What Our Government Is Doing in a Time of Crisis

I'm lying. No one in our government has near enough talent to intentionally put together a funny YouTube video. They are accidentally hilarious, though.

Distracting the Morons

After listening to the new collection of Republican nutballs jabbering away like a flock of demented crows, it struck me how easily the mass of Americans can be distracted from important issues. After campaigning on giving healthcare back to the insurance companies and the drug dealers and babbling about how the stimulus didn't magically fix 8 years of Bush/Cheney madness, their first big issue is . . . abortion.

Supposedly, we were warned. Maybe, but not with much intensity. Of course, anyone with a functioning memory should expect Republicans to begin the distractions as soon as they warm up their office seats. Since their mission is to lie, cheat, and steal, it's obvious that they will be pointing in the opposite direction of where the action really is. So, it's "look over here at this abortion stuff, dummy," while they are pillaging the nation's bank account and dumping the silverware into their gym bags.

Cause, let's face it, nobody in the Tea Party cares a wit about poor people having abortions; especially poor non-white people. The Teabag Ladies don't give a damn about anything poor people do, but they are big on making people do whatever dumb shit they want them to do this week.You can't top the corporate hacks behind the Tea Party Patriots when it comes to gathering up authoritarian nutsacks and getting them into robot marching formation.

As far as getting abortion under their thumb, even a dimwit like Michele Bachmann has to be smart enough to know that cat is out of the bag forever. She doesn't have to say she knows that, though. She just has to pretend to give a shit and the illiterate dimbulbs who stumble along behind her and the Bimbo Führer will keep chanting "four legs are better than two." Yeah, you can make the legal, safe medical practice of abortions illegal, just like you can make natural vegetation illegal. However, telling nature not to grow poppies, marijuana, the coca plant, the peyote cactus, rye fungus (LSD), nutmeg, psilocybin mushrooms, betel nuts, morning glory flowers, salvia, and the rest of nature's recreational bounty is an exercise in arrogance. That arrogance is made even funnier by the fact that most of the plant-banners pretend to be awed by God's brilliant plan. I firmly believe that 99.99% of modern "Christians" are every bit as atheist as me. If they weren't, they'd be very afraid of an afterlife where they have to explain why they thought God is a moron.

The abortion cat is out of the bag, up a tree, and telling all of the other cats about the holes in the bag. A quick Google search on "home abortion" (in quotes to limit the false positives) will return 25,400 hits as of today. Tomorrow, I wouldn't be surprised if another thousand resources appear. Everything from large doses of ascorbic acid to carrot seed soup to mutton marrow is supposed to cause a miscarriage. Even Wikipedia lists 14 references and more than a dozen "solutions." Toss out the doctors and the result is most likely going to be more abortions with more casualties among the mothers-not-to-be.

Legally, the Republican antiabortion stance is one of the most disingenuous arguments in human history. Not only do they not give a flying damn about 90+% of the abortions in the country, but they are tiptoeing around who is going to be criminalized if they get their way. They don't have the balls to tell girls and women that they are going to imprison, execute, or condemn them as witches for having abortions. If they did, today, they would vanish from the face of the national discussion. No, these clever fruitcakes are pretending to be caring, loving human beings while planning the kind of fanatical religious persecution history has seen so many times. Why they feel compelled to piss on our democracy when there are so many theocracies already making life miserable for those citizen-victims is beyond me. As I always ask these characters when they raise their venomous heads, why don't you move to Iran or Pakistan? Those places are exactly the science-hating, superstitious, anti-democratic, totalitarian and miserable places you claim to love so much.

Crazy Is As Crazy Does

The Department of Homeland Security linked Jared Lee Loughner to a collection of right wing hate groups that the DHS called "anti-government, anti-immigration, anti-ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government], anti-Semitic.” Sounds like Fox, doesn't it?

The wingnut bin has been trying, predictably and desperately, to separate itself from responsibility. That's the beauty of being conservative; you can be wrong on every issue and still claim you're Right. When you're Right you're always right.

Of course the other side of that position is it's hard to tell crazy from stupid. Rush and the Bimbo Führer are both crazy and stupid, but they aren't foolish. In our idiocracy you can be a moron and still be powerful, corrupt, and completely unhindered by any form of civility or common sense or any interest in the common good. They are anti-democratic, pro-corporate, and sponsored by elite money that has no loyality to any country, let alone the United States.

Limbaugh, Palin, O'Reilly, Beck, and the Faux News cast of fools and lunatics are running from their own words in terror of taking any responsibility for their constant hate agitation and fear mongering. In a just world, Faux News would be held accountable for all sorts of national disasters, not just the most recent tragedy. As the sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik said, “When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government—the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country, is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

If we were a country ruled by laws, these people would be immediately held responsible for the damage they do. We are not. Obama and the Justice Department are pretending that a "lone gunman" (when have we heard that one before?) is responsible for this assassination attempt and the associated murders. Screaming "fire!" in a dark auditorium is no longer a criminal offense, even when lives are lost. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' father replied, when asked if his daughter had enemies, "The whole tea party." "Enemies," not opponents. Palin and her gang of ignorant "patriots" considered Giffords an enemy because she disagreed with their nutty, perverted mutation of what a society should be.

When taking a political position is sufficient to become a hated enemy, you know crazy has taken over and rational discussion is beyond hope. When a national figure can generate a hit list, publish it nationally, and talk about "reloading" in reference to defeating an opponent, rational dialog is not on the table.When our government stands by and allows this kind of rhetoric to contaminate the tiny minds of fools like Jared Loughner and pretends that those who incited murder are above the law, we are that much closer to becoming the kind of country the Bimbo Führer dreams of.

Look at this map littered with gun-sight bulls-eyes. Tell me you think those are anything but a call to shoot the opponents Palin has listed here. Give it your best shot, but you are only deluding yourself. Of course, if you think Palin is anything but a dangerous fool, you're pretty good at delusion.

Test Yourself

Here's a test worth taking. Political Compass. I found it oddly comforting to be left of Ralph Nader and more libertarian. I can't be embarrassed by the company I keep in this quadrant, either. After you take the test, I recommend you look at the analysis of other places and people. The chart that allows you to look at the politics of a variety of US states is particularly interesting.

The question of right and left has always seemed incomplete to me. The aspect of government that I oppose is authoritarian. The aspect of government that most wingnuts represent would have its sticky little hands and corrupt amorality placed right in the middle of all of our lives. The wingnuts would force their fake religion on everyone. Their phony brand of "liberty" would focus on corporate "freedom" to pollute our water, air, and food and to control any political discussion with floods of money. Whenever a corporation decided to send the nation into war, the wingnuts would do anything in their power to suppress dissent and discussion. Individual freedom would always be sacrificed for the corporate good. I don't care if the authority is the state or federal government or Walmart. Authority and money are moral standards for the pseudo-right and I have no interest in the world they would build.

Obviously, the authoritarian left has lots in common with their buddies on the right side of the vertical axis. I have never been able to tell the difference between Mao and Hitler or Nixon and Stalin or G.W. Bush and Lenin or Sarah Palin and Ayatollah Khomeini. They are all the same character.

Palin thinks Wikileaks editor, Julian Assange, should be on a terrorist hit list. Disagree with the bimbo Führer and you're on an assassination list. Considering her idiotic interpretation of Christianity, Palin's resemblance to Ayatollah Khomeini and his hit on Rushdie is identical. I have no use for either of those authoritarian fools or the morons who chant "four legs are better than two" whenever their timid leaders raise the call.