Left Agenda

Can you imagine the idea of a BLACK MAN actually trying to tell these WHITE Senators how to do their jobs?

OK, maybe it’s not so difficult for you, but it seems outrageous to Cons, Faux News, and the GOP.  While GOP appeals of “start from scratch,” and going, “step by step,” with the HCR bill were ignored, what really seems to inflame many of the RWL (Right Wing Lunatics) is the fact that Barack Hussein Obama thinks he has a right to speak as if he’s equal, or gosh-darnit, even superior to these white Republican Senators.

Of all the hats President Obama tried on at Thursday’s seven-and-a-half-hour health care summit, it appeared the one he was most comfortable wearing was that of the prickly professor.

How dare the President of the United States, commonly referred to as the Most Powerful Man in the World, talk to these people, correct their factual errors, or call for less campaigning and more substance.  How dare he!

The Party of No isn’t named so simply because of their obstructions in the House and in the Senate.  They’ve earned that title because if it were up to the GOP there would be NO social services of any kind, NO civil rights, NO labor laws, NO minimum wage, NO regulation of private enterprises, NO freedom without money to back it up, NO law without money to back it up, NO rights without money to back it up, NO America unless it was renamed America, Inc.

Here’s what the GOP really thinks of Obama:

And who could forget the music to play at all your Klan rallies:

No, Mr. President the Republicans aren’t interested in bipartisanship.  They’re not interested in making America a better place for ALL Americans.  What they’re interested in is taking America back to the 19th century; back to when minorities ‘knew their place’, women stayed in the kitchen, the middle and lower class had absolutely no say in government, and if you were White and Rich than you were above the law.

Politicians lie.  We’ve all known that since we the moment we grew up and became adults, or sooner for some of you that gain wisdom early.  Lying comes in many forms.  There’s simply withholding the truth, or maybe not correcting other people’s lies.  There’s giving half-truths so what you’re saying is mostly true.  Then there’s a complete unequivocal lie whereby someone states one thing with the full knowledge that the opposite is true.

Filtering through these different types of lies is exactly what you have to do when listening to almost any rhetoric be it originating from the media, politicians, our acquaintances… More and more I’m coming to the conclusion that people that support the GOP (along with fundamentalist Christians) have no idea how to distinguish between these types of lying.  This is a failure in critical thinking skills.  Once a person believes that so-and-so tells the truth, they no longer try to distinguish between when they’re telling the whole truth or half-truths.  They no longer question if the person would ever lie.  It just simply isn’t done.  It’s my theory that GOP supporters, Tea Baggers, and Fundies are all part of this group of people that have little to know critical thinking skills.

Now, with that in mind the GOP continues to abuse their constituents low critical thinking skills by lying and fear-mongering.  Case in point:

1) Dems should be afraid of losing their majority in 2010 because it’s almost certainly going to happen.  How do we know, because there are so many Dems retiring.

2) The failure of TSA and Homeland Security and Obama is that no one is saying “terrorism” enough.  We need to say “terrorism” as often as possible in order to remind everyone that we are at war with “terrorists.”  America is at war with drugs communism Iraq Afghanistan Terror.

First off, the Dems losing seats and thereby their majority may happen.  There’s an election, who knows what the results will be.  You could argue that the majority isn’t even important considering how well the Dems have used it up to now.  What you can’t argue, legitimately, is that the Dems have more to fear than the Reps when it comes to losing seats because the numbers don’t even suggest that.  If anything they suggest the exact opposite.  Polls show that Dems are more in favor than the Reps; both have low scores but Reps’ tend to score a good ten points or more lower.  Also, there’s more Reps Representatives and Senators retiring than there are Dems.  I know Faux viewers are pulling their hair out by now because this simply can’t be true; Glenn Beck never mentioned this!  No, of course not.  He’s off ranting about how African-American is a bullshit term for… what?  Black, Negro, Afro-American,… or would Beck prefer Nigger?

Democrats	FAV	UNFAV	NO OPINION
ALL	42	54	4
MEN	33	63	4
WOMEN	51	45	4
DEM	75	22	3
REP	5	94	1
IND	36	62	2
OTHER	32	64	4
NON VOTE	42	46	12
WHITE	33	65	2
BLACK	79	12	9
LATINO	51	40	9
OTH/REF	51	39	10
18-29	59	33	8
30-44	28	66	6
45-59	49	50	1
60+	40	58	2
NORTHEAST	61	29	10
SOUTH	24	72	4
MIDWEST	45	53	2
WEST	44	55	1

Republicans

	FAV	UNFAV	NO OPINION
ALL	29	61	10
MEN	39	51	10
WOMEN	19	71	10
DEM	9	87	4
REP	84	4	12
IND	19	69	12
OTHER	21	68	11
NON VOTE	11	73	16
WHITE	37	53	10
BLACK	6	88	6
LATINO	12	74	14
OTH/REF	11	75	14
18-29	10	84	6
30-44	47	41	12
45-59	23	69	8
60+	26	61	13
NORTHEAST	10	83	7
SOUTH	58	30	12
MIDWEST	19	71	10
WEST	20	70                     10

These figures are taken from Research 2000.

Second, WTF does using the word “terrorism” have to do with keeping the country safe?  Let’s just skip over that fact that Obama and his appointees have been using the term over and over again for months.  But, in what way would it benefit the American people, how would it help keep us safer, if Obama said the word “terrorism” more?  Of course, it couldn’t be the GOP or Dickhead Cheney’s repeated international statements saying that America is weak that would instigate an attack, would it?  No, it wouldn’t be the continued use of Holy Warriors trying to convert Afghanistan and Iraq people to Christianity, would it?  It wouldn’t be that America has killed thousands of innocent civilians and tortured thousands more and many Americans support these actions that would create animosity towards America, would it?  Nah, it’s because Obama doesn’t say the word “terrorism” enough.  Got it?

What’s sad is how many people believe this crap spewing from Faux News and the GOP.  Let me set the record straight, whether you call yourself Conservative, Libertarian, Republican, etc. you’re either a complete idiot for believing their drivel, you’re one of the people lying for your own benefit, or you’re a complete asshole that believes the American Dream is to care only about yourself and never about anyone else.  I’m betting it’s one of the first two.

Anyone following the news can see that Dick(head) Cheney doesn’t take kindly to any kind of investigation of the Bush Crime Family’s practices, or the Bush Administration’s practices as it’s more widely known.  But, it’s the terrorists that he’s really worried about.  It’s the terrorists that he keeps saying America was defended against by the Bush administration which President Obama is now ruining.  Cheney has said, basically, that Obama is making America less safe by not following the Bush administration guidelines on torture.  Guidelines, which even McCain has described as being illegal.

I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture that we ratified under President Reagan.

This is obvious.  In as much as torture has been defined, the use of “enhanced interrogations” or torture, is plainly within those defined instances of torture.  The argument, instead, hasn’t rested on its legality.  No, the GOP has been trying to convince America that torture was OK, nonetheless, because we needed it to protect our country.  Even with the CIA documents released which Cheney swore would relieve him of any blame of wrong doing and prove that torture gave us valuable information, the opposite was true because the documents didn’t show anything of the sort.

But, more important than what Cheney says was OK, since he says it was OK, is what was actually taking place.  National Security Adviser, Gen. Jim Jones (Ret.), that’s Marine General Jim Jones (Ret.), states that Obama is actually doing a better job of defending us against terrorism than Bush ever did.

“This type of radical fundamentalism or terrorism is a threat not only to the United States but to the global community,” Jones said. “The world is coming together on this matter now that President Obama has taken the leadership on it and is approaching it in a slightly different way – actually a radically different way – to discuss things with other rulers to enhance the working relationships with law enforcement agencies – both national and international.”

Jones said that “we are seeing results that indicate more captures, more deaths of radical leaders and a kind of a global coming-together by the fact that this is a threat to not only the United States but to the world at-large and the world is moving toward doing something about it.”

(emphasis lovingly added)

Yeah, so in your face Mr. Darth Cheney!  No, really guys, are we going to allow our public officials to break the law without any recourse?  The Right got so angry about a guy getting a little under-the-desk-action, but kill a few hundred thousand people in the name of Christ oil and you’re A-OK. (Yeah, that’s a few hundred THOUSAND, including Americans, Iraqis, and other Muslim people that our hired mercenaries decided to abduct.)

Now, all the little Murdoch goon-watchers (that includes all of the vast Ruport Murdoch media corporations: Wall Street Journal, Fox News, etc.) will continue to mimic the speaking box that is their news, for their certainly are no brains over at Fox, and instead of thinking about their actions maybe they’ll pray to their god/dog and ask for forgiveness.

Why does being white and born-again Christian allow other people to totally disregard any of your faults, present or past?  Is it that they aren’t responsible for their actions anymore?  It must be so nice to not take any responsibility for any of your wrong doings since you think some poor guy died for all of those sins two thousand years ago.  Hey, fun game you can play.  Count how many people were killed and how many were saved by Christianity.  Does it even break even?

I wondered if this was for real after I read Alex Leo’s post on The Huffington Post, but it seems legit.

180. STUPIDITY. Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine. This course in Critical Psychology follows the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and most recently, Avital Ronell, in a philosophical examination of those operations and technologies that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending. Stupidity, which has been evicted from the philosophical premises and dumbed down by psychometric psychology, has returned in the postmodern discourse against Nation, Self, and Truth and makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beevis and Butthead. This course examines stupidity.

Yes, I added the emphasis.  Yes, stupidity has returned in postmodern discourse, and yes, it is felt in politics(here, here, here, here, here, here).  America, I think, is seeing a resurgence of Stupidity when millions of people will actively fight against their own best interests (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here).

Matt Drudge doesn’t have a chance when he reports the facts as they are.  A frequent abuser of headlines and false stories, The Drudge Report has become synonymous with bottom-of-the-barrel news.  Fox News, The Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, and the GOP have got themselves a fine operation of misinformation going between them.

As we’ve shown ad nauseum here on Left Agenda here, here, here, here, here, and here, The Drudge Report makes a special effort to give misleading headlines, false no-link headlines, spread obvious lies as truths, etc., etc.  Basically, if it’s in the name of conservatism they are willing to lie and fraud their readers.

Well, here’s another example.  Assisting the false rhetoric of ‘Canada’s healthcare system is just awful’ even though Canadians wouldn’t want our system at all, The Drudge Report puts these misleading headlines on their page today:

That is as misleading as you can get once you read the article.  But, Matt Drudge relies on the fact that many readers do not read past the headlines.  Especially when the headline only supports something they’ve know all along, or think they’ve known.

Let’s look beyond this headline.  While it’s true that in the third paragraph, it states:

“We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize,” Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

It is important to get a few facts straightened out.  For one, it is the “incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association,” Dr. Anne Doig, that says these comments.  Calling her Canada’s “top doctor” is false and misleading.  We wouldn’t refer to the president of the American Medical Association as America’s “top doctor”.  But more importantly are further comments made by the currect president of the CMA, Dr. Robert Ouellet, which Drudge didn’t read, because it’s a whole two paragraphs further in the article, or doesn’t want you to notice:

The pitch for change at the conference is to start with a presentation from Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA, who has said there’s a critical need to make Canada’s health-care system patient-centred. He will present details from his fact-finding trip to Europe in January, where he met with health groups in England, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and France.

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that “a health-care revolution has passed us by,” that it’s possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and “that competition should be welcomed, not feared.”

It’s interesting, for one, that on their “fact finding trip” they aren’t bothering to come to America.  It’s also interesting that they are in fact talking about adding competition which is exactly what the Obama administration has been trying to do with healthcare reform this entire time.   Dr. Ouellet also says, very specifically, “maintaining universal coverage,” is the primary concern.

As she continues, she explains what changes can be made more quickly to accelerate the patient centered healthcare,

“A short-term achievable goal would be to accelerate the process of getting electronic medical records into physicians’ offices,” she said. “That’s one I think ought to be a priority and ought to be achievable.”

A long-term goal would be getting health systems “talking to each other,” so information can be quickly shared to help patients.

Simply astounding, he wants healthcare records to be updated and electronically kept, and he wants health systems to communicate with each other, another aspect of the Congressional plans here in America.

So while The Drudge Report readers and bloggers will surely glue onto this headline and say, ‘See, here’s more proof that Canada’s healthcare system is just awful,’ don’t believe the hype and lies.  There is no perfect system, and there’s always room for improvement.  In Canada, no one is left out in the cold without healthcare; can America say the same?

And while you think about those lies, notice, if you will, how poorly America rates in healthcare.