I was right

I think that it is now quite obvious that the underlying character of far right wing ideologues is a paranoid structure. Read back to my prior blogs to see a deeper analysis of this tendency.

The righties are really showing their true colors now - desperation has bred overly paranoid fantasies about the Obama administrations motives-- they have calledhim a fascist, they have said this is the biggest power grab in US history, they have been discussing dictatorship. What a bunch of hogwash. These accusations of course completely ignore the quite clear undermining of the constituation by their own Bush administration (see the John Yoo memos, downing street memos). These memos have just continued to demonstrate that the Bush administration prepared the groundwork for suspending the bill of rights (1, 4, and 5 at least)

It is irritating me to no end that these issues continue to be largely ignored, minimized, and completely uninvestigated and prosecuted. WHY, WHY???

Again, I will reiterate that if democrats investigate this their own complicity will become revealed. So democrats can't do it or they will have to indict themselves (at least some of the leadership).

It is so interesting that suddenly Cheney, Ashcroft, Gingrich, Rove are all coming out of their holes to try to rally the GOP troops that are clearly at a loss.

For example, Steele's claim today that his statements all follow a preconceived plan so he can see his place on the chessboard and where the enemy is. This is such an amazing and almost crazy claim - he expects us to believe that he orchestrated a conflict with Limbaugh just so he could apologize and look like and idiot and distract from other clealry important issues and the GOPs own need to come up with some kind of solution to the economic crisis.

Well, the choice of Steele was so cynical and perverse to begin with.
How did the GOP go down so hard and completely lose their dominance in the press and propaganda supremecy? I'm not going to try to explain this here - mostly because I really only have limitted guesses - the war, the defecit, the economic disaster, and a continuous serious of bad policy decisions. But I don't think these things in themselves are the real reasons. I think the real reason has something to do with changes in ideology and tolerance of the subjegation of reason (though I don't think most humans really use reason very well).

The other issue that I thought to write about is to analyze some of Obama's speeches . It certainly appears that he is a true liberal - just as the GOP has alleged. He keeps saying that it will not be until everyone realizes that they contribute to the welfare of everyone else that we will not make progress. I wish I could generate a number of these statements and quote them here, but I don't have the energy to do so right now.

Single Payer Health Care

OK, I'm getting more and more pissed off. I hear over and over again the same mantra about how a single payer system would lead to the type of service you get at the DMV (department of motor vehicles). Well, I went to the DMV today at lunch time to get my driver's license renewed. It took less than ten minutes and the people there were, if not overtly friendly, at least tolerably helpful. I left thinking that if my doctor's office was as efficient I'd be thrilled. It made me remember that all of my DMV experiences have been relatively easy (even in a dense urban environment), a lot easier than many of my doctor's visits actually. I have spent inumerably more hours waiting in doctor's offices with my expensive private insurance (PPO) than I ever have at any government office (DMV, USPS, etc...).

My vote is for a government run health system that would be much more efficient than anything we have right now.

stem cell research - what controversy?

OK, so the Obama wants to loosen the rules on stem cell research and the press presents it to the world as a "controversy." What controversy? This is another example of the same manipulative stuff we get all the time from the media - even the so called most liberal media (NYT - NPR). All I heard this morning was "controversy" "controversy" "controversy." AHHHHH! The only controversy is that there are a small percentage of scientifically retarded people who have no claim to make statements about such things (i.e. religious fanatics). The only issue should be if there is controversy in the scientific/medical community - and there is not (except of course for the very low % of medical practitioners who are religious fanatics but this seems to be oxymoranic anyway -- there would be no modern medical practice without the rejection of fundamentalist religious ideology).

So for the press to constantly harp on the controversy over stem cell research is completely irresponsible at best and wholly right wing propaganda at worst.

This kind of thing makes me more and more sick - maybe I'll need an infusion of stem cells to my brain to dumb me down to their level of ignorance!

Thoughts on Conservatives

Why is conservatism and fundamentalist religious ideology so compatible? This has been a question for which I have been seeking answers for a long time. I have thought that there have been complex answers to this question, but in fact it is quite simple. The answer came to me in a moment of clarity as I was thinking about how republicans have handled the entire process of ascension (starting with Buckley/Goldwater) and termination (George W. Bush). The fact is that conservatism has been the predominant ideology for 30 years+ and they have had their chance to make it work. Yes, I know many of them would say that they never really put true conservatism into practice - but that is, of course, BS. The fact is this "experiment" of lowering taxes, eliminating regulation, shifting money to the rich, undermining unions, reconfiguring the judicial system etc...have been an utter failure.

Republicans have decided to be in total denial about these facts. Bobby Jindal's rebuttal of Obama's talk revealed that republicans continue to press the exact same ideas that so clearly led to these problems. They stick to their ideologically driven "policies" in a fundamentalist manner - with no ability to absorb reality. So any rigidly held ideological system with no ability to have flexibility or ambiguity in the system leads inexorably to the kind of concrete thinking of hyper religious ideology. In other words, extreme religious beliefs are rigid and resistant to any ambiguities. Therefore, fundamentalist religions (whether christian fundamentalists, orthodox jews, hyper religious mulims, etc...) gravitate toward the conservative parties.

Intolerance of ambiguity, the need to ascribe to your beliefs in the face of direct evidence to the contrary, is evidence of this kind of conservative/religious belief. As an aside this is also what keeps conservatives from being able to tolerate science and "expert" opinions. Conservative/Republican reality is based on a denial of the reality of ambiguity.

The Scariest Article

This is the scariest article I have read in a long time. While I can certainly chalk it up to hyperbole and an example of an extreme analysis, it remarkably fits in with how I have thought about things for quite a long time. In other words, it feeds a certain "fantasy" (I mean that in the psychoanalytic manner - that is any idea, wish, etc whether positive or negative) scenario that I have had for many years - a post apocalyptic fantasy in which life radically changes for the worst.

copy/paste this link:

http://www.truthout.org/022709F


OR CLICK HERE:

After the Financial Crisis, Civil War?

Will the economic and financial crisis degenerate into violent social explosions? Tomorrow, will there be civil war in Europe, the United States and Japan? That's the rather alarming conclusion that the experts of European think tank LEAP/Europe 2020 lay out in their latest bulletin dated mid-February.