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(Posted and composed around the 30 July mark, so new updates on ongoing crises may not be reflected.)
Hey, you! Would you like to see what happens when a climate of intolerance festers under the protection of an elected representative? Examine the rash of teen suicides in the district of Representative Michelle Bachmann, anti-QUILTBAG crusader and friend to the fringes of several conservative movements. That environment, and the school climate influenced by Bachmann friends, made it very easy to bully someone just on suspicion of being QUILTBAG, to the point that they took their own lives because they could not see a way out of the torment. Yet you will often see the people facilitating and engaging in the bullying and attacking of QUILTBAG people as lesser, Other, or inferior to themselves claiming to be the victims of intimidation and bullying, usually generating the spectres of "liberal media" and others whose goal it is to destroy the superior Christ-based culture of the United States and the country with it. Whereas the victims of bullying need only point to the very real institutions lending their support to the attackers and telling them that their bullying is a moral thing to do. Yet I don't believe we've seen a rash of young Christians taking their own lives because they were subjected to constant ridicule about their beliefs by a group of QUILTBAG thugs operating with the tacit or explicit approval of the school faculty in, say, ever. I'd say that makes it easier to tell who are wronged and who believe they are righteous.
As the manufactured debt crisis continues, Mr. Scheer points out how much sinister intent there can be read into the Republicans, where the debt crisis was manufactured to kill Social Security. If that goes to pass, the disasters that will result from stopped Social Security payments will have a severe ripple effect.
The FAA lost their authority to operate. Which normally means "hey, no taxes", which means cheaper prices, right? Wrong. The airlines decided to charge full fare and pocket the profits. Supposedly, you are due a refund from the airlines, but you'll have to fight them to get it back.
And then, in the country, notice how much we still think wealth is better distributed than it is, and how much more even our ideals are. We're not even close to our ideals. And we have people actively pushing Statistics against us to justify their Lies and Damn Lies that the poor here are so much better off than everyone else, and if they just didn't spend their money on luxuries like phone services or entertainment, then they'd be fine.
Another alleged plot against Fort Hood ended with the arrest of the suspected plotter. Having seen it happen once, many of the people around and in the area felt uncomfortable with the possibility of a repeat, and thus turned in the person they saw on the same track.
Elsewhere, the heirs to several iconic Marvel creations lost a case in district court, with Marvel retaining the copyrights of the characters, instead of the copyrights going to the creators' heirs. Thus, always look at your contracts to see who retains copyrights.
In opinions, Mr. Mauro invokes good data to support bad conclusions, mostlly because he assumes up front that the newest potential attacker, like all potential attackers, is part of The Bloodthirsty Religion, and always has been, deceiving everyone else skillfully up unil that point. The danger from more homegrown terror is a problem, but Mr. Mauro puts on blinders when he assumes that only Muslims would be terrorists. That way lies madness, Mr. Mauro, and what's worse, there are still plenty of people careening down that path, oblivious to the violence in their own traditions as they condemn those same ideas at work elsewhere and oblivious to the ways that their own traditions often permit, or at least look the other way on, similar things to what they condemn in others. All of that is subordinated in the quest to ensure that The Bloodthirsty Religion gets tied to violence, attemtps at violence, and pedophilia, either unknowing or choosing to deny the history staring them in the face.
Ms. Noonan says that nobody loves President Obama, not even the people who support him and will vote for him, because he's all numbers and no personality, no humanity. And thus, that makes him a loser which nobody likes. All the hope has given way to politics, cynicism, and bitterness at his partisan opponents, and the people don't want bitter cynicism at the intransigence of your opponents. They want optimism and to be told everything's going to be fine, pay no attention to the people in the Congress ready to wreck everything.
Calling a spade a spade about who is holding up legislation and necessary action will get you pilloried in conservative columns, who want to distract the public from the truth of the statement by calling attention to its tone. Or try to discredit the speaker by throwing up non sequiturs. Blaming Republicans for the problems works because the Republicans are responsible for the problems. It's a much better tactic to try and shift the blame back onto the President by claiming he's not serious about any real proposal while narrowly defining the scope of "real" to mean "whatever the Republicans and conservative movement deems acceptable". Moving the goalposts is much more likely to work than complaining about the tone of the argument, not that either of them are actual rebuttals. The proposal for a balanced budget amendment as a check on federal spending is at least actually putting forward a real proposal, even though there are plenty of conservatives who say it's not going to fly for being too ambitious.
That is, when he's not letting the EPA mandate higher fuel efficiency, which plays nicely to his environmentalist and auto worker union bases, forcing businesses and gasoline consumers to bear the brunt of higher costs, which should make at least some people happy with the Obama EPA.
The Murdoch-owned conservative mouthpiece the Wall Street Journal blames entitlement spending, starting with FDR, as the real reason that the United States will have its credit downgraded and the only reason for ballooning debts and deficits, sweeping most of the Republican expenditures on "defense" as necessary things for victory and choosing statistics that paint those years in favorable lights. Elsewhere, Mr. Shapiro accuses liberals of being giddy at the prospect of lost jobs over the Murdoch affair. Because being glad that someone else is not getting nearly monopolistic control of media is totally being glad that people are losing their jobs. Then again, that seems tame to Murdoch papers claiming that the phone hacking scandal by the News of The World wasn't as damaging as what Wikileaks did.
Last for tonight, some sanity - Mr. Tapson mentions that the reason people aren't fond of the President on issues withthe Middle East is because he set expectations that have not been followed through on. No secret religious affiliations, just unmet expectations. And it's awful when that level of sanity seems to be the breath of fresh air.
Hey, you! Would you like to see what happens when a climate of intolerance festers under the protection of an elected representative? Examine the rash of teen suicides in the district of Representative Michelle Bachmann, anti-QUILTBAG crusader and friend to the fringes of several conservative movements. That environment, and the school climate influenced by Bachmann friends, made it very easy to bully someone just on suspicion of being QUILTBAG, to the point that they took their own lives because they could not see a way out of the torment. Yet you will often see the people facilitating and engaging in the bullying and attacking of QUILTBAG people as lesser, Other, or inferior to themselves claiming to be the victims of intimidation and bullying, usually generating the spectres of "liberal media" and others whose goal it is to destroy the superior Christ-based culture of the United States and the country with it. Whereas the victims of bullying need only point to the very real institutions lending their support to the attackers and telling them that their bullying is a moral thing to do. Yet I don't believe we've seen a rash of young Christians taking their own lives because they were subjected to constant ridicule about their beliefs by a group of QUILTBAG thugs operating with the tacit or explicit approval of the school faculty in, say, ever. I'd say that makes it easier to tell who are wronged and who believe they are righteous.
As the manufactured debt crisis continues, Mr. Scheer points out how much sinister intent there can be read into the Republicans, where the debt crisis was manufactured to kill Social Security. If that goes to pass, the disasters that will result from stopped Social Security payments will have a severe ripple effect.
The FAA lost their authority to operate. Which normally means "hey, no taxes", which means cheaper prices, right? Wrong. The airlines decided to charge full fare and pocket the profits. Supposedly, you are due a refund from the airlines, but you'll have to fight them to get it back.
And then, in the country, notice how much we still think wealth is better distributed than it is, and how much more even our ideals are. We're not even close to our ideals. And we have people actively pushing Statistics against us to justify their Lies and Damn Lies that the poor here are so much better off than everyone else, and if they just didn't spend their money on luxuries like phone services or entertainment, then they'd be fine.
Another alleged plot against Fort Hood ended with the arrest of the suspected plotter. Having seen it happen once, many of the people around and in the area felt uncomfortable with the possibility of a repeat, and thus turned in the person they saw on the same track.
Elsewhere, the heirs to several iconic Marvel creations lost a case in district court, with Marvel retaining the copyrights of the characters, instead of the copyrights going to the creators' heirs. Thus, always look at your contracts to see who retains copyrights.
In opinions, Mr. Mauro invokes good data to support bad conclusions, mostlly because he assumes up front that the newest potential attacker, like all potential attackers, is part of The Bloodthirsty Religion, and always has been, deceiving everyone else skillfully up unil that point. The danger from more homegrown terror is a problem, but Mr. Mauro puts on blinders when he assumes that only Muslims would be terrorists. That way lies madness, Mr. Mauro, and what's worse, there are still plenty of people careening down that path, oblivious to the violence in their own traditions as they condemn those same ideas at work elsewhere and oblivious to the ways that their own traditions often permit, or at least look the other way on, similar things to what they condemn in others. All of that is subordinated in the quest to ensure that The Bloodthirsty Religion gets tied to violence, attemtps at violence, and pedophilia, either unknowing or choosing to deny the history staring them in the face.
Ms. Noonan says that nobody loves President Obama, not even the people who support him and will vote for him, because he's all numbers and no personality, no humanity. And thus, that makes him a loser which nobody likes. All the hope has given way to politics, cynicism, and bitterness at his partisan opponents, and the people don't want bitter cynicism at the intransigence of your opponents. They want optimism and to be told everything's going to be fine, pay no attention to the people in the Congress ready to wreck everything.
Calling a spade a spade about who is holding up legislation and necessary action will get you pilloried in conservative columns, who want to distract the public from the truth of the statement by calling attention to its tone. Or try to discredit the speaker by throwing up non sequiturs. Blaming Republicans for the problems works because the Republicans are responsible for the problems. It's a much better tactic to try and shift the blame back onto the President by claiming he's not serious about any real proposal while narrowly defining the scope of "real" to mean "whatever the Republicans and conservative movement deems acceptable". Moving the goalposts is much more likely to work than complaining about the tone of the argument, not that either of them are actual rebuttals. The proposal for a balanced budget amendment as a check on federal spending is at least actually putting forward a real proposal, even though there are plenty of conservatives who say it's not going to fly for being too ambitious.
That is, when he's not letting the EPA mandate higher fuel efficiency, which plays nicely to his environmentalist and auto worker union bases, forcing businesses and gasoline consumers to bear the brunt of higher costs, which should make at least some people happy with the Obama EPA.
The Murdoch-owned conservative mouthpiece the Wall Street Journal blames entitlement spending, starting with FDR, as the real reason that the United States will have its credit downgraded and the only reason for ballooning debts and deficits, sweeping most of the Republican expenditures on "defense" as necessary things for victory and choosing statistics that paint those years in favorable lights. Elsewhere, Mr. Shapiro accuses liberals of being giddy at the prospect of lost jobs over the Murdoch affair. Because being glad that someone else is not getting nearly monopolistic control of media is totally being glad that people are losing their jobs. Then again, that seems tame to Murdoch papers claiming that the phone hacking scandal by the News of The World wasn't as damaging as what Wikileaks did.
Last for tonight, some sanity - Mr. Tapson mentions that the reason people aren't fond of the President on issues withthe Middle East is because he set expectations that have not been followed through on. No secret religious affiliations, just unmet expectations. And it's awful when that level of sanity seems to be the breath of fresh air.
