Obvious Thought For The Day

The only people who thought Sarah Palin would run for president are those who supported her; that is, the only people who willfully failed to see who and what she is. (Don't fail to read the last sentence in the block quote in that link!)

Another Good Sign

And The Words Of The Prophets Are Spoken...

George Carlin. As close to a prophet as we've ever had. Ignore the language if it offends, but the message, in three minutes, is exactly and pretty much entirely what I've been saying here for years; other than the fact that I've been pinning it, politically anyway, mostly on one so-called party. Because I see the Rovian connection to the religious right as central to the plan to disuneducate the voting masses.

Nevertheless, if I'd seen this clip before, I guess I could have just re-posted it every day and saved myself a lot of trouble. He says it all, succinctly, dead-on. Look around: what did he get wrong?

Take A Guess

The "news" guy claiming they want to get the protester's story out is Bill O'Reilly's producer, Jesse Someoneorother. Anyone think this video was aired on Fox? (Hint: no.)

Coffee

Had coffee with a guy with whom I'd been corresponding for a long time, off and on, but hadn't actually met. He comes at things from the right, more or less, and I, of course, do so from the left. He's a thoughtful man, curious, has had an interesting life. Like me, he's been married forty years, served in Vietnam, life has had its ups and downs.

My writings notwithstanding, I've had a number of conservative friends over the years; have a couple in my family. My favorite, maybe, died unexpectedly a few years ago, way too young. I still miss our spirited talks in the doctors' lounge, away from which people tended to slink as our voices rose (never in anger, I add.) Another tossed me overboard like fishguts when he couldn't convince me President Obama is a Muslim terrorist sent here to destroy us.

Talking with Larry was different. Maybe it's aging; maybe it's the fact that, when face to face, people tend to be more civil than in cyberspace. In any case, it struck me that when people are thoughtful, open-minded, a little skeptical, the spaces between them get smaller and smaller. It's not hard to agree that things are seriously amiss. It's not even too hard to recognize what the problems are, and that the political climate in which we find ourselves is not, to say the least, conducive to problem-solving. Suddenly, labels like liberal and conservative lose what little meaning they've retained in the slide toward oblivion. It's just two people talking about stuff, finding much on which to agree. The distinctions aren't important, if they exist at all.

In other words, this blog, the stuff I write, the comments I get, reflect the worst of things, the prevalent and reflexive polarity that serves no purpose. The putdowns. The need to disparage for no damn real reason, and to no useful effect. I'm as guilty of it as anyone -- although I try to be fact-based. I don't make shit up, and my -- whatever it is, anger? -- is about the lack of substance, the political falsehoods, the deliberate deceptions that, yes, come mainly from the right and from its propaganda machine. The end of coffee-talk.

Because in my heart I yearn for the sort of discourse that can be had from different sides in a coffee shop, and I know that it's possible for people of good will -- politicians, even -- to find ways to communicate and to see ways forward. Mainly, I know that it's become practically impossible; it's entirely absent from our political stage, and among the people who've chosen sides for reasons they probably can't fully explain. Answers are there. Interest in finding them is not, not in Washington, not on the airwaves.

That's why I write, cry in the wilderness. Point out the lies, the stupidity, the vacuity. It's because I know there's something better, and its absence drives me crazy. It's killing us, and the axe-murderers are all around, and they don't care. Some of them even sometimes drop by here, smirking, thinking they're proving some point or other, scoring points in a game that's as far from the point as it could be. Neither realizing, recognizing, or caring.

Thanks for the coffee, Larry. It's both reassuring and depressing, but let's do it again.

Good Sign

Water Boy

Mitt Romney is nothing if not inconsistent. He's even flip-flopping on flip-flopping, having first denied he's changed positions, and then, of late, saying (rightly, I might add) that when facts change, opinions must change, too.

On that concept -- being open to new information and adjusting one's views accordingly -- we most certainly agree. But here's my question for the man whose shape, like water, depends entirely on the container in which he finds himself at any given moment:

What new facts, Mr Romney, convinced you to change your mind about gay marriage? What recent information caused you to run away from agreement that man has a significant role in climate change? Facts, please. Not the perceived need to pander to teabaggers, okay?

And the even more important question: will anyone in the media, might any moderator of a debate, ask him to specify the process?

Sunday Thought

Values

He likes to shoot guns and do that sexually ambivalent jogging thing, has the undoggiest of dogs? Not a problem.

My concern when watching the above is, what's his definition of "patriot"? I'm pretty sure that, despite a lifetime of hard work, dedication to my patients, paying my taxes without shelters, serving in Vietnam, voting, supporting gay rights and all civil rights, understanding science, agreeing that the earth is billions of years old and is warming at a frightening pace due to human activity, being skeptical about all religions and believing that separation of church and state means exactly that, contributing money to liberal politicians and causes, respecting my neighbors and not parking in their driveways or playing loud music, keeping my lawn mowed, feeding stray cats, writing letters to the editor, criticizing the invasion of Iraq, complaining about most politicians and both political parties, being both glad and frustrated at living in the US, believing in the value of education and the rights of all to obtain it free from religious indoctrination.... it doesn't include me.

It does, however, remind me how much I dislike the word, seeing how it's been used, of late, by such luminaries as Perry and Palin and Bachmann and generally any and all of the RWS™ to carve a line in the flesh of our country. Gimme a definition, okay, and maybe I'll change my mind.

Saw This A While Back

A bit rough at the edges, but, given the subject, succinct (if a tad NSFW).

Bad Lip Reading

Prediction

Ultimately, the R nominee will be the Mittster (unless Chris Christie gets bought in). Because, even though crazy and clueless are irresistibly appealing to teabaggRs, like the Sirens to Odysseus (which analogy, I recognize, is highly insulting to the poor lost seafarer), in the end the fact that he's the guy who's four feet tall in a land otherwise populated by tiny and silly elves will be dispositive. Not to the teabaggers themselves, of course; they'll cling to whichever of the no-everything-know-nothing-and-proud-of-it contingent remains standing near the end. And they'll do so forever. But one must assume that between independents (meaning Republicans but embarrassed, of late, to admit it) and the few card-carrying Rs who would like to see their party have at least a chance of prevailing and, maybe even conceivably some day, a return to respectability, there will be enough people to see idiocy for what it is. Could happen. So Mitt, the only one with at least a patina of adulthood, will get the nod by default.

When Romney is the nominee, one hopes that among the forever feckless Democrats there'll be some (of the caliber and capabilities of Elizabeth Warren) who'll get out the message of his obvious lack of convictions on any subject, his abject pandering (his recent promise not to pander being a perfect example), his lies and distortions which are even more offensive than those of Palinbachmannperry because you'd think he might actually know better -- and be able to shoot the fat fish in the small barrel once and for all. And over and over.

Romney is worse than convinctionless, though. He's a deeply cynical liar, amoral, and the inarguable proof of that is his basing his entire campaign on the lie that Obama went around the world apologizing for America. That it's patently false hasn't kept Romney from repeating it daily (nor, naturally, has it kept typical teabaggRs from believing it). But Romney isn't dumb like Perry or insane like Bachmann. He's simply so desperate to be president at any cost including that of his soul that he'll say whatever it takes to whomever will listen. (Here's a much smaller, but no less disingenuous example of his unselfconscious, unrepentant fakery.)

Any shred of respect I might once have had for Mitt Romney, for his handling of the Olympics in Utah, and for his transitory stand for gay rights and the rest of his so-called beliefs that he keelhauled quick as a teabag leaks brown in hot water, has more than disappeared. For making this patently dishonest theme central to his campaign (he titled his book in reference to it, for Moroni's sake!) there's simply no other word than shameful, in a man who demonstrably has no shame.

Which is not to say he won't win. Who among us thinks truth-telling or integrity are considered desirable traits among R candidates?

Only In America

Here's a good article on America's singular denial of anthropogenic climate change, harbored pretty much exclusively within one formerly useful political party. Between the lines, it speaks volumes. Denying the undeniable. Ignoring the obvious. Rejecting science -- and pretty simple science at that: one party, one mindset, whose selfishness and neediness for magical thinking will destroy us all. The extrapolation to just about everything they believe, and how and why they believe it, is more than obvious. For the life of me -- for the life of us all! -- I simply can't fathom the way some people can do it. Some of them are even, by some standards, smart.

If such mental frailty is part of the human condition -- and, in surprisingly many, it surely is -- there must have been some evolutionary benefit at some point, though it's hard to see what it is. Not now, anyway; that much is clear. And it's even harder to figure how, to the extent that it hasn't been dropped from the gene pool, in the so-called civilized world the ability, the need, to ignore reality seems to have congealed solely in the US of A.

I suppose you could speculate that people who immigrated here against all odds had to have had a certain optimism, a type that comes from believing those odds don't apply to them. In that sense, it could only have been a good thing. On the other hand, to succeed after getting here required a sort of mental toughness and creativity that would seem, to me anyway, at odds with rejecting the obvious. The earliest settlers came here for religious freedom, didn't they? People whose need to believe what they wanted to believe in the unprovable magical realm made them willing to risk it all to maintain it. Maybe Republicans are the spawn of that group. Certainly, they claim exclusive rights to the thoughts of the Founding Fathers.

But those weren't the Pilgrims: those were something else entirely. Voracious readers, skeptics, agnostics, among the religious. Jumping on the "I know what (your choice of dead person) would say" bandwagon, I have no doubt that Thos. Jefferson would be a believer in man-made climate change. Ben Franklin. John Adams. These were seekers of truth, rebels against status quo. Science guys.

From such promising beginning, our country has, nearly inexplicably, descended quite suddenly from one of invention, of risk-taking, of horizon-broadening explorers, into one -- at the level of governance, at least; of politics -- of selfish cocooning into the opposite of thinking. Of close-mindedness in the service of maintaining the immediate comfort of religious or religion-like adherence to nonsense. Of choosing such empty-headed dishonest bigoted stupid (or needing to appear stupid to win teabaggR approval) people as the current crop of Republican presidential candidates.

How I wish I could be around when, much too late, they realize what they've done.

[Added: just this morning, I watched this:]

Sunday. Time For Prayer

They Just Can't Help Themselves

Well at least they're consistent. There's nothing Barack Obama can do, not even things they've been calling for themselves, that teabaggRs won't criticize. How much more obvious can it get that Rs have no interest in doing what's right -- have, in fact, interest in doing what's wrong? Their aim is ruin, at all costs, in order -- as their hate-fevered brains see it -- by destroying the country to destroy Obama. To gain power. To do what, one can only wonder. It's crystal clear they can't care less about the fate of average Americans.

(And they love to smear Michele Obama, too.)

Truly: it's no hyperbole to say these are horrible people.