Defending the Faith

I hesitate to write about this, since everyone and his horse will undoubtedly pick up on the latest Republican hilarity.  It's an easy target, but it says so much about what the Republican party has been party to: the degradation of truth, logic, decency and freedom.  Yes, we have another Republican telling us that women probably can't get pregnant from being raped.

Denial, as I've been saying ad nauseam, is the flip side of belief and every belief requires a denial.  Denial of what you know to be true, is hypocrisy and to avoid hypocrisy, too many Republicans will defend what they know to be false and tell themselves it's heroic; tell themselves that lies are not lies if they're useful in defending the faith. Some of what one needs to defend in order to gain party support is immoral, indecent, mean-spirited and nasty too. Much of it is just a series of damned lies, but that's another story.

There's just no truth to the idea that God or biology protect a rape victim from pregnancy but the creed demands that one oppose terminating a pregnancy, whether unwanted or repellant or dangerous, so you -- forgive my technical jargon -- have to make shit up in order to defend the belief and deny the truth, be it incontrovertible truth about evolution, cosmology, geology, economics, law, mathematics or history. In many cases, being a Republican requires that you park not only your brains, but your honesty, your decency in the alley behind the GOP bar next to the dumpster, lest any of the clergy see it.

I won't deny that I take a certain satisfaction in presenting this one small, relatively unimportant demonstration of the mental processes that produce and direct the American Opera Buffo.  I delight in airing their dirty laundry, not because I like the rancid smell of batshit, but because it's time to burn it and bury the ashes.  It has been time forever.  

Losers

John Perr at Crooks & Liars today quoted Romney as having said about his wife Ann, back in 2007 "Her positions I do not think are terribly relevant to my campaign"   Hell, his own positions haven't been either! "Whatever you wish I would say - well I just said it" would be more accurate.

Almost as telling as the loser  Allen West's insistence that the frivolous law suits he keeps filing, trying to get recount after recount the law does not entitle him to, are "not about me" but rather about justice.  It's about you West and about time you got your "war hero" ass the hell out of town and be content that you weaseled out of an 11 year sentence at Leavenworth.

And of course Obama didn't win fair and square either.  People, you know, second rate people who should know their place, like Women and such voted for Obama because he lied and told them Republicans would march them into "rape camps" if Romney was elected, says Michael Graham, one of the Tea Party's maddest hatters.  You never heard of Rape Camps?  They're right over there next to the Death Panels and the filing cabinet where they keep Obama's Kenyan birth certificate and his Bin Laden autographed Koran.

What, you're just now noticing that the GOP is only a replica of a conservative party and probably put here by body snatching alien invaders who ate the originals?  What were you thinking and what were you thinking with?

Boo

"With regards to immigration policy, that those that come here illegally should not be given favoritism or a special route to becoming residents or citizens that's not given to those people that stayed in line legally,"

-Willard Mitt Romney-

One would think, if one had the fortitude to spend more than a moment watching what passes for television news, that for the last half decade or so there were nothing of more than momentary interest happening than the American political circus and perpetual campaign. Geological and meteorological calamities do get reported, but the vast bulk of air time is given over to "the candidates" and the unchallenged lies they perpetrate. There are no pauses between campaigns, no half time shows and no seventh inning stretches.

I say circus although circuses are intended to be family entertainment these days and freak shows have gone the way of Times Square peep shows, cock fights and lynchings -- and sadly, the traces of any sense of shame, decency and honesty that ever had the audacity to interrupt or question the ragemongering has disappeared.

At the South Carolina Fox News debate Monday last (and I call it debate with all awareness of the inherent dishonesty of the appellation) Mitt Romney was booed, not because of what discernible policies he may be espousing at the moment, but because his father was born in Mexico. I don't recall any booing in response to John McCain's having been born in Panama, but of course anything done or said more than ten minutes ago is irrelevant in today's Republican world and that hobgoblin called consistency is always foolish.

George Romney, Mitt's father, entered the US illegally from Mexico, which might have given a better, more decent, less ambnitious Mitt pause before making such harsh statements about not tolerating any mercy for illegal Mexican immigrants, but of course it's a racial and ethnic issue, not an immigration one despite assurances to the contrary. The name is Romney after all, not Ramirez -- and this was South Carolina, Glossolalia, Holy Ghost Power and Rebel Flags, just he way God likes it.

But the mood of the South Carolinian Republican Rabble was ugly and when moderator Juan Williams asked if it wasn't a bit insulting to minorities when Newt Gingrich spewed that nonsense about black people needing to demand jobs instead of food stamps, as though the unemployment problem were caused by laziness and a president that encourages it, the ugly mob conservative citizens booed the black moderator just as Republican snake pits at previous "debates" have booed Child Labor laws, booed a serving US soldier and cheered the killing of prisoners in large numbers.

Is it any worse that they insist on being called 'conservatives' and not snarling beasts and that our only sources of news collaborate in that farce? Is it surprising that the state of South Carolina, still unrepentant for having been the first to take up arms against the United States, would once again boo at Ron Paul's suggestion that the 'Golden Rule' so often quoted as a core Christian value be applied in US foreign policy?

" Quit warmongering, stop going to war, and treat other nations like we want to be treated. "

Hell, no! Boo the bastard! Ask not what Jesus would do, ask what Attila the Hun would do, what a tribe of savage head hunters and cannibals would do, what a pack of giggling, stinking hyenas would do while ripping and tearing at the corpse of America.

It's been suggested to me, that I should approach such people with a more polite demeanor -- that the people who have made most of human history a horror story need to be given a chance to discuss things, to debate things and that monsters and the people who promote monsters can be persuaded by kind words and reason to change.

Boooooooo!

Waiting for Gandhi

Those CNN.com Polls are hardly scientific nor do they claim to be, but when I read that 76% of participants think the payroll tax cut extension should be approved, I have to wonder at the Republican pose that insists such 'socialist' things are being stuffed down our throats by tyrannical Democrats who don't represent us as well as billionaires and multinational corporations do. Other things like medicare and Social Security and health care reform have been stuffed down our throats even though three quarters of us support them. Yes, Americans can seem like geese sometimes, but it's mostly the people eating foi gras and hating Democracy who want to run the farm.

Even my most intransigently Republican friends are risking an eternity in hell by suggesting that the GOP is deliberately sabotaging the government and the economy and the well being of our citizens for political gain and Obama's approval rating is slowly climbing as the flock of candidates chortle about sin and repealing child labor laws. So perhaps the slow shift in mood has to do with the traveling freak show from whom Republicans will be forced to choose as well as the unavoidable recognition that our definition of "smaller government" smells so much of the 19th century British colonial attitude: do nothing, have nothing done and don't allow anyone to do anything. Gandhi was able to turn it back at them. It should be easier for us. We already have the vote.

T- Bag to T-Rump

"Listen, you motherfuckers, we're gonna tax you 25%"

-Donald Trump-

Rummaging in a desk drawer this morning, I came across a tin box with a picture of George Bush on it. It said National Embarrass Mints. Remember those more innocent times? Of course that eight year horror story wasn't the first time I've been embarrassed for my country, or by my country. Actually that has been my regular condition since the Johnson administration, but I suppose it's the sort of thing one builds up a tolerance for. If we had had the Tea Party decades ago, I'd like to think they would have been written off by most conservatives as ill informed, ill intentioned and just plain ill. We've reached the point where an admission that the country had been steered into a war longer than and more expensive than WW II on false pretenses, on borrowed money and people punished for trying to expose it, has disappeared into the background noise, drowned out by the screaming about Planned Parenthood and National Public radio. America hasn't had a sincere, informed and rational discussion about anything for years: witches, flag pins, racist accusations, lies, damned lies and religion and all the while they're selling our American birthright out the back door.

Each increment, each step downward, seems to be a bigger one. The distance between the T-Baggers raging about things they are totally misinformed about and T-Rump calling the Chinese government "Motherfuckers" because they make a profit on trade with the US is as least as much a demonstration of the accelerating madness as all the insanity about birth certificates and scholarships paid for by Islamic Communist terrorists. But it's the sight of the cheering throngs enthralled by a barking idiot with hair that would make Andy Warhol's wig maker cry that has brought me to a point far beyond the galaxy of mere embarrassment.

It's not the idiots and crooks and con men in Washington to blame, it's the howling apes and laughing hyenas who don't think they're bad enough or destructive enough to suit us. Foreign policy? Why what we need to do is what that Tucson lunatic did and shoot the bastards, tax the motherfuckers, show them who the big dog really is. Let's put on togas, get shitfaced and PAAAARRRTYY!

I'm disgusted, I'm offended, I'm done. Living in a country where some drunk, ignorant, low life braggart with a skull full of stupid can get cheers acting like a sociopathic barroom hooligan and be considered as a potential president of the United States? Fuck it. It's not worth saving if it can't save itself -- and I pretty sure it doesn't even want to.

What does the end of America look like? It looks like this and it sounds like this and people love it.

So when do we start restoring sanity?

OK, so you think my last post was petty, or over the top and just plain silly? You think the country hasn't lost any connection with reality and we haven't turned into gap toothed, tattooed and camouflage clad Chatty Kathy dolls who squawk the same old tinny phrases when anything at all pulls the string? You think that objective, fact based and reasoned perceptions aren't more rare than raisins in some off brand breakfast cereal?

CNN.com is running a story today about a countrywide Federal crackdown on sex traffic in underage girls. This Federal initiative began in 2003, but according to the kind of people who post comments, child prostitution is Barack Obama's fault. And not just that - Obama likes people to abuse young girls. You see, some of the culprits were from Somalia where most people are Black and nominally Muslim. Obama's father was from Kenya which is on the same continent as Somalia. Therefore Obama is a Muslim and a child molester who wants to protect child molesters.

I realize it's fashionable amongst liberals who aren't scientists to say that IQ means nothing, but it certainly does. If yours is above room temperature, you'll question the presence of "therefore" anywhere in that statement. You won't see it as the fair and balanced "other side" of the story.

The inability to see that this string of pronouncements doesn't even superficially resemble a logical or factual progression seems more than prima facie evidence of congenital and irredeemable idiocy. I'm sorry to sound all Democrat here, but there's something wrong in making it hard for a brain surgeon to get a green card while allowing massive political power to people who only resemble human beings in that they walk on two legs - and rising to power by riding their wave of idiotic anger.

John1865

This is absolutely Obama's fault. The Democrats want illegal's in our country, so they can get their votes. We need to unite and close our borders.

jake1111

And to think.. This is what Obama wanted to protect and even proposed a law suit on Arizona to protect these monsters!.. Remove this man ASAP!

jake1111

This still wont stop it. We must stop the Obamaism of protecting radical Muslims, Ilegal immigrants etc and remove all illegals from this country ASAP!

BobMD

Isn't third-world immigration just great for our society? Our culture gets enriched with third-world customs like child prostitution.

pemch

These f-gg-ts should be put behind bar for life.


OK, so that's enough. I don't have to tell you ( if you're not a Republican dupe) that illegals don't vote, Obama isn't trying to support sex crimes, especially by arresting the offenders and isn't encouraging immigration by deporting half a million illegals every year. I just put in the last one to show the total disrespect for reality it takes to suppose that male homosexuals really want to rape girls. I left out the one suggesting that all people who have a pension [sic] for young girls should be executed because it's a form of murder even though the victims were rescued alive.

No, all the comments aren't insane, at least not completely, but some of the sane ones claim that the courts don't have mandatory sentencing, which of course is nearly as grotesquely stupid as blaming Obama because there were some Somali pimps involved while ignoring the demonstrable fact that the current administration is deporting half a million immigrants a year, which is far, far more than the Republican administration did. And then there's the fact that the current administration actually rounded up these folks, which makes it hard to wrap one's mind around the assertions that the federal government cannot do anything and should do even less.

No, Obama doesn't want to import and support foreign organized crime, isn't encouraging illegal immigration and in fact it's the Republicans who are protecting companies who hire them. No, child prostitution isn't a previously unknown import, although many of the victims are and if anyone insists that Obama is "protecting radical Muslims" by rounding up, prosecuting and jailing criminals, perhaps it's time to deport such folks or have them committed to mental institutions. But you know, there's a certain party who loves the insane zeal, loves the cognitive disabilities and yes, the insanity and, don't give me any more bullshit about Democrats are just as bad -- they're not -- and you all know damned well people who post comments like these call themselves conservatives.

Our founding fathers certainly weren't deluded enough to equate liberty with rule of the most manic. Where is the protest? And who is it shouting "elitist" when any shy suggestion is made that, despite the neo-Maoist sentiments of the tea baggers, dumb people say dumb things and make bad leaders and bad voters. And OK, lets be fair and ask who enables and encourages them by being all cute and not voting "in protest" because Obama didn't leave you the present you wanted for Christmas? Yes, you're damned right it's your fault too.

Season of the Witch

Will the process that's been so noticeable since Nixon's retreat result in civil war, or will the collapse of government be as invisible as a black hole in the midst of the raging litigation now being planned by the Republicans to mark their return to power? The legal assault on Bill Clinton, that was retribution for the legal actions taken against felonious Richard Nixon and his corrupt administration, was notable for its attempted parity.

Charge for charge, and almost word for word, the Gingrich gang and its Starr inquisitor attempted to make charges of propositioning a woman payed handsomely to make them, and having asked his secretary not to tell his wife into impeachable treason. That the Democrats have again usurped their perceived mandate of heaven and taken control ( sort of) once again, plans are already being made to cripple Barack Obama as they did Clinton, come November 8th and never mind that Obama seems faithful to his wife -- it doesn't matter.

" Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) – are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s,"

says Politico today.

"How acrimonious things get really depend on how willing the administration is in accepting our findings [and] responding to our questions,” adds Kurt Bardella, spokesman for the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who refers to his boss as “Questioner-in-Chief.’"

I'm assuming Obama won't readily accede to the inevitably trumped up and specious charges, but you never know, judging from his restraint in bringing up the GOP's singular failures, gross misrepresentations, war crimes and constitutional infractions, but acrimonious? That's as close to real humor as a Republican has ever come.

There are no angels in this dogfight, but the Republicans have an undeniable record of unrestrained, immoderate and rabidly vicious assault on all fronts when they're defeated and more so when that defeat is so clearly merited. They don't like rules except when the rules protect them. They love secrecy but decry it in others. They don't like taking responsibility for their failures, but find fault with anything and everything in their opposition and they don't give a damn if they're right or wrong as long as they gain power.

The November elections are only two months away, but the pyre is already under construction waiting only for the witch hunt to begin. It doesn't matter what Obama does or whether he succeeds or fails. I doesn't matter if he picks up every stitch, it's still going to be the season of the witch.

Below the surface

Sometimes I meet the nicest people, kind, outgoing, articulate and with many shared interests. A Saturday afternoon barbecue, a manicured garden, a convivial crowd of fellow boaters; many with experiences I can only envy, of cruising the beautiful and exotic parts of the globe.

I mention a planned sail to the Leeward Islands and a stop in beautiful Dominica with it's mountains and waterfalls and hot springs and black sand beaches like the Hawaii of long ago. "Maybe I'll never come back," I say.

"Maybe we'll all have to go elsewhere" says she, "before those Liberals ruin the country with all that debt and, you know before that Obama destroys capitalism."

There's that sick, sinking feeling again; the realization that beneath the tranquil surface, there's a dangerous reef to rip your bottom out. I should have known; but facing the isolation one feels when surrounded by people passionately inimical to your every thought and steadfastly obstinate in resisting any facts or any argument that might diminish the comfort of their cherished anger, makes one too desperate to believe someone might not have been infected with that alien zombie virus. Damn it, I let my guard down again.

"I can't watch the news any more, it's all Liberal" she says. Perhaps she doesn't, but she's listening to someone. Someone is not telling her that the debt began so soar in terrifying fashion when George entered the white house; has soared under every Republican president since Ford or reminding her that the tax cuts that were supposed to increase government revenues didn't and that were supposed to create new jobs created no private sector jobs whatever while government jobs and government coasts soared. Someone isn't telling her that our senseless military endeavor that appears now to have been embarked upon for profit has already cost more that World War II and continues to burn through billions. That kind of debt doesn't count, only debt that might help Americans who aren't already in the club. No -- best not to listen to the Liberals on the TV news.

"It's true that 24 hour coverage leads to a format that's mostly speculation and opinion and it's true that at least one network simply lies and invents and misquotes and twists facts, " I said. Her brow began to furrow. "That's why I try to read as many sources as I can. "I read three or four to a dozen newspapers most every morning," I say. " I listen to everything from Al Jazeera to Haaretz on line." I can see the suspicion growing, the bestial voice in her head growling liberal.

I'd ask her to define liberal, but I know she's define it as its opposite. I know she has no awareness of current events, history or anything outside the Yacht Club Republican cocktail-hour school of economics and social criticism. I know there's no point in flexing a consciousness that's been ossified in one position for 75 years, so I do what I always have to do and smile and say:

"Oh, don't worry, it's a strong country and I'm sure we'll survive," even though I'm far from certain.

Kind of a blast.

Amongst the most common criticisms of President Barack Obama published in my local papers are that he has an "agenda" for taking away our guns. The few howlers offering any proof of this nefarious plan depend mostly on the fact that Obama is a Democrat and on redacted quotes from Rahm Emanuel or references to obviously incendiary articles with titles like "Rahm Emanuel to disarm America" and calling him things like "a Zionist gun-grabbing Communist." Even if we're to discount the Skinhead origin of much of this and ignore the supercharged, nitrous injected hyperbole so common to apoplectic extremists intent on portraying everyone else as extremely angry, we need to remember one thing: Rahm Emanuel is not the President of the United States, and has no authority in any way related to being able to do anything about Gun laws. That's the job of Congress and this congress seems unlikely to consider any such thing even if the President suggested it -- and he certainly hasn't. The Courts have ruled on the side of allowing private citizens to own and carry firearms, most of the legislators elected in the last election are pro-gun and that seems to be that.

Of course, just like the Tea people, out there howling about a tax increase they didn't get and death panels we've had all along and about taking back the country they never owned from the majority without any recognition of the blazing, neon lit irony -- my fellow gun owners and second amendment supporters are about, as I write this, to mount an armed protest against the gun-grabbing liberal commietyrantmarxistafrican, are unaware or are unwilling to be aware that Obama signed into law last year a bill making that demonstration legal by finally allowing firearms to be carried in National Parks. Thanks, Pres. As a Liberal, I approve of that.

I don't know whether it's too much of a strain on people from Stormfront to pass beyond the shoddy "democrats grab guns, Obama is a Democrat, he will grab guns" syllogism and into the world of real events. It doesn't matter however, since the supply of things real and imagined will always allow the kind of Storm and Stress they need. For those of us able do discern elitist things like irony however, it's a blast.