Thursday, September 27, 2012

Stop it!

Being clueless and rich is hard!

Burns?  Or Romney?

Darrell Issa hits the big time...

Dealing with a troll.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
In Arizona, where anti-abortion crusaders have passed some of the most restrictive women’s health laws in the country, abortion rates seemed to have increased. 
And by the way, good Christian women? Shut up.

High Fructose Corn Syrup must be called that, not the 'disguised' name of Corn Sugar.

Maybe the Earth had two moons at one time?

6 comments:

Steve Bates said...

Where to start? How about

"In Arizona, where anti-abortion crusaders have passed some of the most restrictive women’s health laws in the country, abortion rates seemed to have increased."

This reminds me of the repeatedly established observation that states which have the death penalty consistently average more murders and felony assaults than adjacent, demographically similar states that don't. (I'm too tired to chase the link, but I think Death Penalty Information Center has the stats.)

What's the commonality? Simple: radical conservatives have a very poor understanding of human nature, and they write their laws accordingly.

(Maybe more late tomorrow...)

ellroon said...

What was Bill Clinton's line? "So I wanted to try to explain that in very simple terms. No one else would do that; no one . Unless you were being driven by ideology instead of by evidence. This is a practical country. We have ideals. We have philosophies. But the problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence. So you have to mold the evidence to get the answer that you've already decided you've got to have. It doesn't work that way. Building an economy; rebuilding an economy is hard, practical nuts and bolts work."

They think they can legislate morals and ignore human nature....

Steve Bates said...

Bill raises a good... and practical... question: are Republicans driven by ideology?

Put aside the party rank-and-file, for whom "ideology" is any collection of catch-phrases repeated often enough to become a sort of creed; that's mere manipulation by their leaders. "Lower taxes," say GOP leaders. "Less government." "Balanced budget." "Responsibility for oneself." "Job creators." "The invisible hand of the market." Any other fatuous idea that can be reduced to two or at most three words. Put those true believers aside. Hell, put Mitt Rmoney aside too; he hasn't the intellectual horsepower to attempt actual ideology... the antithesis of Karl Marx he ain't.

No, consider instead the party leadership: McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Issa, McCain until he ran for president. Are they ideologues? true believers? My conclusion: they are not! They believe deeply in money and little else, and they will do anything to obtain and/or control large amounts of money. Some of them are also power-mad. But no, they're not ideologically driven. They are mere manipulators.

Whatever your philosophy of politics, if you mistake the battle as a conflict of ideals, you have missed something essential. And yet... if the battle is anything else, we're cooked. Or perhaps Koched. To my deep regret, I think we may very well be just that.

ellroon said...

Sauteed or fricasseed?

I will keep on yelling and pointing and refusing to eat the gruel the Republicans are forcing on us. Haven't yet taken to the streets though.... would waving sheets on the overpass over the freeway count?

I keep on saying this... but I never thought that within my lifetime we would have a rerun of an imperialistic illegal war (like Vietnam), the McCarthy era, the Salem witch trials, and a repeat of the Great Depression. Hasn't ANYONE in Congress passed a history course?

Steve Bates said...

"Haven't yet taken to the streets though.... would waving sheets on the overpass over the freeway count?"

Back before my crippled days, I spent my share of time in the streets. That was at nonviolent events, and the era of gratuitous tasering-peppersprayingstraightintheeyes-LRADassault-kettling-etc. as police techniques was not yet upon us. But I have to rate my efforts, all of them, as failures in the one thing that matters: compelling the oppressors to change their behavior.

What's next, short of revolution? I don't know. I'm reading Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy"; it's old and somewhat tedious but has served as a manual of techniques for well-organized resistance in a number of countries. Mother Google will take you to it.

ellroon said...

Noted, thanks. Hope he doesn't write a sequel "From Democracy to Dictatorship"....