Believe It Or Not — Without Huckabee, Republicans To Grow More Callous… LooneyToons

Huckabee’s Decision Not To Run for President Marks the End of Compassionate Conservatism

Wow! Never thought I would think such a thought! A Baptist Minister is NOT my idea of a reasonable fellow to be… The President (deep voiced echoes follow). But, thinking back to the run-ins he’s had with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and other looney, right wing extremists such as Ron Paul and Tea Party politicians, it’s pretty much a field of mean-spirited, libertarian-oriented regressives remaining in the rethugnican ranks.

After accepting that he would not become the repugnican party’s nominee, Huckabee clearly wanted to outline the terms of what was happening within the party:

“The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism… It’s this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it’s a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says, ‘Look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don’t get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and health care, so be it.’ “

Huckabee was onto something, and it’s called the truth.

Yes, the Baptist Minister was lampooning orthodox libertarian thought. And that’s about right, to me, as I find it to be a philosophy of social darwinism ushering in a mean and calloused age for the United States — in a manner that completely rejects respect for and value of citizenship and human life.

This breed of libertarian republicanism struggles mightily to explain that their’s is a pursuit of good government and good economics… not heartless—”teach a man to fish, give him a tax cut, and send him on his way,” as Slate Magazine wrote. Liberals like me say this new breed of libertarianism is just guilt-rejecting and mean-spirited — like a sociopath. Huckabee sided with us liberals on this one, and he failed to re-educate the republicans.

Huckabee knew as much but remained optimistic about the best nature of Americans when he stated:

“That might be a, quote, ‘pure economic conservative message,’ but it’s not an American message. It doesn’t fly. People aren’t going to buy that, because that’s not the way we are as a people. That’s not historic Republicanism. Historic Republicanism does not hate government; it’s just there to be as little of it as there can be. But they also recognize that government has to be paid for.”

Well, I won’t miss Huckabee in the race, but I will miss the sense of compassion and realism that he might have added to the race.

Tea Party’s Over

At least it looks like Europe survives : )

Protesters Target Billionaire Koch Brothers… Couldn’t Happen To Two More Deserving People

Hundreds of activists showed up in Rancho Mirage, Calif. (actually one of my favorite places, with incredible modernist architectural gems), on Sunday to protest the political activities of conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Protestors convened outside a resort where the libertarian Koch brothers were meeting in closed-door sessions with donors, strategists, and politicians, including House Republican leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

Police Barricade Resort for Koch Brothers

The billionaire brothers, who run the chemical corporate behemoth Koch Industries, have been criticized in the past for quietly funding the Tea Party and limited-government, anti-environment initiatives (or waging a covert “war against Obama,” as The New Yorker would more correctly have it).

Protestors Surge Intersection Across from Koch Brothers Resort Compound

While protestors faced off against helmeted police officers circling the resort, a Koch spokeswoman defended the meeting.

It “brings together some of America’s greatest philanthropists and job creators … who share a common belief that the current level of government spending in our nation is simply unsustainable,” she said.

This is the eighth such meeting convened by the Koch brothers, and although the guest list is kept secret, past attendees have included Glenn Beck and prominent GOP figures.

Where, per chance, did the Koch family obtain its great wealth? Actually, Pappa Koch formed business alliances with that great defender of liberty, Joseph Stalin… you may remember him from the Soviet Union…

Oddly enough, the fiercely capitalist Koch family owes part of its fortune to Joseph Stalin. Fred Koch attended M.I.T., where he earned a degree in chemical engineering, and in 1927, he invented a more efficient process for converting oil into gasoline. Unable to succeed at home, Koch found work in the Soviet Union. In the nineteen-thirties, his company trained Bolshevik engineers and helped Stalin’s regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries.

And what did the Kochs and Stalin eventually build? Well, this…

Know who your evil sponsor is, really, Tea Partiers!

With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

Even By Air, Koch Brothers Are Protested At Rancho Mirage Resort

Political Spectrum: Because It’s More Complicated Than “We” Know…

So tired of hearing “She Who Shall Not Be Named” mis-brand the current Centrist/Progressive-leaning U.S. President as “Socialist” or “Communistic” [sic]…

So tired of hearing otherwise-highly-educated U.S. Citizens simplistically (and incorrectly) labeling all political stances as “Left” or “Right,” “Liberal” or “Conservative,” etc…

So here’s a chart to educate “her” and YOU:

Can we move on now? Please!

DINNER CHAT ABOUT A LUNATIC AND… I’m sorry, what were we talking about?

Out to dinner the other night with long-time friends, the subject turned to, of course, the recent tragedy in Arizona, the sanity/motives of the shooter, our current national debate over lessons to learn (or not), and my blog postings regarding the same.

• One comment stated as a biting joke only a long-time friend can make with the aura that they’re just kidding went something like, “Yeh, this one’s socially isolated now.” ‘Cept… t’wasn’t really said entirely in jest.
• And the other comment said, with all honesty from a good and loving heart, “I know you don’t really think it’s got anything to do with political rhetoric. You know this kid’s just a nut ball all on his own.”

To the first comment, sure I’m a bit “out there” from the rest of the field of Americans — always have been, always got better grades in school, too : )

Now, if I were like most Americans I could cloak my true thoughts in a palatable and patriotic veil of righteousness and say, “Well, with Jesus in my heart and the Lord guiding my spirit, I just know that what I’ve said is true and inspired by the Will of God. Any true American supports my God-given right to tell others of His Word… to shine heavenly light upon the dark political world infecting His exceptional nation.” Nah!

To the second comment, I say, “Sure, Loughner’s a nut case! And, it’s true that no one can know exactly what’s in a killer’s mind. So why have we spent so much time debating exactly that?” Because, in the end, it matters.

Let’s look behind the curtain, shall we?

I think we have to accept that it’s just far easier for folks to regurgitate Jared Loughner’s lunatic library — arguing whether he favored “The Communist Manifesto” or the screeds of that shrew, Ayn Rand — than confront the larger and harsher snapshot of our current social landscape that emerged after his massacre.

So, we will naturally regress back into the ol’ familiar post-tragedy cycle of our Reality TV-stultified era — quick “closure” to the tragedy,… a return to business-as-usual,… and, finally, national somnolence (look it up).

Case-in-point: In a Jan 09 2011 ”Portfolio.com” business column, the author J. Jennings Moss writes (implores) in “Blame Game In Tucson,”

Harsh voices from the left and the right are rising in the Gabrielle Giffords tragedy. None of this is good for the nation or business, especially when the only person to blame may just be a mentally troubled 22-year-old.

“None of this is good for the nation or business…” Wow, sorry. What kind of priority would place the shooting rampage upon 20 persons above business? Learning? Bad for the nation!

If we learn nothing from this tragedy — and “you” won’t (I’m going to keep referring to “you,” instead of the more embracing “we” because I am not a part of this general national mentality, so aptly pointed out at my dinner conversation) — we’re back to where we started. Get out of your goddam Lazy-Boy Recliner!… But, I digress…

And where we started was with two years of accelerating political violence — real violence, not to be confused with violent language — that should have struck fear into many… but didn’t, ’cause… ya’ don’t pay attention.

Let’s also face another tragedy that “y’all” will ignore: The only two Social Reforms (gasp!) that might have actually stopped him — tighter gun control and an effective mental health safety net — won’t happen. Even now.

• Gun and ammunition sales spiked last week, especially for the “Glock-19″ pistol and high-capacity 33-round magazine Loughner used. In Tucson, a traveling gun show enjoyed 50 percent better business a week following the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others! Even though six people died in the attack, gun enthusiasts showed up to show their support for the right to bear arms. Sick! Nothing — not even another bloodbath — will move Congress to enact serious gun control on unjustified/unneeded assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, because we’re Americans and, well, naked if not locked and loaded.

• Mindful Americans remember that it was President Ronald Reagan who eliminated federal funding for mental health institutions and then flooded our streets with the homeless mentally-ill. Enhanced mental health coverage will still be a nonstarter since the highest republican/conservative/libertarian priority is to repeal the federal expansion of health care access — which is also, let’s just say it, sick!

Moreover, calls for civility will have no more lasting impact on the “tone” of American discourse now than they did after the J.F.K. and R.F.K. assassinations or Oklahoma City bombing. Especially not in an era when technology allows more than 300 million Americans an open silicon megaphone for unmediated rants (this one, included).

Think back just a bit to when the House passed the health care bill last year. Within hours, on Monday morning, vandals smashed the front door of Rep. Giffords’s office in Tucson. The Palin “target” map (and the accompanying Twitter decree to “RELOAD”) posted online just one day after that vandalism.

Now, what’s the big deal about a little broken glass?

Few wanted to see the truth — that the vandalism and death threats were the latest results of a swelling and ugly insurgency that has metastasized since the final weeks of the 2008 presidential campaign…

Because… let’s face it, a huge number — maybe even most — white Americans just can’t abide a Negro as President (better civility prevailed, but I wanted to use the larger “N-word” deliberately since — though you might not openly use that term yourself — it is the term in most of “your” minds’ eye. It is your true unspoken feeling. I have my own personal experience with this as a white husband for twenty-one years to a black man.)

This inner disgust about your new Negro President percolated in the fiery health care conniption of August 2009. In that mix, Rep. Giffords held another “Congress on Your Corner” meeting, at a Safeway. The crowd’s rage and the dropping of a gun by one attendee prompted aides worried about her safety to call out the police.

Let’s just face it, America… you’re mean… and you’re frighteningly armed… and given a lack of civility and the cloak of anonymity (or it’s enabling cousins, fatalism and derangement) you are dangerous!

Like a puppy being house-trained, you will determine how free you — hence, we — remain in the future.

Can Americans really be expected to responsibly steward their own personal freedom? The question is begged. I mean, come on, your analytical and interpretive capacity are as limited as your performance in world-wide academic testing comparisons. Plus, you revert too easily and quickly to baser instincts of violence and tribalism. Certainly, you can’t reasonably be expected — or more appropriately… trusted — to thoughtfully balance freedoms with responsibility… accountability… when these are the attributes you as a group display.

Fellow citizens, you are afflicted, and too many of you are an affliction. You become confused too easily… delusional, even.

For instance, Mike Pence, a potential G.O.P. “Values” candidate for president (Oops, threw up in my mouth a little bit), told a C-Span audience that those bearing firearms at Congressional town hall meetings and Obama events (including one in Arizona, August 2009) were no different than anti-Bush demonstrators “waving placards.”

Right, holding signs legitimately pointing out the president’s criminality in his efforts leading the nation to illegal war is equivalent to ranting and chanting about taking back “your” nation while fully armed!? OK, so… can you see… yes, you are a delusional nation… and you’re armed. Dangerous.

As the president said in Tucson, we lack not just civil discourse, but honest discourse — which makes sense as honesty is precluded in the presence of delusion… Hello.

Since Obama’s ascension, we’ve seen repeated incidents of political violence. An incomplete, short list would include,

• the 2009 killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a neo-Nazi Obama-hater;
• the shooting death by an antigovernment gunman at Washington’s Holocaust museum in June 2009;
• last year’s murder-suicide kamikaze attack on an I.R.S. office in Austin, Tex.; and
• the California police shootout with an assailant plotting to attack an obscure liberal foundation obsessively vilified by Glenn Beck.

If, as President Obama said to the nation at Tucson’s memorial service, “a simple lack of civility” didn’t cause the Tucson tragedy, and we assume it didn’t cause these other incidents either… then one may appropriately conclude that what did inform the earlier violence — including the vandalism at Giffords’s office — was an antigovernment radicalism as rabid on the right now as it was on the left in the late 1960s (though, in the acting-out phase, two Kennedy’s and a black preacher named King were assassinated by the radical right and not the left, as I recall).

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But here’s the point: the fact that Loughner is likely insane, with no coherent ideological agenda, does not mean that a climate of antigovernment hysteria has no impact on him or other crazed losers out there. Nor does Loughner’s insanity mitigate the surge in unhinged political zealots acting out over the last two years. Oh! Hello, Sarah

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What’s also disturbing is what republican and conservative leaders have not said. Their continuing silence during two years of simmering violence has been chilling. The few who do speak are non-sensical:

• When a Department of Homeland Security report warned of far-right extremism and attacks by “lone wolves,” Newt Gingrich called it a smear and John Boehner demanded an apology. Really? No, I mean… really?
• A senior Republican senator told Politico that he saw the Tucson bloodbath as a “cautionary tale” for his party, yet refused to be named. Cowards, all.

Unless and until sane, intelligent, balanced (not, Fox’s “fair and balanced,” mind you!), and truly freedom-loving, responsible, and commendable citizens and leaders can summon courage and speak DOWN to the haters and Fox News Gestapo, too, it’s hard to see what will change in our mean and irresponsible society.

An Attack on the Soul of the Nation: What is Our Role in This Tragedy?

The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, the young congresswoman from Arizona, must speak to the soul of this nation.

Gabby, as everyone calls Representative Giffords, is liked on both sides of the political aisle as one of the warmest, brightest, most open, and best-listening members of Congress. She was listening to her constituents Saturday at a shopping center when a young man pointed a gun at her head and shot her at point-blank range, and then kept shooting until 14 people were wounded and six people killed, including a federal district court judge and a nine-year-old girl who was a member of her student council.

This horrible tragedy must now become an important American moment…

It is our obligation as citizens to make sure it does not become simply another quickly forgotten event. As the county sheriff in charge of the criminal scene in Tucson said on Saturday, this must be an occasion for national “soul searching.” Part of the tragedy is that, while this shooting has shaken the communities in which Gabby is a part — Arizona and Washington, D.C. — violent tragedies like this are far too common in our bitter country and our calloused world.

We should have always asked and now must ask: What is our role in this tragedy?

A central calling for the religious (Christians and Jews and Muslims alike) is to be peacemakers. Peace is not simply the absence of current conflict, but the presence of a just community. In the midst of tragedy and violence, it should mean that every person “of faith” must ask themselves:

• “How am I responsible?”
• What more can we do to bring peace to this world as the “Prince of Peace” has called us to do?
• What are the situations and environments that allow this kind of hate and violence to grow?
• How can I not only stop conflict, but also be a part of bringing about a just community that displays the positive presence of peace?

As many have already said, we must honor this tragic event by reflecting deeply on how we speak to and about one another, and how we create environments that help peace grow or allow — nay, invite — violence and hatred to enter:

• Many of us who would never consider violence of the fist have been guilty of violence in our hearts and with our tongues.
• We need to be able to relate to others with whom we disagree on important issues without calling them evil.
• The words we say fall upon the balanced and unbalanced, stable and unstable, the well-grounded and the unhinged, alike.
• Are we likely to increase or decrease the likelihood of such incidents if we literally place opposing politicians in the “crosshairs?” *
• Are we improving political discourse when we attack political opponents at events that also offer an opportunity to fire automatic weapons?

Inflaming 'Weak and Vicious Minds'

The Past Is Prologue (It’s Happened Before; It’ll Happen Again)

In the run-up to the 1912 Presidential Election, a man approached Theodore Roosevelt as he emerged from his car in Milwaukee for a scheduled campaign appearance and fired a 36-caliber revolver at Roosevelt’s heart from close range. The bullet lodged in the muscle of the former president’s massive chest. Roosevelt insisted on going forward with the speech.

As his white dress shirt grew increasingly red from the wound’s flowing blood, Roosevelt talked of the man who had just attempted to take his life:

Now, I do not know who he was or what he represented. He was a coward. He stood in the darkness in the crowd around the automobile and when they cheered me, and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me…but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me…

The attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) should not provide an opening to opportunistically score political points against an opposing political philosophy, but… tragedy often forces reassessment about who we are and how we function as individuals and as a society.

People of all political persuasions can learn some sobering lessons from this brutal and senseless episode, yet conservatives need to be particularly thoughtful about the language, images, and messages some individuals who seek to lead their cause have been using over the past 18 months.

 

Sign At Giffords' Hospital

The assault on Giffords begs the question not of whether it was directed or deliberately encouraged by any individual or organization in mainstream politics, but rather the question of whether it was an isolated event detached from the current level of public discourse or whether that discourse is inflaming “weak and vicious minds,” as Roosevelt put it. Do words have consequences? Do words help dehumanize persons in the mind’s eye of the weak and sick?

 

It can be easy to simply turn the station when violence breaks into our world — or happens in another community, not ours — but it’s a tragedy if the violence against Gabrielle Giffords and the others wounded and killed in Arizona become another passing event — a blip on the social media network of our lives — rather than something that changes us.

Instead of viewing this shooting as something that happened to other people in another place far away, this could be a time to tie us closer to our neighbors and fellow citizens across the country… even if we have disagreements.

As prayers continue for Gabby and the families of all those who were so brutally attacked, let the soul searching begin.

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*

 

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Portions Adapted from a commentary by Jim Wallis, “Christian leader for social change”

 

 

Ariz. Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Shot In The Head – This One’s On You, Republicans!

The mean-spirited attitude of the Republican Party is to blame for violence. THE BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS because of the horrible atmosphere you’ve created.

More overly armed American freaks are sure to follow. Let the Mayhem begin. I hope the Republican Leadership and Fox News feel deep pain and remorse. Likely not, though.

—————————————- Breaking News Alert: Reports: Ariz. Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shot at Tucson public event January 8, 2011 1:46:13 PM —————————————- Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot on Saturday morning while hosting an event outside of a Tucson grocery store, according to local news reports. National Public Radio reported Saturday that Giffords, who in November narrowly won re-election to a third term, was hosting her first “Congress on Your Corner” event when a gunman ran up and began shooting. According to a local news report, Giffords was shot in the head at point-blank range. She was taken to University Medical Center in Tucscon; her condition was not immediately known. Last March, Giffords was one of ten House Democrats who were the subject of harassment over their support for the national health care overhaul. At the time, the front door of Giffords’ Tucson office had been shattered in an early morning incident.

 

HAS AMERICA LOST ITS MARBLES?

Cult of Paranoia: Fear-Based, Right-Wing Persecution Fantasies

Sure doesn’t seem like it’s possible to have rational discourse these days. Instead of explaining why one’s ideas are better than the opponents’, there’s more of a tendency – an outright desire – to ridicule opponents.

It’s not just that “their” ideas are bad; they “themselves” are bad. The louder and uglier one can make that attack, the better – at least as far as ratings are concerned, if you’re in the media realm.

How did our Socio-Political Environment come to be so?

Author Michael Wolraich gives his take on what he calls “Persecution Politics” in his new book, Blowing Smoke, with the subtitle, “Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies About the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas and Turn Junior Into a Raging Homosexual.”

Succinctly, attacks from the extreme right find footing based upon Fear, primarily their acolytes’ fear of losing place in the power structure. The preferred means of fighting involves making themselves seem the victims, suffering unjust persecution from • anti-Christians (or worse, secularists!), • black power militants, • feminazis, • eco terrorists, • sexual deviants (that’s us gay boys and girls), and that all-purpose dumping ground for anyone they’ve overlooked, • socialists (lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!).

Wolraich breaks their strategy down into three steps:

• the slippery slope,
• the secret plot, and
• persecution.

The first of many examples cited for this action strategy concerns Bill O’Reilly promoting the idea that Christmas was “under siege” (yeah, as if!) in a series of Fox News segments. Creating an issue out of thin air — calling a Christmas tree a “holiday tree” — was just the first step down an evil path leading inexorably to systematically undermining Christianity (you see that, right?).

Interestingly enough… in 17th century England, those fun-loving Puritans banned Christmas trees (too pagan), caroling (too Catholic) and nativity scenes (too idolatrous). Now, that’s a war on Christmas! Has Bill O’Reilly been informed?

Now, who could be behind such a nefarious plot? No shortage of Conspirators, it seems, presented themselves: including those “Committed Secularists” in the nation’s courts and school systems, the Liberal Media (hell, we couldn’t even keep a national radio station on the air… so what are you talking about?), and, of course, dread defenders of individual rights… the ACLU. Can’t you see what this means? Christianity is under attack!

I am always fascinated, and increasingly disturbed, to learn just how paranoid my right-wing fellow citizens think, not to mention what strange conclusions they hold:

• Pat Buchanan, railing about how African-Americans are catered to by quotas, while bemoaning, “Who speaks for the Euro-Americans, who founded the United States?”
• Pat Robertson, who actually said, “Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians! It’s no different! It is the same thing!” (Have I missed seeing masses of evangelicals being rounded up into concentration camps and then summarily executed?)
• It’s also not a new tactic, as Wolraich shows when he quotes the President of the California Republican Assembly in 1962, campaigning against a proposition that would have outlawed housing discrimination, who explains, “The essence of freedom is the right to discriminate. Discrimination means free choice.”
• Today’s world: cue libertarianmiester Rand Paul and Faux News fascist John Stossell who both publicly profess that true freedom means being able to discriminate based upon one’s racist proclivity so the free market may reward or punish them for their abusive discrimination (May the Gods above help us).

Technologically, the volume’s been amped up in our cable and internet-plagued era, while rational debate is increasingly stamped out.

Moderate conservatives are seen as being nearly as bad as those darn socialists, and if they don’t toe the line, they’re dumped — witness the tea-bagging of many moderate republicans who won’t be seated in the next congress.

The rest of us are simply demonized as not being “Real Americans” because we dare to disagree. If we do so with facts, information, and rational thought… then the abuse must be all the more severe.

What’s to be done? Wolraich has some suggestions.

• One is the boycott: when viewers boycotted Glenn Beck’s show after he said President Obama hated white people, Beck’s rhetoric was (somewhat) toned down.
• “Just say no to media thugs,” he says.
• Present an opposing viewpoint whenever and wherever possible, with conservative moderates left out there especially encouraged to speak up.
• Wolraich points out how in the 1960s, a group of conservatives, including Sen. Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr., got together to strategize how to distance the party from the extremists in the John Birch Society, proving that yes, such things have successfully happened before.

Perhaps that was then, but this is a different time, and Wolraich’s proposals seemed naively optimistic to me. I’m simply overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness. People seem to have so much invested in being ugly to each other these days, I just don’t feel we have much chance of getting past it.

I mean, really, I’ve experienced it myself many times… even with family… once, at a wedding reception… for my niece! After deserts were served, a group of my generation of the family sat around a large round table. My cousin’s second husband, Fritz, couldn’t let the evening pass with us just feeling happy for the new bride and groom… No, we had to be reminded how fortunate we were for being privileged to do so in the world’s greatest nation.

After – literally – gagging on my sip of Champaign, I looked at him inquisitively and offered, “Um, Fritz… (pause) I live in a different America than you, because… no, I do not live in the greatest nation on the planet.”

He started to interject, and I just spoke louder over him, “No, and I thought everyone in this family knew that I have tried to give up my citizenship and obtain EU citizenship on several occasions.”

Various words flew back and forth, but in the end, the inexorable words arrived with great anger and tonal violence, “Then get the fuck out of this country, if you don’t love it!” To which I calmly tossed back, “Perhaps you weren’t listening, Fritz, but that’s what I started out saying I have attempted to do… did IQ’s sharply fall as we started this conversation?” I couldn’t just be allowed to have my opinion, my position, my personal life conclusions. No, an attack had to be mounted against the patriotic defiler!

I looked around the table. No one dared step in… because they knew my experience with this country (despite financial and quality-of-life success), knew my steadfast conclusions drawn, and knew I would not back down. My cousin also knew Fritz would not back down, as well, so her hand found his hand, and her gentle words flowed forth, “Fritz, Steven has his reasons, and we do not need to agree with them. It is how he feels.” Enough said. Fritz and I shake hands now and move on at family gatherings (Love my cousin, not a fan of her hubby).

Do check out Wolraich’s book. In addition to making me angry, it also made me laugh.

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As madness reigns, pundits, politicians, and cab drivers debate the source of the hysteria. Some blame ignorance; some blame racism; some blame the economy.

After poring over mountains of political screeds and heedlessly subjecting himself to countless hours of Fox News, author Michael Wolraich discovered the secret formula that turns ordinary men and women into fire-breathing, smoke-blowing right-wing maniacs. It’s “persecution politics”…again.

In Blowing Smoke, Wolraich documents, dissects and deconstructs the myths that underlie the right’s growing reliance on the politics of persecution, from Joe McCarthy to the Tea Party movement. In the process, he delivers an original and compelling hypothesis with penetrating insight and blistering wit.

At turns hilarious, disturbing and edifying, Blowing Smoke is a good if not great account of modern American politics.

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Look Who’s Talking… and Voting!

The state of America and self-described Americans seem to some of us as sad. Seems lately that myopic, ill-informed, and yes, rather unsophisticated haters lurk on every corner.

They’re voting! Here’s an introduction:

Some of these are citizens I truly like or love as friends and family.

But, it must be said:

• a lack of intellectual curiosity for due diligence and deep, thoughtful reasoning…
• seem to have combined with personal fear and deep-seeded personal insecurity…
• cloaked behind bombastic and unearned hubris
• – opening a vulnerability to leadership by political Lotharios, a manipulative power elite…
• who play a panpipe of mesmerizing vitriol so as to unleash the masses’ fearful baser instincts of destructiveness to “the others.”

Would that he tried, it would take Mr. Obama almost a lifetime to right the wrongs of this world, if he could do it at all.

The world is too full of foolish, self-haters who can not, for their very lives, see beyond the end of their own perceived self-interests — the interests actually of the Koch brothers and family that Libertarians and Tea Partiers gleefully swallow as their own.

Not familiar with the Koch family? How sad indeed — but you could prove my assertions wrong by completing due diligence on their interests and agenda… and see that they have funded your little Tea Party to advance their personal priorities and interests, not yours, nor the nation’s.

Now, while the Koch’s and friends have stirred many Americans’ ire that a Nigger (shhhhh!) could ever become a legitimate President of the United States of America… I really don’t think color is their big issue — it simply works effectively to stimulate and motivate your baser prejudices.

No, no indeed… What terrifies them is that they think Obama is liberal, and a liberal president might mean that the very rich and powerful few will no longer be in charge of the government itself. They won’t always get their way, might end up having to pay a more fair tax rate and — this one really hurts — might have to follow rules, as if they were common citizens, like you. They’ve enjoyed their god-like status, and are furious about losing it.

And, before you thoughtlessly assign me to the realms of a stereotyped unsuccessful person jealous of others’ success… consider that at 27 years old, I earned an income greater than 97% of Americans… and to this day, twenty-one years later, still bring in an income from various sources equivalent to more than 95% of Americans. It’s comfortable here.

Having pointed out this fact, the more important one is that the power elite leading Tea Partiers by the nose sit within the top 1/4 of one percent of the nation’s income earners. The distance between me and them is huge… The distance between most of you and them is… insurmountable! And they don’t want to share a dime to help you make your own life better.

Stressed and overworked, desperate for any work (!), just short of a world-class education but literate enough to read propaganda, and convinced unrealistically that you can become them… ah! now that’s where they want you. Easily manipulated prey.

Snap out of it!

http://colorofchange.org/whoisvoting

If you had any doubts about heading to the polls, this video should help get rid of them.

And if you have any friends or family who you think might not show up to vote, please send them the video to remind them why staying home is simply not an option.

http://colorofchange.org/whoisvoting

Conversation With A Tea Partier

Words Have Actual Meanings!

A Tea Party Patriot tries to explain how our freedoms are in jeopardy.

VOTE as if your very Freedoms depend upon it and are threatened!

Because American Freedoms are threatened… by Ignorance and Basic American Apathy.

________________________

You know, all kidding aside, the danger from the Tea Party and Tea Baggers themselves… comes not from the fact that they have a different opinion than I and other progressives (Who cares? Diversity of opinion is valuable and fun)…

• The threat to American Freedoms is the very lack of inquisitiveness (I know… big word for most) in the Tea Bagger character and the seemingly absolute disregard for fact-based thought.*
• The threat of the Tea Bagging movement is the validation of ignorance as a character-builder.*
• The threat of Tea Partying is “lack-of-knowledge” as a point of American Pride.*

The rather large number of serious conversations I have had with Tea Baggers and Libertarians who spoke, advocated, and debated much like this political cartoon is nothing short of profoundly shocking.

And the sad thing is… it’s generally my generation that seems most enmeshed in the movement and its emotional appeal. I know we were taught to think better than this… I know because I was there with them… learning to think, not just to react and parrot back a party line. What the hell happened to us?

We will be the generation that fails the nation and the youth. Sad.

* Yes, I would say I can be labeled a Proud Member of the Intellectual Elite