Boy howdy, that Fierobear fella sure has mastered the copy and paste function on Winders.
That's because I post real information, rather than just posting nothing more than stupid, insulting s*** like you do. I actually want to learn something, and I do by reading and sharing with others. From you, we learn how a grown man can act like a grade school snot.
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He's even become a master at name calling, and could put almost any 9 year old to shame in that department. Well almost.
That's because you deserve nothing more than that level.
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Originally posted by NEPTUNE: They have too much class, as well as real lives, to hang out here.
We'll have to save the above for posterity. Thanks for making it so easy to point out what kind of a-hole you are. In your own words, too!
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While he has called me an A hole repeatedly because I don't agree with his narrow minded, jingoist agenda, he hasn't called me a NAZI yet.
No, I call you an a-hole because you're acting like an a-hole. Nice try, dickweed.
And no, I don't think you're a Nazi. You do make a good case for calling you a communist, though.
Calling me a fag again? I thought you were an advocate for gays and gay issues? Yet another Neptune hypocritical moment.
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What do I have to do to be elevated to NAZI status in your world, Hackster?
While I despise Nazism and anyone who espouses such a philosophy, at least they have one thing people like you don't have - the balls to admit they are Nazis. Commies like you slither around quietly, hoping not to be discovered. If you could grow a pair, you might be dangerous.
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 08-15-2009).]
Hollywood and the media routinely offer up two standard portrayals of government officials -- inept and comical idiots or sinister characters. The latter is especially true of media depictions of NSA, CIA, and FBI employees, but both are quite typical of the reigning liberal elite's opinion of all government agencies and their employees: bureaucrats are either hilarious nincompoops or dangerous evil-doers, and amazingly enough, sometimes both at once. Hollywood seems to think that the government is either screwing up the country because it doesn't know what it is doing or it is destroying the country because it is trampling on the rights of its citizens.
However, the people who hold these convictions are the exact same people who want to turn over the operation of all the key components of the country to the government to manage. Health care, energy, education, the economy itself -- these and dozens of other critical features of American society should be directed, according to the Left, from the hallowed halls in which the bumblers and betrayers work.
These liberal elites, who are now in positions of great power in the nation, seem to believe that the politicians and bureaucrats who populate the federal government, are on the one hand part fumbling meatheads who can't tie their shoes and part evil plotters who want to screw John Q. Public. At the same time the left believes that those who run the bureaucracy should be entrusted with the management of virtually every aspect of American society. Is there not a fundamental disconnect here? What could possibly explain this self-contradictory faith in the power of the government to successfully solve the nation's problems? I will offer three explanations and then speculate as to which applies to the celebrity who now occupies the White House.
The first explanation is ignorance. The people of our nation have been subjected to an intense liberal indoctrination for so long that there are a huge number of them for whom the tenets of liberalism are so deeply ingrained that they accept without question the proposition that the government must address any problem that arises anywhere in America. Under a relentless assault from the liberal dominated media, educational establishment, legal profession, arts community, foundations, and even segments of the business and religious communities, many have succumbed to the brainwashing.
Consequently, they believe:
FDR's New Deal saved us from the Depression rather than prolonged it;
the Great Society helped to lift minorities out of poverty, rather than institutionalizing it;
capitalism creates unjust, inequitable outcomes in the US, ignoring the fact that it has powered our economy to unimagined and unequaled heights of prosperity;
government creates jobs by spending the tax payer's money, rather than preventing their creation because of the tax dollars pilfered from entrepreneurs;
government regulations improve the functioning of our economy, revealing obliviousness to the enormous drag they impose;
the rich don't pay their fair share, whereas in fact the "rich" pay the overwhelming majority of the income tax that Uncle Sam extracts, while the lowest
40% of income earners pay virtually nothing;
the Constitution is a malleable document that serves as a guide to the making of law -- in fact, it is a binding document that can be changed only by a demanding Amendment process and the American republic has survived and prospered precisely because continuing generations have agreed to abide by the deal struck by our founders with the people;
radical change not adherence to tradition, is the American way.
I venture that a large proportion, perhaps a substantial majority of the folks who voted for Obama fit into this category -- especially young people.
It is legitimate to ask how such hoodwinked people can accept the portrayal of the government as bumbling or sinister or both -- laugh at it if it is the former, be mortified by it if the latter -- and why does it not occur to them that it is lunacy to entrust their welfare to the bumblers and evil-doers?
I think the answer is to be found in the attitude teenagers exhibit toward their parents and teachers. The kids often see their elders as at best hopelessly square, out of it and even stupid and at worst as manipulating, tyrannical, and unfair. Most -- not all -- do not question the fundamental authority of their parents and teachers. The kids expect the adults to remove the obstacles that the youngsters encounter and the kids are willing to put up with the rules laid down by the adults because it is expected of them, because it is the natural order of things, and besides there is no choice. So too does the juvenile mass of brainwashed citizens view the authority of the federal government. They deride and lambaste it for its incompetence; they fear it for its omnipotence; but they accept unquestioningly its "legitimate" authority to control their lives.
The next explanation might be characterized as arrogance. Its practitioners understand that the government doesn't have a particularly good track record of solving the nation's problems. They recognize that previous government forays into health care, agriculture, housing, etc. have resulted in mismanagement, excessive waste, deleterious effects on the economy, fraud, and corruption. Nevertheless, they believe that the federal government is the correct mechanism to address the nation's problems and under their tutelage one (or both) of two things will happen. First, they will do it better. They will bring better design, planning, execution, and supervision. Or, it won't work any better, but they will profit personally from the results. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party is chock full, from top to bottom, with these types -- the naive ones who think they will execute the liberal agenda more perfectly and the corrupt ones who intend to profit from the agenda, however it is implemented.
The third explanation is malevolence. This characterization applies to the hard core leftists who believe the classic American political, economic and cultural systems are rotten and must be overthrown. I am thinking of revolutionaries like Saul Alinsky, George Soros, Michael Moore, and, yes, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. They don't care that the government to which they wish to assign more and more responsibility is a combination of ineptness and corruption. So much the better; it will bring the system down more quickly. Radicals like these thrive on a crisis atmosphere (as admitted by Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel). They seek to create a perpetual crisis, which leaves the people panic-stricken and easily manipulated by those who, under the guise of addressing the dangerous ills they have identified, will divert more power to the government, and who are in fact at work destroying the system under the false cover of crises like climate change and health care. If they can enact universal, federally-controlled health care and the business-crippling cap and trade bill, their malevolent objective might be attained -- America could be so fundamentally changed that there will be no hope of returning to republican principles.
I believe the vast majority of Americans on the left fit into category 1, a substantial number fall under 2 and a small, but dedicated cadre occupies the third position. Into which category does the guy in the White House fit?
Like most of America, my acquaintance with President Obama is recent and superficial. That he occupies the White House is a testament to the uncharacteristic recklessness of the American people, who have installed therein a person they know precious little about. Is he the leftist radical his voting record suggests or the relatively moderate politician he seemed to be during the campaign? Everyone who interacts with him insists he is very smart. If so, it is impossible that the rationale for his leftist mentality lies in the first explanation: ignorance.
Throughout the campaign, my impression was that he was a number 2: arrogant. Yes, there was no denying his far-left voting record -- but he tacked right during the election and then he appointed a number of relatively moderate cabinet officials (to go along with the hard core leftists he selected as advisors and czars, to be sure).
But since the inauguration, the gloves are off and the trend is clear. President Obama is a leader of the malevolent, revolutionary forces in America who want to overthrow the system and replace it with a Euro-socialist, nanny State that repudiates much of American history, including the Constitution.
What is the evidence? Many of his opponents would cite: his promotion of cap and trade, which surely would cripple our economy; his drive for universal, government-controlled health insurance, which would make virtually all of us wards of the State; his foreign policy of appeasement and repeated apologies for American behavior; or his reckless spending, borrowing and taxing that will bankrupt our children and grandchildren.
For me it is as simple as this. I see no evidence that he loves America, that he (or his wife) takes any pride in the achievements of our country, that he subscribes to the idea that America, unlike any other nation, is founded on a political idea and is called to be a beacon of freedom to mankind. That is not Barack Obama's America. His new America will be a bizarre combination of France, the Soviet Union and Canada.
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 08-15-2009).]
In sifting through the intellectual landfill upon which the American left has built its worldview, a researcher can find any number of artifacts to help decrypt the Obama presidency.
Among the more illuminating is Weather Underground, a watchable 2002 documentary on the soi-disant Weathermen and their times. Although superficially objective, the film allows the final comment of Weatherman Mark Rudd to stand as something of a thesis statement.
"It was this knowledge that we couldn't handle," says Rudd, explaining the group's turn to violence. "It was too big. We didn't know what to do. In a way I still don't know what to do with the knowledge."
The Russian equivalent for Rudd's "big" knowledge is pravda, as in "larger truth" or "truth and justice." In the Soviet era, Communists hammered the facts until they fit the "truth." Small "c" communists like Rudd and his former colleague, Bill Ayers, still do. Their indifference to history stuns the knowing observer, especially in regard to the defining event of their era, the war in Vietnam.
By contorting every fact that did not naturally fit their template, the Weathermen and their allies concluded, in Ayers' words, that America's "intentions were evil and her justifications dissembling, her explanations dishonest, her every move false." This was the "knowledge," uniquely intuited by the hard left, that Rudd and his colleagues found "too big" to handle.
In Weather Underground not one of the seven or eight Weathermen interviewed in 2002 questions this assumption about America and the Vietnam War. Neither do their liberal critics in the film, nor do the filmmakers for that matter. All that anyone questions are the futile ends to which the Weathermen applied their superior insights.
The film offers no hint that the 1968 Tet offensive proved disastrous to the Viet Cong. No hint that by August 1972, U.S. ground forces had so whipped the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) that they were able to withdraw fully from Vietnam. No hint that the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (ARVN) held their own for nearly three years and collapsed only after a Democratic Congress cut off all military funding. No hint that Cambodia sunk into horrific genocide and Vietnam into a repressive Stalinist state after the Weathermen's communist heroes took over. No hint that the anti-war left ignored, or cheered, the horrific consequences of America's withdrawal. In sum, no hint that the Weathermen's larger truth was largely false.
More troubling, in neither of their memoirs -- Ayers' 2001 Fugitive Days quoted above and Rudd's 2009 Underground -- does either author give any sense that his "big" knowledge is any less true or relevant today than it was forty years ago. America was and remains, in Rudd's words, "racist" and "imperialist." It must be thus, as Ayers declaimed in a 2006 speech in Venezuela, because "capitalism promotes racism and militarism -- turning people into consumers, not citizens."
Since hitting the mainland Obama has surrounded himself with leftists well versed in the knowledge too big to handle. "I chose my friends carefully," he writes in his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, "The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets." With his new friends, Obama discussed "neocolonialism, Franz (sic) Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy" and flaunted his alienation.
The literary influences Obama cites include radical anti-imperialists like Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X, communists like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, and tyrant-loving fellow travelers like W.E.B. DuBois. "Joseph Stalin was a great man," DuBois wrote upon Stalin's death in 1953. "Few other men of the 20th century approach his stature."
In Dreams, Obama gives no suggestion that this reading was in any way problematic or a mere phase in his development. He moves on to no new school, embraces no new worldview. At least five of the authors he cites -- Wright, Fanon, Hughes, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin -- Bill Ayers cites in his writings as well. (As an aside, both Obama and Ayers misspell Fanon's name in the same way as "Franz.")
For mentors, Obama chose men like Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the fraudulent Palestinian wannabe Edward Said, and the radical PLO groupie Rashid Khalidi. These are the men he turned to for wisdom. In 2003, for instance, Obama publicly thanked Khalidi for providing "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases."
Khalidi, in turn, publicly thanked Ayers in the "acknowledgments" section of his 2004 book, Resurrecting Empire. "Bill was particularly generous in letting me use his family's dining room table to do some writing for the project," he says of Ayers, a gifted writer and editor. In Rudd's "acknowledgments" section, he thanks his agent, Jane Dystel, who was Obama's agent as well. To complete this left wing cluster back scratch, Obama thanks Dystel, but, understandably, not Ayers.
Not surprisingly, given his inputs, Barack Obama has embraced a vaguely Marxist, post-colonial view of the capitalist enterprise. In the 2004 preface to Dreams, written after his keynote speech at the Democratic convention, he describes an ongoing "struggle -- between worlds of plenty and worlds of want." America, he implies, prospers only at the expense of the rest of the world, a zero-sum fallacy common among those who refuse to understand the way free enterprise works.
"I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side," Obama continues. When the powerless strike back, the powerful respond with "a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware."
By equating Chicago with the third world Obama endorses the link between racism and imperialism, the presumed motive for America's involvement in Vietnam. Later in the book, he makes this point more explicitly when he talks about righteous insurrections in "Soweto or Detroit or the Mekong Delta." For the left, racism at home parallels imperialism abroad, one or both of which must inevitably underwrite the capitalist adventure.
To be fair, the "Detroit" and "Mekong Delta" references -- the whole preface for that matter -- are more likely to have come from Bill Ayers' pen than Obama's, but if so, Obama surely felt comfortable with Ayers' conclusions. And from all evidence, even after eight months as president, he still seems to accept the left's relentless, anti-capitalist, anti-American agitprop as "knowledge."
Whether it is "too big" for Obama to handle only time will tell.
Once upon a time, a young lad was born without a belly button. In its place was a silver screw. All the doctors told his mother that there was nothing they could do.
Like it or not, he was stuck with it . . . He was screwed.
All the years of growing up were real tough on him, as all who saw the screw made fun of him. He avoided leaving his house . And thus, never made any friends.
One day, a mysterious stranger saw his belly and told him of a monk in Tibet who could get rid of the screw for him. He was thrilled. The next day, he took all of his life's savings and bought a ticket to Nepal
After several days of climbing up steep cliffs, he came upon a giant monastery. The monk knew exactly why he had come. The screwy guy was told to sleep in the highest tower of the monastery and the following day when he awoke, the screw would have been removed. The man immediately went to the room and fell asleep.
During the night while he slept, a purple fog floated in an open window. In the mist floated a solid silver screwdriver. In just moments, the screwdriver removed the screw and disappeared out the window.
The next morning when the man awoke, he saw the silver screw laying on the pillow next to him. Reaching down, he felt his navel, and there was no screw there! Jubilant, he leaped out of bed . . . And his butt fell off. The moral to this is:
'Don't screw around with things you don't understand -- You could lose your ass.' Congress is noted for screwing around with things they don't understand - like the economy. That's why we are all losing our asses!
The poor shmuck wanted to go to Tibet. And wound up spending his lifes savings on a trip to Nepal instead. He later sued the travel agent, won a million dollars, and lived happily ever after with a Burmese hooker.
Good story anyway.
[This message has been edited by NEPTUNE (edited 08-19-2009).]
Charlie Cook is one of the most respected pollsters of either party in the country. He was predicting a Dem landslide in both 2006 and 2008 months before election day and was extremely accurate in estimating the final tallies.
He polls exclusively for Democrats which is why his analysis of the current political landscape is so shocking.
From Politico's The Scorecard:
Charlie Cook, one of the best political handicappers in the business, sent out a special update to Cook Political Report subscribers Thursday that should send shivers down Democratic spines.
Reviewing recent polling and the 2010 election landscape, Cook can envision a scenario in which Democratic House losses could exceed 20 seats.
"These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report's Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low," he wrote.
Cook scrupulously avoided any mention that Democratic control of the House is in jeopardy but, noting a new Gallup poll showing Congress' job disapproval at 70 percent among independents, concluded that the post-recess environment could feel considerably different than when Congress left in August.
From what I've read, the GOP is doing a good to excellent job of recruiting candidates to run in vulnerable Democratic districts. This is a turnaround from 2006 and 2008 when candidate recruitment by Democrats spelled the difference.
Could history be repeating itself and a landslide is in the offing for the GOP in 2010?
There are several factors working against that scenario but most professionals are now willing to entertain the possibility. That's a far cry from last January when talk of a permanent Democratic majority was all the rage.
You don't break a young bronco just by beating it. You break it by making it feel helpless -- confining it in a small corral, isolating it from the herd, running it around and around on a short rope, feeding it only when it follows commands, making friends with it, whipping it as needed, and making sure that it knows who's boss every second of the day. In the end the colt knows there's just no way out.
That's the real motivation behind "Universal Healthcare" Obama is trying to sell us Euro-socialism, which means bribing and intimidating people with their own tax money and corralling everyone with an endless sea of laws and regulations, until they know they can never fight City Hall. The crux of ObamaCare is centralizing power; everybody is made helpless except the politically connected.
Eurosocialism is the power of the elites to break the will power of ordinary people by any means. You can kill with kindness, and if that doesn't work, with overwhelming control. It means controlling the supply of life-saving medical care, and punishing people for tiny infractions of Political Correctness, as defined by the power class. Ordinary people end up wading in a swamp of threats, rewards and propaganda that keeps them intimidated and cowed. Nobody wants to be accused of being a racist, a smoker, or a hater -- or whatever the target of the moment happens to be. Using media, indoctrination, taxes, doctors and cops, you corral people like a young bronco by making them helpless.
In Europe the Political Class is now impossible to throw out. Elections make no difference. The Ruling Classes are locked into permanent power just like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi. It's just the old European aristocracy under a new label. The permanent Ruling Class sends out an endless stream of commands, and the only appeal is to the bureaucracy itself. Franz Kafka had it right.
In European countries that used to stand for exemplary honesty and decency, corruption has now become pervasive, and it is never punished. In the UK, Gordon Brown's ruling Labour Party was just exposed for routinely double-billing the taxpayers for second houses and a hundred other little extras. The newspapers were filled with genuine outrage from ordinary people. With what result? Nothing happened. Nobody got fired or demoted. Gordon Brown just decided not to have general elections until things looked better for the Labour mafia.
That's not democracy. It is just another locked-in class system. That's how you break a bronco, and how you can break people as well.
What Marx called the Organs of Propaganda are the big stick of social control. The BBC is a great example. The Beeb has only one mission: To propagandize the little people on behalf of the Socialist Ruling Class. The Beeb will lie every minute of the day, stamp out the truth, and above all control everything people see and hear, day in and out. No human mind can resist the polluted river of propaganda. The Corporation has panel trucks going up and down every residential street in the UK, triangulating all the home TV antennas to see if they have paid their Broadcast License Fee. If not, they get hit with a hefty fine. Result: You can't have a radio or TV turned on without being spotted and paying the tax. It doesn't matter if you actually listen to the Beeb. (They are doing the same thing with internet connections even now. Look for it in your neighborhood.)
Just look at the decline of Britain's armed forces. In Europe the armies are welfare programs. The Socialists are ball-and-chaining soldiers. The need to buy votes for the National Health Service drains off all the money. That is why they still need America to defend them, sixty years after World War Two, and twenty years after the Cold War.
That's Obama's model. Obama is a hierarch: He lives for power, and feels natural only when he arrogates total control to himself. Socialized medicine is the key, because control over your health means the power over life and death. Once the Democrats control one-sixth of the US economy they can hang on to power for good.
We face a stark choice. The Left thinks it is winning. They want total control, but they will accept a foot in the door.
I hope we don't give them even a foot in the door, because our house will never be safe again.
Marine Humor A U.S. Marine squad was marching north of Fallujah when they came upon an Iraqi terrorist, badly injured and unconscious.
On the opposite side of the road was an American Marine in a similar but less serious state. The Marine was conscious and alert, and as first aid was given to both men the squad leader asked the injured Marine what had happened.
The Marine reported, "I was heavily armed and moving north along the highway, and coming south was a heavily armed insurgent. We saw each other and both took cover in the ditches along the road.
I yelled to him that Saddam Hussein was a miserable, lowlife scum bag who got what he deserved, and he yelled back that Ted Kennedy is a fat, good-for-nothing, left wing liberal drunk who doesn't know how to drive.
So I said that Osama Bin Laden dresses and acts like a mean- spirited hooker!
He retaliated by yelling, "Oh yeah? Well, so does Nancy Pelosi!"
"And, there we were, in the middle of the road, shaking hands, when a truck hit us."
Hmmm, sure doesn't look like I'm taking to myself here. Yet another Neptune blunder.
The f'd up thing about this pres is that it ain't hard to find f'd upped things he is doing. What are we up to now, more than one for each day in office. The "One A Day" pres. Heard his cabinet meetings have turned somewhat religious, they have now resorted to praying for Serendipity.
I grew up in a home where God was MIA. I don't remember religion being mentioned except occasional references to some sort of God and a heaven. While my family was proud of their ethnicity, they didn't practice the religion. Aside from the requisite Bar Mitvahs, they never set foot in a synagogue.
My parents did worship at the altar of pleasure. They loved to party; they lived for the times they'd go out with their large, rowdy group, and dance and drink the night away.
I'm not sure why my parents were such party animals. It was probably a way to escape the past, the memories of which were permanently etched on the mournful faces of my grandparents.
The past: Atrocities in Tsarist Russia. Poverty in the U.S. Tiny, noisy tenements in New York City; ghettos of immigrants from Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe huddled together.
My father's dad, desperate for money during the Great Depression, accepted a dollar to name my father after another man's deceased loved one.
Brazen anti Semitism; recurrent chants of "dirty Jew." WWII; the enormity of the death camps and the guilt of being safely sheltered.
My father, with a little money saved from working 12 hour days, reinvented himself. He changed his Yiddish sounding name to something WASP'y, and moved the family to a look alike, tract house in the ‘burbs. While the lifestyle was modest compared to middle America today, my parents were euphoric, a state that continued even into old age.
Escapees from the ghetto, no longer targets, my parents finally felt like true Americans. They were happy as clams in their perfect, sanitized life of black and white TVs, a washer and dryer, frozen vegetables, and luxuries like bottled salad dressing.
When I think about my dad, I remember how he ate. Every morsel, whether formerly boxed or canned, was exquisitely delicious, and he savored each bite, murmuring "Mmm, mmm," like a man just rescued from starvation.
My parents worked hard during the week, and then weekends traveled the cocktail party circuit, dancing the night away. They were in perpetual adolescence, recreating their lost childhood.
Meanwhile, I was a latchkey kid before the phrase was coined. With my only hobby being shopping, I occupied myself with my friends, the Addams Family, the Brady Bunch, Ed Sullivan, and Patty Duke. When I was a teen, it became mind numbing sex and drugs and rock and roll.
Weekends there was so little to do that I slept in until 1 pm. Occasionally I would tag along on a Sunday with my best friend and her family who went on outings. I was astonished that an entire family went out in the car for activities like picnics and museums.
It was a flat, colorless childhood with no strong arms to guide me. I drifted along the best I could, like a lone, unguarded leaf.
College was a blur of hook ups, hard drugs, and parties as I was speeding headfirst into disaster. Mercifully, in my early 20's, I found my way to a few decent boyfriends who had brains and I gained some myself, giving up my untamed habits along the way.
I settled down with my husband, Jon, a bookish type, who came from a family the polar opposite of mine. Jon still jokes (?) that he helped raise me.
Often Jon would drag me to talks by other brainiacs, where I would summarily nod off. But I like to think I absorbed something in between snoozes.
Eventually my life took shape: around my career as a psychotherapist and my leftist crusades to change the world. I found religion, or perhaps it found me.
I had just turned 30, an event that had given me the willies. Perusing a book by Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa in a bookstore, I was entranced by the novel idea that happiness is not the goal of existence, but the byproduct of a life well lived; that the purpose of life was truth not pleasure.
I started studying Eastern religion with a fervor, especially books by Trungpa and Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), and even called myself a Buddhist until I shed most of my old identities a few years ago. I became more of a heavyweight, able to look at the big ticket items of life -- mortality, illness, and suffering -- because I was safely nestled in the world of the Spirit.
I remember the moment I discovered God, in my 30's, when Jon and I were on vacation. I was reading a light novel, and he, of course, was studying some heavy tome. When I perused it and saw it was a religious book, I asked him, "Do you believe in God?" (Yes I know it's bizarre that it took l0 years for the subject to come up.)
I was bowled over when Jon said, "Yes." (He was also raised secular, and had never previously mentioned the G word.) My eyes welled up with tears. I realized that I did too.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the factors in my life that lured me far Left for so long; what captivated me and held me there even with mounting evidence that the ideology was bankrupt. And why are millions still following the Pied Piper of Chicago, even though he's looking increasingly more corrupt and vacuous?
And I've come to this: the Left is filled to the brim with people like me, who grew up in homes with God in permanent exile and various adults floating in and out in hot pursuit of self fulfillment. With no way to understand life, this realm starts looking like an unmanageable House of Horrors. The result: people turn to someone like Obama to engineer a whole new world.
So we have a situation today with the Left in charge, preaching their religion which is anti-religion. Their dogmas are so harsh that they make the Torah look like a light summer read. The Left's missionaries are trying to tame the savages (stupid white people) just as the missionaries of old traveled abroad to tame the savages.
But, as survivors of Jonestown learned, a religion without a beneficent God firmly in place, is a cult, and can destroy lives. Those spiritual teachers I admired when I was young, Osho and Trungpa? They turned out to be major pervs. They slept with their students, even encouraged violence against them. Both died as a result of their depravity.
Without some type of faith, people can remain in a state of ravenous hunger, as needy and frightened as a little lost child. They're looking for something, but all the roads are blocked off The only door leading to safety has been shut in their faces by a society that rejects the Sacred.
So the masses flock to Obama because he offers them meaning and a way to organize a chaotic universe. People believe he's some kind of Messiah because they're frantic for a Prophet to create a heaven on earth.
I saw a blog where a young person posts, "I have pictures of Obama on my wall. He gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning." There are no rational arguments about bailouts and taxes that will counteract this desperation for purpose.
Our culture offers youth nothing of substance to carve out a dignified life. In the place of spiritual and intellectual richness, we pump them up with noxious television shows and films, texting and sexting, addiction to Facebook, and lots of drugs. We may have created a Generation N, for Nihilism.
And it's not just the young. Baby boomers are being dragged kicking and screaming into old age, without any spiritual guideposts and within a culture that fears and despises anything old. In ancient times, elders were revered as the cultural wellspring of wisdom and tradition.
But in most of the First World, older people are as disposable as yesterday's trash. How unacceptable to grow old in a culture that finds no grace, only disgrace, in wrinkles, and wants to hustle you out the door as soon as possible.
Baby boomers are also dancing to Obama's beat, enveloped in feelings of hope and change, holding on for dear life to their long lost youth. But it's not the real 60's with its hard drugs, violence, and exploitation of women, but a fantasy, frozen in time, of peace and flower power.
I understand the draw of Obama and liberalism and changing the world because I know what it is like when life has no other meaning. I understand how unbearable it is when not only one's parents but God is MIA and school is a forbidding place, and drugs only temporarily blunt the pain.
And I know the feeling of being so depressed that you grab onto anything -- whether it's a bottle or a relationship or a guru -- anything that eases the despair, and you won't let go, even when the consequences keep mounting. You won't let go until you find your way to the truth.
And I know what it's like to wake up from the fog, to shake off the dread, and to find that I'm strong enough to walk on my own two feet and that a Higher Power lifts and carries me when I'm too weak to stand.
If we as a culture don't find our way back to those young and old who are lost in space, adrift and unanchored, they will embrace false idols. For as long as Obama is the only game in town, the only way people can feel alive and hopeful, they'll ignore every red flag and defend Obama until their last dying breath. They must believe in him. The alternative is just too unbearable.
"I have pictures of Obama on my wall. He gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning."
That one quote illustrates just how bad the problem is. It's not politics, it's idolatry. The "drink the Kool-Aid" line has been around for a while, but this really drives home how many Obama followers exhibit the same type of psychological dependence that lead to Jonestown.
That one quote illustrates just how bad the problem is. It's not politics, it's idolatry. The "drink the Kool-Aid" line has been around for a while, but this really drives home how many Obama followers exhibit the same type of psychological dependence that lead to Jonestown.
YES. Exactly. Pretty much the same goes for global warming. It's a religion to these people. That's why you won't be able to get them to see and hear *reason*.
OK, how's THIS for blatant hypocrisy? Remember all the anger from the left over the "outing" of Valerie Plame? What's their excuse for this? Is it suddenly different now that Democrats are in power?
The interrogator, a now-retired CIA operative named Deuce Martinez, had spent more than a year trying to get information out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as the mastermind of those attacks, and Martinez also interrogated Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin Al Shibh.
As the Justice Department investigates whether Guantanamo Bay detainees were improperly given about 45 photos of CIA officers or contractors, FOX News has learned that one of the photos was of a lead interrogator of the accused plotters of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The interrogator, a now-retired CIA operative named Deuce Martinez, had spent more than a year trying to get information out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as the mastermind of those attacks, and Martinez also interrogated Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin Al Shibh.
Martinez's identity was first revealed publicly a year ago in an article by the New York Times, which published his name despite strong appeals by the CIA and its director not to run the story. The Times argued that Martinez wasn't a covert agent, but the CIA said revealing his name still would put his life at risk.
It is a violation of federal law to identify CIA covert personnel, and it is a violation of military commission rules to disclose classified information, even if only to the defendants.
The photos reportedly were provided to the detainees by the John Adams Project, a combined effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to assist in the defense of the detainees.
Sources told FOX News that the ACLU and detainees' defense attorneys sent a photographer to Martinez's home in Northern Virginia and took photos of him that were later shown to some of Al Qaeda's worst of the worst at Gitmo.
But FOX News also learned from its sources that there is some question whether the Justice Department itself may have played a role in relaying photos of covert CIA operatives -- which would make the story even more unbelievable, according to some lawmakers with responsibility for intelligence oversight.
The Justice Department's investigation of the photos, led by counterespionage chief John Dion, is trying to determine if military lawyers defending the detainees divulged classified information or compromised covert CIA officers.
The investigation was first reported by The Washington Post on its Web site Thursday night. The ACLU told the Post the organization was confident no laws or regulations had been broken.
The lawyers defending terrorist suspects held at the Navy-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have sought to expose their clients' treatment at the hands of government interrogators, particularly those held in CIA "black sites" overseas, where harsh interrogation tactics were used. Critics of those tactics say they are torture.
Such treatment is likely to play a central role in expected trials for the detainees, either in federal criminal courts or at military commissions, and defense lawyers are expected to try to call CIA personnel and CIA contractors to testify.
I have to ask myself, are the Liberal/Progressive/Democrats, or LPDs, among us, aware of how crazy they sound? I'm sure a lot of them are kind to children and puppies, and very few are hard-core crazy but they certainly sound like there is a serious wiring problem in their heads.
For example, they talk incessantly about "choice", as in a woman's right to choose. Or "choosing a life style", which is code for appeals to the gay and lesbian community. But even though the LPDs preach "tolerance" and "diversity" in terms of certain other "choices" they are utterly intolerant. School choice comes to mind. As does any healthcare choice other than the so-called public option for health care insurance.
So, are they for or against the concept of individual choice?
The LPDs support sections of the health care proposal that would involve cutting off life lengthening care for seniors on the grounds that it is too expensive and would be a waste of money for someone who is no longer making a positive contribution to society. OK, maybe not exactly Sarah Palin's "death panels", but close enough.
At the same time, though, these same über-liberals are completely inflexible in their opposition to the death penalty. It would seem to me that if anyone can be defined as not making any positive contribution to society it would be those who are on death row. But the LPDs insist that we house, feed, clothe and, incredibly, provide medical care for serial killers, rapists, and other types of non-contributing members of our society.
Likewise, why is the selection of a Supreme Court Associate Justice now predicated on the candidate's "empathy". It's almost understandable that the judicial representatives of the people try to understand the point of view of those seeking justice before the bar, but it appears that it will be impossible to expect the same empathy for those whose only crime is being subject of the entropy that affects all living beings.
So, do LPDs favor or oppose the government determining if a person should live or die? And if they are for the government making such a determination, what do they propose as the ethical or moral basis for deciding the question? They're good at making an economic case, but they also keep hammering away at us on the basis that we have a "moral obligation" to respond quickly to resolve the problems caused by the crisis du jour. Or are we back to the question of "choice"? Are they telling us that we shouldn't be allowed to "choose" for yourself what is best for you because they, the LPDs, are the only ones qualified by their educations at prestigious universities, and their incredible levels of empathy to make such determinations? Are they implying that non-LPDs just aren't smart enough to realize without government guidance that they shouldn't run with scissors.
And this apparent bi-polar disorder reveals itself in areas other than healthcare. Take the Global Warming (Oops, I mean Climate Change!) debate. LPDs announce that all CO2 emissions from ANY source are evil and are in fact, according to NY Times writer Paul Krugman, "treason against the planet". So the LPDs have determined that we must destroy our economy, reduce our standard of living, and risk the lives of the elderly living on minimal incomes by raising the costs for them to heat their homes, to ensure that the CO2 genie is forced back into the bottle. OK, maybe "ensure" is too strong a word. Perhaps "hope" is more accurate.
Of course China and India have both said they won't even consider making the American and European LPDs happy by going along with this idea. In fact, the Chinese are planning to continue their massive expansion of coal fired electrical generating plants which will more than offset in CO2 emissions what the LPDs will "cap" with the Waxman-Markey climate bill.
At the same time that we are in the middle of this debate, the Obama administration has loaned Brazil two billion dollars to help fund the development of Brazil's huge offshore oil reserves. So the LPDs are adding to the source of CO2 gasses at a cost of a couple of billion, while demanding that we tax ourselves into poverty to reduce CO2 gas from the burning of petroleum.
Since the LPDs purposes are always noble and just chock-full of empathy and all that warm fuzzy stuff, perhaps they could explain how these two things are not in direct conflict with one another. And they could also explain why George Soros, the ultimate "sugar-daddy" of the LPDs, who is a major shareholder in the Brazilian corporation Petrobras that will be receiving the loan, apparently hasn't divested his holdings in protest of this despoiling of the planet. Maybe they could also explain why he's not a traitor to the planet.
Our good LPD friends also seem to have difficulty with the word "big". It seems like it should be a fairly simple word to use, especially for those who have benefited from Ivy League educations. But they can't seem to differentiate between hating the word and loving the word. Just think about how it's used:
E V I L (and should be nationalized)
Big Oil
Big Business
Big Tobacco
Big Pharmaceuticals
Big Auto
G O O D (and should be bigger)
Big Government
Big Labor
Big Education
Big Media
And of course we have organizations like AIG which are "too big to fail". But is that a good Big or an evil Big? Was the evil Bigness of General Motors offset by the good Bigness of the United Auto Workers?
This bi-polarism problem extends to the very basis of the entire country, our Constitution. When LPDs want to do something distasteful, they always resort to "reinterpreting" the Constitution, discovering penumbras, and making education a function of the federal government. This reinterpretation appears necessary, since there isn't a single word about education apparent to anyone who isn't an LPD. So the LPDs can see as Constitutional mandates things that are utterly hidden to ordinary folks like us. Right to privacy, rights to abortions, rights to unearned income, lots of rights. But rights that are clearly spelled out, in English any high school student could understand, like the 2nd Amendment, seem to be beyond them.
The LPDs also seem to think that if they are directing the effort, communities organizing themselves to accomplish social, economic or legislative and governmental goals are just wonderful. But if anyone not certified as an active LPD attempts to do the same, they are classed as evil. They are un-American. They are a distraction from serious debate. The only thing that the LPDs haven't called the folks at the tea-parties and town hall meetings is "counter-revolutionary".
Again, they seem to be unable to keep from oscillating wildly between multiple definitions of the same words.
The LPDs in Congress and the White House who claim to be able to direct the entire economy, the climate, and our very right to be alive should be able to express themselves more clearly. They should be able to think more clearly. But apparently they can't.
Perhaps WE should be making these decisions for THEM, since they appear to have some problems. It's a shame that those problems would preclude them from getting medical care, now isn't it?
I checked out a link to this website for an organization called "Fund for the Public Interest". I sent the following email to one of their people:
Your web site says:
Fund For The Public Interest is a national nonprofit organization working to increase the visibility, membership and political power of the nation’s leading environmental and progressive groups.
but then your website says...
Current Fund partners like Sierra Club and Human Rights Campaign are expanding their donor base and passing tougher legislation against air pollution, forest clear-cutting, hate crimes, and special interest money in politics.
Wouldn't YOUR organization be a special interest group, raising special interest money for a political agenda?
Need evidence that Wikipedia is left-leaning? Read this entry about Saul Alinsky. Not only is it not critical in any way, it's nearly a glowing review of his work. Not a single word that he was a Marxist. Nice whitewashing job, Wiki...
I wish the bear and other neo-conned fools here would spent a little time thinking about why after their GOP had total control of the USA congress the white house and the court voodoo didnot work and real debts went up not down as they promised the wars were not won no mission was accomplished NO WMDs or real links to 9-11 were found in iraq the afgan mess got worse USA's world standing droped like the GOP poll numbers in war for oil all they did was raise the price of oil balance of trade got worse jobs and pay rates went DOWN markets crashed imployment crashed house prices and banks crashed millions are out of work
can they admitt they TOTALLY BLEW IT ?????? no they create a long thread blaming the other guys bear and your "" heads here need to do as JC said get the beams out of your own eyes before you try to do any others people's eye specks
will you do that???? talk about how and why your plans totally FAILED no blaming others just examine you own faults and failures
------------------ Question wonder and be wierd are you kind?
Most happened on Obama's watch. It just took a little push from him to cause these to happen. He may or may not have caused them, but he didn't do anything to stop them from happeneing and even made some things worst. The Republicans might have a majority the first couple of years of Bush's administration, the rest of the time it was the Democrats who held this power. It's even worse now, as there is no way to stop them from passing anything they really want to pass. Too much power is dangerous and this is what the Democrats are enjoying right now. 2010 can't get here fast enough.
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 09-02-2009).]
Most happened on Obama's watch. It just took a little push from him to cause these to happen. He may or may not have caused them, but he didn't do anything to stop them from happeneing and even made some things worst. The Republicans might have a majority the first couple of years of Bush's administration, the rest of the time it was the Democrats who held this power. It's even worse now, as there is no way to stop them from passing anything they really want to pass. Too much power is dangerous and this is what the Democrats are enjoying right now. 2010 can't get here fast enough.
110% BS you got congress in the early clinton years thru 06 in 2010 the demo's will add seats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! nobody but your hard core will vote for your looser proven to fail ideas and programs btw the house prices and repo's started before the elections in 06 the market crashed under BuSh2 your boys never came near a balanced budget fail is all the neo-conned did and they failed BIG TIME
thats OK as I will not wait for your drones to admitt they failed as I guess they are not man enuff to do so and as long as they do not wake up and change directions are doomed to fail over and over
------------------ Question wonder and be wierd are you kind?
thats OK as I will not wait for your drones to admitt they failed as I guess they are not man enuff to do so and as long as they do not wake up and change directions are doomed to fail over and over
We've posted adequate proof of our points, over and over, and you keep repeating the same incomprehensible, absurd, paranoid nonsense.
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 09-03-2009).]
your very dull so called points are PURE BS SPIN totally lacking real facts and are smoke and mirrors with a large dose of hand waving and look over there thrown in
your party had control of the house from 1995 to 2006 and the senate from 1995 thru 2001and 2003 to 2006 note 2002 it was a tie or one vote each as members died or swapped partys the court even longer and the white house and cabinet 1980 to 1992 and 2000 to 2006
in short you had control and did stupid things or failed to change important things sorry but your claim the demo's did IT just does not pass any test for TRUTH and is simply an other BIG LIE
------------------ Question wonder and be wierd are you kind?
It takes two to tango, in this case Democrats and Republicans to pass new laws. It's not like the Democrats didn't have a choice on stopping any legislation they opposed, they just didn't oppose any legislation. Thank you for making our country what is is today.
