Picking Up The Pace and Tying Up Loose Ends…

It has been a while since I put anything on this blog. There are plenty of reasons that I could share but none of them are particularly useful as excuses. Unless you count the attempted murder. Or the fire…

But that is behind us and it is time to move forward. I think that I need to pick up the pace in writing new posts. I also need to finish my unintentional series on Fixing Education. And, apparently, I need to quote Ronald Reagan some more. He seems to be very popular for some reason. OK. That’s a bit disingenuous. I know why Ronald Reagan is so popular. It’s because he was such a Liberal. Right?

Anyway…

I want to start posting on a weekly basis, at least. I would also like to narrow the focus here a little bit better. I seem to be all over the place. It kind of mirrors the way I think but I never intended the articles here to be a roadmap to my thought process. I would also like to get more comments from readers. Anything really. Suggest topics, share your likes or dislikes, or even just general comments.

There is a wealth of political topics to discuss also. It seems as if the Republican Party has been infiltrated by a radical cadre of hyper-rightwing, poor-people hating, money loving, union busting post-boomers. They hate the middle class and they hate the working class with such a passion that they seem willing to destroy this way of life as readily as they would swat a mosquito. The Tea Party Republicans hate everyone except those they aspire to be. The wealthy.

The Tea Party Republican Agenda

This is just off the cuff and poorly researched but…the Tea Party is perfectly willing to call teachers a drain on society because of their “thugish” unions and their ridiculous fiscal planning and uppity retirement plans. But GE, the world’s largest corporation, can announce a worldwide yearly profit of $14.2 Billion with just over $5 Billion coming from their American operations while still paying $Zero in taxes and the Tea Party is just fine with that. In fact, GE claimed, and received, a tax benefit of over $3 Billion. If we count just the North American profits of $5 Billion, that means that GE was taxed at a rate of -60%. So, using the new Tea Party math, if I made a very fictional $50K last year, I should expect a tax benefit of $30,000.00. Sounds fair to me. I need to get those union thugs on this right away…

…but these Union Thugs don’t spend $Millions each year on lobbyists and tax lawyers like GE does. They just bargain collectively for teachers, a high crime in the eyes of the new regime. But that brings us back full circle. You know who hated the GE tax dodge? Ronald Reagan. You know who didn’t hate collective bargaining? Ronald Reagan. So I will leave you with a quote from the Rightwing’s favorite pinko commie…

Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.

~Ronald Reagan

Journalism? Conservative Cannibalism Keeps Fake Scandals Alive

Yes. The country has been taken back. Back to a time when gentility and civility did not exist. Back to a time when divisiveness was de rigueur. Back to a time when disrespect was common, racism was fun and facts never got in the way of a good story. The so-called Tea Party Movement was able to shift this country even further towards the right with a simple grass-roots movement which, in turn, was backed by a simple corporate news conglomerate and some billionaires who want to keep the conservative agenda alive. The best way to do that is, of course, to keep the huddled masses huddling.

Facts?

Facts just get in the way of a good story. Why bother with finding out of a story is true when it plays so well on the radio and TV? Point in case? The President’s trip to India. Earlier in the week, an unnamed source from an unnamed agency stated that President Obama was on his way to India and that the trip was going to cost $200 million dollars a day and that there were to be 34 warships and an aircraft carrier going as well. Once the story hit the Internet it was picked up by the conservative news services. Suddenly Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity even the freshly elected Michele Bachmann were all harping on the President’s big, extravagant, luxury ridden trip to India. Never mind the fact that the Pentagon laughed at the notion of committing 10% of the US Navy on a peacetime visit. Never mind the fact that Factcheck.org did the math and pointed out that $200 million a day is more than the Iraq war cost. Never mind the fact that no one in the White House ever said anything. That the Secret Service doesn’t release this sort of information to anyone. Ever. And why shouldn’t we mind the facts? Because they just get in the way of a good story.

When pressed by Anderson Cooper for some additional information about the numbers, Michele Bachmann stated, “Well these are the numbers that have been coming out in the press…” Well of course they are. And that leads us back to Beck and Limbaugh and Hannity and Fox News and every other member of the corporate conservative news machine. They have stopped reporting the facts and started reporting what each other reports about the facts. To say, “It’s in the press” is tantamount to saying “Fox News is reporting that Fox News has said (insert fake scandal here)…” Fox News is now a self-perpetuating, fake-scandal reporting, fact-ignoring juggernaut. It exists by feeding off of itself to the extent of hiring the very same people they pretend to report on.

It’s On The Internet

Eric Bolling from Fox Business News might actually deserve the credit for getting this ball rolling on his Fox program, “Follow the Money.” He ran a package with numbers quoted from an Indian website. Numbers that were not substantiated, verified or accredited. But hey, it’s just the news…right? And to absolutely prove he was right, Bolling added this little gem:

“I will tell you unequivocably, I am not making this up, this has been reported, go to the Internet, go take a look.”

Go to the Internet and take a look. Does that mean that if it’s on the Internet it’s true? Good. What else is true then? Let’s start with one I found on Drudge. “REPORT: US Military to build kilometer-long bomb-proof tunnel – so Obama can go to the Ghandi Museum…” Really? I thought that I should read the article before commenting on it. Or linking to it on my blog. Drudge should try that once in a while. The article starts out by condemning the American mind-set. The author, Pandurang Mhaske, writes, “It could give a sense of superior American organization, or be an indicator of a deep-set persecution complex. It could also be a manifestation of Uncle Sam’s penchant for a show of strength.” Deeper into the article, Mhaske describes the tunnel. “The tunnel would be a kilometer long and measure 12ft by 12ft — enough to let Obama’s cavalcade pass through. The tunnel would be centrally air-conditioned, fitted with close-circuit television cameras, and will be heavily guarded at every point, including, of course, its entry and exit.” Sweet. But wait! There’s more!

Mhaske wrote, just before describing the tunnel that it would be built by American military engineers IN JUST ONE HOUR! “They came up with a quick solution which left the Indians accompanying them amazed: A bomb-proof over-ground tunnel — to be installed by US military engineers in just an hour.” Amazed indeed. The only amazing part will be if any of this is even remotely true.

Other “True” reports on the internet include:

• The Pentagon was not hit by a jet liner on September 11, 2001. BUT…
• The Pentagon was built on occult symbols that can only be seen from the air but that are hidden and “barely discernible albeit almost complete.” It was done for undisclosed reasons by undisclosed people.
• The moon landings were hoaxed.
• UFOs have been visiting earth for centuries and much of what we are, we owe to our alien pals.
• Atlantis existed.
• George W. Bush was a Mass Murderer.

All on the Internet so, according to Fox News, all true.

And Now This Important Message…

Spencer Tracy recited these lines in the 1960 movie Inherit The Wind.

Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!

Of course he was talking about evolution in a movie loosely based on the so called Scopes Monkey Trial but he could have been talking about the current state of politics in America. The favored hark and cry of the Tea Party supporters is some variation on “We want to take America back.”

Back To Where?

“We want to take America back.” Back to where? Or is it back from where? Who has it that shouldn’t? Or is it the whole progress thing? Listening to the candidates, it seems that the new conservative movement wants to take us back to a time where women and minorities knew their place. Back to a time where only land owners could vote. Back to a time where the poor were left to die and only the wealthy had health care. Back to a time “when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind.”

VOTE!

The madness has to stop. Where are we in this country when followers of a candidate are wearing uniforms? When private security guards are arresting reporters? Where political candidates are discussing revolution as a viable option. Armed insurrection against the government of the United States of America as a political option? And why? Because they lost an election two years ago?

Please get out and vote. I really don’t care if you vote Democrat or Republican. Just don’t vote for the lunatic fringe. And don’t vote for anyone these people represent.

Nope. Nothing racist here.

Really this is perhaps the saddest of them all.

Fox News. Number one source of infro-mation.

This moran needs a brain.

Dipers?

Asian Kids hate your Grandma.

And are speelings.

Therefore Obama is British and…Uhmm…Look! Hotdogs!