What is it with people?

           There I was, just surfing teh intarwebs, armed only with my wits, my extremely non trusty keyboard (QWERTY sucks), and an old cold cup of coffee that wasn’t helping anyone, and all of a sudden, WHAM, it hit me.  I have been playing around on this @$%@^$# computer all day and I haven’t written  hardly anything… well, i did toss a blurb out in the rhino nuggets, but it wasn’t much.  Plus, Khlaid Sheikh Mohammed is dead meat on a stick no matter where he goes, doesn’t much matter where they hold the trial.  He must be held accountable, and he must be held accountable by “We The People” not the military, not just kept locked up in a cell forever.  Put him in a court and let him defend himself just like anyone else who went around killing people like a complete antisocial f****** nutcase.  Aaaaaaaand We do have the death penalty here, ya know…

      Onto other things.

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  I’ve been reading some comments on youtube that were attached to this particular viddy (after watching some keyboard cat goodness, of course), and I have to tell you, the Presidents opponents are both angry, and extraordinarily unintelligent, at least the ones whose fiction I read there.  A few tidbits for you to peruse:

Obama: At his SKIT SPEECH in “Asia”……”HEY ASIANS!……..if I can keep up the LYING BY OMMISION?……then we have a whole generation of kids in America !!! who ~mm~mmm~mmm!…..I will be turning over to you – and you can make them become Chinese SLAVE LABORERS – as their only career choice! ……..that is because I am here to destroy the FREEDOM OF AMERICA!….with some more loans and Liberal World AGENDA of COMMIES and CRACKPOTS and CULTS – I so admire! LET’s get er DONE!”(cheers follow)

Obama = another smooth talking, Muslim.

I didn’t know Kenya was a pacific region.

Here is a outline of Obama’s trip:

Blame America
apologize for America
America will not monitorize the debt (although we are already doing that)
America will give Billions for Global warming (or is it temperature change now??)
Fat ass michelle will once again barely fit on air force one do to her huge butt and hips.
America makes too much CO2 (it would be a lot less if Obama would just shut his trap.)

     Do you see ANY intelligent discussion above? Anything that could be construed as an honest political discourse? Me neither.

    A) Barack Obama is a Christian and was born in the city of Honolulu, on the Island of Hawaii, this has been proven, and the birth certificate is out there.  Pay f****** attention, dumbass.

   B) If we are going to lay blame for America becoming owned by Asia, that blame goes a long way back. Japan and China have been buying our debt in massive quantities for years.  China has been adding exponentially more American debt since the early 2000’s.  Japan since the 90’s.  And Great Britain and Germany have been major players for years.  Don’t hear complaints about them.  Or Luxembourg, or Caribbean banking centers, or any of the other 25+ listed nations that buy our debt.   And with all the debt they have been buying, the bulk of our debt stays here.  The last numbers I have seen have the foreign ownership of said debt at 27.9% of total.

    Meaning that 72.1% of it stays here in America, it doesn’t leave these shores. So much for the thought of our children being sold in slave labor to china by way of other nations owning us.  Better way to put it is WE ARE BROKE AND WE HAVE BEEN FOR AGES.  This sucks, tis true, but blaming The President, and China, and foreign interests is bullshit from the get go.  There’s enough blame to go around for everyone. 

    And there is no liberal world agenda. 

    C)  America will give billions for Global Warming, and we won’t monetize (not monitorize) the debt? Umm…WTF is that about? Monetization was necessary due to the amount of pressure the financial system was under due to the banking system collapse in 2008.  And we have been monetizing some portion of the debt for a while now.   Or what else do you call what’s happening with Freddie mac and Fannie mae? And who the f*** are we giving billions to for global warming?  Ya need to explain a wee bit more there, laddie. 

    D)  Since when does Michelle have a fat ass?  My guess is that guys wife weighs 400 pounds and has more cellulite than the entire city of Louisville Kentucky.

    Everyone is entitled to an opinion.  But some opinions have a more firm basis in fact than others.  I’m not perfect in this, I have been wrong on a great many occasions, but not here.  Misinformation and plain nonsense of the type written by these …crazed xenophobes doesn’t make those opinions valid, it lessens the value of what is written by these writers.  In the end, opinion without fact is useless to the world.

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     To end with something completely off topic … SCREW YOU ARRINGTON! Play him off, keyboard cat!

    

   Later!

Today’s nuggets, by Plato, Via wikiquote:   When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong … And so the rhetorician’s business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.

Truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Last edit – 12:59am  11/14/09

Anagram: No More Anagrams, Dammit/ Mainstream Roman Dogma

        

    It’s Veterans day. Millions have served in this nations armed forces, and over one million Americans have died in War since this nations inception, to protect the rights that we hold so dear.  Remember them and honor them and their strength this day.

         91 years ago, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, WW1 ended.  Over 116,000 men died in battle during our 1 year in that war to end all wars.  23 years later another World War started that took 3 times that number of American lives.  We set aside this day to pause and reflect on the hard sacrifices of the millions of our fine servicemen and women over our 230+ years of history.  One day doesn’t seem enough.

    God Bless America.

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   Not much to look at, unless you think Thom Hartmann is pretty, but an enlightening conversation between radio host Thom Hartmann and Professor and Author George Lakoff.  Enlightening as far as the President’s mindset and political agenda.  Enlightening as far as the admission that there is simply not enough progressive media infrastructure.  It may not be news to you if you are liberal that the Presidents entire agenda is built around the twin concepts of social responsibility and empowerment, but the more conservative elements of society may be a bit surprised by it.  Why? I dunno…

Captain Oblivious

     Perhaps its the way they want so completely to control the “narrative”.  That’s a big word for all the political spinners, narrative.  I would talk to you about the right wing narrative, but I prefer not to.  When I see pictures of Dachau used to reference this government, as if the devil himself, Adolph Hitler, was running it, mere feet away from the minority leader of the House of Representatives and claims to not have seen it, when I hear about inflated numbers given for a “press conference” by Michelle Bachmann where the public was invited, but the press wasn’t and there were no questions asked of those who spoke at that press conference, when I see video run on a right wing network that purports to be from that “press conference” that is in fact from a tea party that happened in September, I tend to not want to help these people along by giving them much in the way of coverage. 

   And if you don’t call that controlling the narrative you really aren’t paying attention. 

       For all that you hear about there being a left wing liberal media bias, the bias that I see in fact tilts the other way, heavily so. The left wing doesn’t have enough media control to create a nationwide narrative like the right wing has, which is why the debate nowadays is so skewed to the wants and needs of the right. 

       Which is why the Presidents attempts at bipartisanship are doomed to fail.  There is the bipartisanship that Prof. Lakoff speaks of in the above video, which is reaching to people on individual subjects.   The President speaks to the people about the subjects he feels he must inform them about, not about politics.  He doesn’t talk  about “Democrats”, he talks about ideas, like health care and banking regulations, and the wants and needs of the people. But actual bipartisanship will elude him, because the narrative the other side has, they have invested in so heavily, it seems, that they cannot break away from it. 

    They have held that narrative in place since the days of Ronald Reagan.  It is all about fear and making Americans feel small in comparison to government.  Giving their followers a scapegoat called government, while never doing anything about the evils they claim to be against.  Taxes never go away under these Con$ervative Republican$, no matter how many Republican$ are around, or who is in charge,whether they control the White House and the house and senate or some combination of these three, yet you hear how they are against taxes, but those taxes never really get cut.  The amount taken out of my check in taxes, percentage wise, was just as much in 1988 as it was in 1998 as it was in 2008.  88 was Reagan’s last year, there was a republican majority in the house and senate 10 years later under a moderate democratic president, and 2008….well you all know the mess that we had to deal with in 2008.

    Bipartisanship on that level never really works if those on one side of the aisle think of themselves as separate and apart from those on the other, which is a political narrative that the right has tried to foment in one way or another since at least the early days of Reagan and Goldwater’s presidential run in the 60’s, and became the voice of power in America under the tutelage of Newt Gingrich, with his “Contract on America”.

   I believe that American politics is a road.  A long wide road, there are those on the far left who think the only path is there on the left and see the other side as a path to destruction.  There are those on the right who think the only path is there on the right and see the other side as a path to destruction. What those on the far left and far right don’t realize is that this is one road, which we ALL travel on, and it is wide enough for everyone. 

  I may yell and scream about the tactics and propaganda of those who differ from me politically here in America, and I think I am right to, but they and I are Americans, and I always have enough room in my heart to let them in and treat them like family, because they are Americans. And in the end that is what’s important.  Similarities, not differences, we all want whats best for America, we just have different visions of how to get there and what needs to be done to get us to that great place called the future.

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    One final note, If you read the title of this blog,  you see that it says No more anagrams.  I am going to( if i remember) start putting my titles together without them.  They take a long time to do, time i could spend writing and researching.

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   That’s it from here.  Later!

Today’s nuggets, from our founding fathers, Via Wikiquote:  The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists — and all those who abuse public credulity — is founded on errors in this type of calculation.  Benjamin Franklin

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.  George Washington

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.  Thomas Jefferson

Anagram: The Oppressors/ Proper Hostess

        Who are your oppressors?

       To answer that question, first you have to know what form the oppression takes.  Most of the time oppression is something obvious, something overt.  The subjugation of the African American community in the United States is a rather obvious example of this.  When bombs are set and detonated, when people are hung by the neck until dead for the crime of being a different color than the guy who owns the rope in a particular place, when people cannot sit and eat in the same place as everyone else, when arrest can be arbitrary, that is overt oppression. Do you see oppression here?

   

     Digging that snake.

      Could you call taxation oppression? Clearly the answer is yes.  The United States of America was founded on revolution, a revolution that had as a main component of it’s argument ”taxation without representation”.  Shays rebellion, a rebellion that took place on American soil shortly after the Revolution was fought because of taxes.  The famous and now oft used quote of Thomas Jefferson was in response to the quelling of that rebellion :
 

“a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

       He was in fact referring to the blood of those who rose up to fight the onerous taxation.  They were rebels who were shot and killed.  The man was trying to be nonchalant about a thousand tax cheats trying to steal munitions, a few of whom got their asses shot off in the process.

       Never has a quote been taken out of context quite like this one has.

     But back to our question.  Who are your oppressors?  We now know what oppression looks like, and that taxation can be oppressive.  Not that we needed that little lesson, but it is there to illuminate a point.  Who are your oppressors?

      If you look at the economic stimulus passed by this government, and the health care bill, and every other major economic package passed by this congress and this President, what do you see? Oppression?

     I do not.  No taxes have gone up.  They will, but only on the rich, any argument that any tax will go up on middle or working class Americans would require more proof than exists to adequately argue that point.  In a similar vein, to argue the point that government is trying to take over business and oppress the people would again require proof.  There is in fact proof of the opposite.  In a speech to be given tomorrow here in New York City, The President plans to show plans to wind down Government involvement in the financial sector.

      You read that right.  He’s not trying to keep control of anything, he’s returning control of business to business and getting us out of the Bailout business.  Sound capitalist economic thinking there, business knows what is best for business, and the President understands that as well as everyone else.

      If you see oppression by this government, let me know what rights are being abridged.  Tell me where and how this is happening.  Your guns are safe.  Your freedom of speech is clearly safe, or I wouldn’t be capable of speaking freely here, and tea party conservatives would not exist.  Freedom of the press and religion are all safe.  I cannot think of one major freedom, not one right, that is in truth under attack. 

       Well, there is one.  The right of congress to tax as laid out by the constitution seems to be under attack.  But I would not cry if that went away, for though I want my government to provide some type of safety net for the citizenry, and I know that that is provided for by taxation, if these tea party conservatives got the taxes knocked down a wee bit, I would not complain too hard.  Unless it, of course, got in the way of good governance.  If these fighters against taxation for the rich get in the way of government doing it’s job properly, it would put these self same conservatives in the oppressors seat, by taking from the citizens what they see as rightfully theirs.

        Tomorrow I am either going to go over the different seats up for grabs in the current election cycle, there being primaries in New York State tomorrow or a piece about actual oppression in government, something you should be thankful doesn’t exist here.

       That’s it from here.  Later!

Today’s nuggets, from a variety of places:  Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.  James Madison

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. It is the freedom to refrain, withdraw and abstain which makes a totalitarian regime impossible.  Eric Hoffer

Good government is that which delivers the citizen from the risk of being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently – one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified and more agreeable undertakings.  H.L. Mencken

  Minor error fixed 2:38am 9/14/09

Anagram: Thousand Mile Journeys/ I Should Just Earn Money

          A thousand mile journey begins with a single step, the old Chinese saying by Lao Tzu goes.  Tis true, but it is made up of millions of steps afterwards which make the journey what it is.  I am on a journey.  All of us are to be honest, and part of why I write is to tell the world about mine.  There are many aspects of my journey, like yours.  Music, exercise, love, thought on a thousand subjects, work, money.  Many more beyond these. 

     The journey is rarely easy, but it isn’t supposed to be.  It is the rough times which are the times which show us what we are really made of.  It is the harder parts of the journey which shape us, make us what we are.  The important bit is that we make the journey together, all of us.   No one is really alone, no matter how you feel.  There are always people there to help us along the way.  Even when you think no one is there for you, if you look, really reach out, there will be a hand to help.

     This is the basis of my entire life, is the basis of most every train of thought, the starting point of my philosophy on life, and tells the tale of who I really am.  A man, small, weak, the least of my brothers, but with love in my heart enough to help anyone along the way.  Do good and good will be done for you.  Know as much as you can, do as much as you can, ask nothing for yourself, expect nothing from others, but do anything for them.  Teach where there is something to be taught.  Be silent and learn if I know not.

    I write on politics here to speak what I feel in my heart and know in my heart and mind.  I speak it because it needs to be said, because no one speaks precisely the way I do, no one thinks precisely the way I do, and if my words go unsaid, it guarantees no one will hear them.  If I tell them here, I can at least say that I let the world know what I think and how I feel. 

    I feel and think with a liberal perspective because I have seen what I think is the right vision of the world, of politics, and of government, and it is liberalism.  The word liberal is from the Latin liberalis, meaning of freedom, befitting the free.  Freedom is not just having the right to do and say and feel and think what you like, it is also the responsibility to make sure that freedom exists in equal measure for all.  

   

     Let’s use the current debate as an example.  I see, for example, in this health care reform, much good.  It will help the little guy and girl, who barely makes enough to make ends meet, make things easier on them by making the price of health insurance go down, and make that self same health care better.  I see the public option as a way of leveling of the playing field and making life easier for those who need a break. 

    

       A break from visits to the emergency room, where you see a doctor for all of 5 minutes after waiting for 6 hours, and he reads a chart and tells you to go home and take a few pills and you get a bill for $1,000.  A break from having a preexisting condition make you ineligible for health coverage.  A break from $50,000,000,000 a year in expenses from those who are uninsured.  A break from 20,000 people a year dying because they have no coverage.

     What has freedom done for them? Do they not count? Are they less human because they haven’t the money to pay for this? Freedom for some to suffer and die because of a system that cares for them not a lick is not true freedom. It is irresponsible, it is license on the part of these businesses to not care, because the dollar is more important than the person.  And when the dollar is more important than the person, there can be no true freedom.  There is only slavery to the dollar, slavery of the people, slavery for a profit.    

    Freedom is not license.  There is no right to leave people behind, to let them rot, to just not care about your fellow man.  That is not freedom, that is irresponsible social behavior, and that is wrong, and wrongs are there to be righted.  This wrong we can right.

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     Speaking of 1,000 mile journeys, I ran 8 miles today in  1:05:48, an 8:13.5 m/m pace.  After weeks of 30 mile averages, last week i ran 37 miles and this week I am on pace to run 45-50.  The slower running is helping me here, my feet take less of a beating when I run slower, so it’s easier to run that way.  Mind you I do have nagging minor problems here and there.  Pain in the left knee, stiffness in the right quad, and a sore point in my left ankle.  If they continue, or get worse, I’ll have to cut the miles down.  Hopefully i won’t have to cut running for any significant amount of time.

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    That is it for me.  G’night!

Today’s Nuggets, by John Locke,  Via Wikiquote:   He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it. There is nobody in the commonwealth of learning who does not profess himself a lover of truth: and there is not a rational creature that would not take it amiss to be thought otherwise of. And yet, for all this, one may truly say, that there are very few lovers of truth, for truth’s sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth’s sake, but for some other bye-end.

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

Anagram: Conspiracy Theory/ A Rich Tycoon’s Prey

         I was listening to some talk about conspiracy theories earlier today, talk about the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, among other things.  This got me thinking about the generally conspiratorial air that seems to linger around modern day politics.  A few very recent examples from the health care bill. 

    

    Sen. Chuck Grassley and Death Panels.    Rep. John Boehner and Abortion.  Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (among others) and the 8% payroll tax.  Michael Steele and mandatory suicide for vets.

      All of it blistering bullshit, but all of it designed to do one thing.  Undermine the effectiveness of government, and of the democratic party in particular by painting every action of this government as an assault on America and it’s values.  It created an air of non-validity to every program in  government, fueling something that is prevalent in American society in general.  Distrust of those in power.

   

    But when you do that, should you not also look at the people putting out the message? Check the messenger and the message out? If for no other reason than to make sure that the message being sent is in fact genuine? In each case,  from the famously wrong death panels, to the equally wrong Federally funded abortions, to the false payroll tax increase to Mike’s mandatory suicide psychosis.  These people have done nothing more than undermine ALL government, and there is government that is good.  Plenty of it. 

     Medicare.  Medicaid.  DOJ. LOC.  Social Security.  SBA.  A ton of others.  Every time you undermine one portion of government, especially something as key as this, you by extension undermine the underpinnings of good government and the good programs like these and a hundred others that do good for the people of this land all over this land.

     

   I am torn here, though.  It is a thought of mine that rather than attack, attack, attack, and undermine the good that can be done, and that is done every day by our government, that these people and those like them put down this incivility and learn to be more respectful in both tone and argument.  It is another thought of mine that we are free to argue and yell about perceived injustice as loudly as we like.  How can I reconcile these two thoughts without caving into cognitive dissonance?  Four Words.

     Freedom is not license.

   

     Just because you are free to spout off on any subject at any length, does not mean you are free to lie.  No one is free to shout fire in a crowded theatre, to use a famous example.  This is exactly what these four people have done. There is no danger of any of these things happening, no danger whatsoever, and yet here we are hearing them shout ”FIRE” in our theatre.  Causing a panic unnecessarily. Stirring people not to protect freedom, but to protect license to destroy trust in the republican form of government and by extension anyone who stands as a symbol of authority.

    Authority, when abused, should be fought.  These people, each of them are in positions of power and authority, and each has gone out of his or her way to create an anti-government conspiratorial air.  The Democrats here in this particular example seek to create a more equitable health care system for all Americans, while the Republicans, using their offices as bully pulpits, have spouted lie after lie in order to discredit that which will make America a better place to live.  

     The Republicans here seem to be going out of their way to create a government as conspiracy subculture within the American people. Evil? No, just sneaky, underhanded, and utterly disrespectful of the good offices of a government they work in and the people they work for.

    There are more thoughts interwoven into this one, which i will write on at greater length another time.

     That’s about it from here. Later!

Today’s Nuggets, By John Adams, Via Marksquotes:  Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.  

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.