Horrifying. This is what we get when the far right gets a free pass from the mainstream media. How about nightly fact checks on the evening news programs? These people are dangerous (the so-called journalists on the far right) when they inflame potential domestic terrorists so they can drive up ratings with their "info-taiment" shock talk, and then run from the responsibility when one of these nut jobs actually takes everything they've been saying as fact and starts building bombs or firing off shots.
Do they have the right to say the things they do? Well, I suppose they do. But the mainstream media, more so, has the responsibility of challenging what they say, from Fox News to Glenn Beck and beyond. Instead, they ignore it, or even worse, take it seriously and start reporting on the same "stories" these dangerous anti-journalists are fabricating without any real reporting to clarify fact and to separate truth from fiction.
When, not if, but when we have the next OKC, I'll be blaming the major mainstream news outlets as much as I'll be blaming the right wing "info-tainment" outlets. Perhaps even more so, because they truly are dropping the journalism ball where Beck and folks make it very clear that they are pandering to their viewers and listeners for the sake of the holy dollar and have little real interest in actually being journalists.
A lot of these folks cite the Bible for their political philosophies, well here's one for them:
Romans 13 (NSV): 1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.
Monday, November 25, 2013
When does it become too much? Some tea partiers are now calling for Obama’s “legal” assassination
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Christian persecution in America?
This has always frustrated me. We can talk about the death of spiritual principals and how those who do try to follow a spiritual way of life, whether or not I agree with them, are probably falling into a minority in this country, but to claim you are persecuted for being a Christian in the USA? That just makes me want to puke.
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Sunday, May 13, 2012
Marriage Equality: President Obama & North Carolina
I think the President does a nice job of explaining his evolving position on marriage equality in the following email:
Friend --
Today, I was asked a direct question and gave a direct answer:
I believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.
I hope you'll take a moment to watch the conversation, consider it, and weigh in yourself on behalf of marriage equality:
http://my.barackobama.com/Marriage
I've always believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. I was reluctant to use the term marriage because of the very powerful traditions it evokes. And I thought civil union laws that conferred legal rights upon gay and lesbian couples were a solution.
But over the course of several years I've talked to friends and family about this. I've thought about members of my staff in long-term, committed, same-sex relationships who are raising kids together. Through our efforts to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, I've gotten to know some of the gay and lesbian troops who are serving our country with honor and distinction.
What I've come to realize is that for loving, same-sex couples, the denial of marriage equality means that, in their eyes and the eyes of their children, they are still considered less than full citizens.
Even at my own dinner table, when I look at Sasha and Malia, who have friends whose parents are same-sex couples, I know it wouldn't dawn on them that their friends' parents should be treated differently.
So I decided it was time to affirm my personal belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.
I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them.
If you agree, you can stand up with me here.
Thank you,
Barack
Unfortunately, President Obama’s shift on this issue, while important, does little to change actual policy. In fact, while this counts as one in the win column, in North Carolina, there is not only a set back on marriage equality, but yet another example of poorly written legislation coming out of the far right wing of the GOP.
It’s one thing to write laws that I disagree with, entirely another issue altogether to put poorly written laws in the books… One is politics, the other is incompetence.
4 Worst Media Misrepresentations of North Carolina's Anti-Gay Amendment One | Media | AlterNet:
UNC-Chapel Hill law professor Maxine Eichner has spoken extensively to delineate the definite consequences of the Amendment as well as the possible consequences. She says the Amendment definitely bars the state from passing same-sex marriage or civil union legislation, which extends rights to same-sex couples, in the future. Furthermore, it bans the State from passing domestic partnership laws, which extend legal rights to unmarried couples, no matter their sexual orientation. Not only that, but it invalidates “existing partnership benefits by municipalities for all unmarried couples,” no matter their sexual orientation. In other words, as Protect All NC Families, the coalition organization set up to fight Amendment One, explains on its website, the Amendment eliminates “health care, prescription drug coverage and other benefits for public employees and children receiving domestic partner benefits."
Of course, there is always the possibility that this new amendment does exactly what its authors want, limiting the legal rights of people who are immorally shacking up regardless of gender…
Considering the recent birth control debates, would this really be an unexpected development at this point?
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Lord of the Rings - The Right Side of History | ||||
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| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Barack Obama's Gay Blasphemy | ||||
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| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Endless Suffrage 2012 - States' Rights Edition | ||||
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| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Barack Obama vs. North Carolina on Gay Marriage | ||||
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Sunday, February 12, 2012
Conservative voters: Poorly informed with low IQs & voting against their own best interests?
I was just going to throw this link up onto Snip.it & Pinterest, but I really felt some words were necessary here.
First of all, I have known some very intelligent people who have conservative political views. Not only are they smart, but their political views are smart as well. Their arguments are usually well developed, informed, and are very intelligent, based on legitimate facts, figures and historical interpretations.
Quite often I disagree with them, but this is because we subscribe to some different historical and philosophical interpretations. However, when we debate, I hope both of us walk away better informed than when we started.
These debates usually change no minds, but they can actually make each of our arguments stronger, because through a well-informed conversation on an issue, we both learn some new facts and figures, holes are punched in our weaker arguments, and we have to find support for fuzzy truths we may have thrown out in haste or drop those imperfect arguments from our repertoire. In the end, each side can make a better informed decision on the point being discussed and, hopefully, takes away stronger arguments in defense of our views.
But what about right and wrong? What about winning? Well, in intelligent debates, we are usually arguing sane problems and issues that have multiple, legitimate, intelligent solutions. There usually is not a right answer or a wrong answer. Or they are very complex problems that require the best ideas from both the right and the left to be adequately resolved.
Of course, I am not talking about racism, prejudice, discrimination, or science. I usually find that intelligent conservatives and I pretty much share the same views here. Because we are not stupid or ignorant.
Which brings us to this…
Conservatism Thrives on Low Intelligence and Poor Information | | AlterNet:
…Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.
It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.
But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasise the maintenance of the status quo".
Pausing for a second… I do not equate conservative ideology with intolerance, necessarily. Social conservatism, perhaps, but not conservatism in general.
It seems as if a narrow path is being walked here, almost but not quite defining conservatism as racist and intolerant. That may be problematic. Further, if these sorts are drawn to the conservative ideology, does that mean conservative ideology is intolerant? Or does it become intolerant because of the influx of these intolerant people with low IQs? In the end, does it matter even matter where the causes and effects lay? Or has it become a self-perpetuating cycle with the chickens shitting all over the eggs they are laying, beyond any identification of cause and effect?
Blah. From here the article climbs up onto more solid ground… The problem lies not with a lack of intelligent conservatives, but with the way the intelligent conservatives have been pandering to their side’s “basest, stupidest impulses.”
This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.
But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that man-made climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.
…
…"the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today". The Republican party, with its "prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science" is appealing to what he calls the "low-information voter", or the "misinformation voter". While most office holders probably don't believe the "reactionary and paranoid claptrap" they peddle, "they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base".
This is troubling in so many ways. But this is why so many poor Americans are fervent Republicans while many of the policies and practices of the GOP act against their own best interests at worst, or have little to do with any issues really effecting the poor at best.
Even more troubling:
In the UK, “the Guardian reported that recipients of disability benefits, scapegoated by the government as scroungers, blamed for the deficit, now find themselves subject to a new level of hostility and threats from other people.”
And even worse, and heading towards my real point here:
These are the perfect conditions for a billionaires' feeding frenzy. Any party elected by misinformed, suggestible voters becomes a vehicle for undisclosed interests. A tax break for the 1% is dressed up as freedom for the 99%. The regulation that prevents big banks and corporations exploiting us becomes an assault on the working man and woman. Those of us who discuss man-made climate change are cast as elitists by people who happily embrace the claims of Lord Monckton, Lord Lawson or thinktanks funded by ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers: now the authentic voices of the working class.
Many of the policies that benefit corporations are acutely harmful to the poor. Tax policy? Maybe, maybe not, but the minimum wage? Expensive workplace safety regulations? Even more costly environmental protection regulations?
The people arguing for deregulation will never live where the water supply has been poisoned by carcinogens, so why should they worry? Guess who gets to live there? The people voting for the conservative candidates who argue that such regulations kill jobs.
The real issue is not the IQ of the voters. I know for a fact that many of the loudest voices on the left should be locked in small rooms and only allowed to talk to rocks. Both sides have these people.
But what is so disturbing to me is how so many on the right so callously prey upon the ignorance of many in their voting base.
Perhaps this is my own prejudice, but what I see so often is the left saying, vote for us and we’ll keep the plant next door to your house from killing you while the right says, vote for us, and we’ll keep the left from putting job killing regulations on the plant next door to you and who really believes in all that science stuff, anyway, that says arsenic is bad for you? Jobs and superbabies! You can have it all!
I used the photo of the class warfare sign at the top of this post because I feel that this really is class warfare. It is an act of class warfare for the right to use these tactics on their own supporters.
The right says we cannot have a discussion about income inequality, because that is class warfare and an attack on the capitalist principles of the American Dream. Those on the right who would actually benefit from having this discussion, those who desperately feel the worsening ache of the dying American Dream every day, turn angry, fearful eyes towards those on the left who are fighting for them, away from those on the right who are actually stealing access to the American Dream from the vast majority of the country’s citizens in the first place.
And that, beyond being reprehensible, is just plain frightening.
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Monday, October 17, 2011
On SNL (with Video): Rick Santorum fantasizing about gay shower sex (because I just can't say that enough...)
Livewire | TPM: Santorum: SNL Debate Sketch Was 'Bullying':
Rick Santorum found himself debating the rest of the GOP field from inside a gay bar over the weekend. Actually, that was just where SNL placed Andy Samberg as he was portraying the candidate in a sketch. Neither Samberg’s Santorum not the candidate himself were pleased with the placement.
In an interview over the weekend, Santorum claimed that the sketch was “bullying.” “We’ve been hammered by the left for my standing up for the traditional family and I will continue to do so,” Santorum said. “The left, unfortunately, participates in bullying more than the right does. They say that they’re tolerant, and they’re anything but tolerant of people who disagree with them and support traditional values.”
'via Blog this'
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Sunday, October 09, 2011
Rick Santorum Fantasizes About Gay Soldiers Who 'Shower With People'
Considering the second excerpt from this piece, I felt it necessary to post the Google search of his name from this morning. Yep. I did it. I went there. So much for the high road.
Rick Santorum Bemoans Gay Soldiers Who 'Shower With People':
"Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum doubled down on his recent comments opposing allowing gay soldiers to serve in the U.S. military, invoking the image of soldiers showering together to explain his support for reinstating the discriminatory "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
...
Wallace then presented a quote from a former military official to Santorum and asked whether he agreed with its basic idea: "The army is not a sociological laboratory. ... Experiments ... are a danger to efficiency, discipline and morale and would result in ultimate defeat."
Santorum, looking uncomfortable, said that he did agree with the general idea of the statement. Wallace then revealed that the quote was from Colonel E.R. Householder, a World War II-era official whose comments were made in opposition to the racial integration of the military."
'via Blog this'
Just checking the old Google Search...
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Man Charged With Possessing 4,000 Pounds Of Explosives, Saying 'We Will Be Mercenaries' | TPMMuckraker
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Breitbart: Conservatives ‘outnumber’ liberals, ‘and we have the guns’ | Raw Replay
Hell, if we are truly at war with these people, then I'd say our democracy is very much in distress. Maybe they should be looking more at workable solutions then at conquering everyone who disagrees with them.
Breitbart: Conservatives ‘outnumber’ liberals, ‘and we have the guns’ | Raw Replay: "Speaking to a Massachusetts tea party group recently, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart made some comments that are raising eyebrows online this week, telling the small gathering of Republicans that he sometimes wants to “fire the first shot.”
“I’m under attack all the time,” he said. “The call me gay. There are death threats… There are times when I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot. Bring it on.’ Because I know who’s on our side.
“They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country and we have the guns… I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with. ”
Breitbart added that “major named people in the military” will sometimes “grab” him and say, “Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.”"
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Counterprotesters confront Westboro Baptist Church at Arlington - CNN.com
KKK protests Westboro Baptist Church protesters... You know you are low when the KKK looks good compared to you. Though I do wonder about the line, "Members of the group declined to say whether they were armed." This is relevant how?