indeed a dog whistle for those among the right wing to avoid doing their part to help their neighbors and communities. Because what is not told is that these “lesser” people if they cave and fall, they take everything with it. The crime rate explodes, house values already at precarious levels fall even further. Look no further than the fanciful fever dream Detroit Ms. Rast and her think tank provided in her column. It’s STILL being ravaged by this recession and it’s decline didn’t start nearly three years ago when Obama became president as you are lead to believe.
It’s going to be a sad day when using our taxpayer dollars to repair and propel our great societal net is viewed as anything less as the least we can do for those less fortunate than the rest of us. I personally am perfectly fine in paying more taxes to keep every child who hungers fed. This is our future we’re talking about here, do we wish to set a good example, or a poor one? You’d think that the great societies who brought us these programs, who laid out a plan, would be inspiration enough. Sadly, wealthy people out there seem to think you can take it with you when you go, or are more than happy to pour taxpayer money down their corporate whore holes to continue to spread buffoonery much on par with Ms. Rast and her think tank overlords.
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