Winslow usually won’t post a rebuttal of a rebuttal, but I know what he drinks. OK, Crank, why can’t Rep. Boehner and Speaker Pelosi both be bad for America? I would like to see the Dems lose the house just to see Nancy Pelosi sit the hell down. She is one of the singularly most ridiculous figures in politics today. And, in 2010, that’s an astounding refudiation. Anyone who says “the best way to create jobs is to extend unemployment benefits” needs to turn in her gavel by the end of the work day. You must do it during business hours, of course, because it won’t slide under the door. But getting Boehner (OH) to replace Pelosi as the next Speaker of the House is kind of like replacing Edith Bunker with Reverend Jim from Taxi (am I showing my age?).Whereas I never support stupidity on either side of the aisle, you steadfastly support your local moron.
You made a statement on the mosque issue when I disagreed with the majority of Americans.
You said, “Don’t you know how ridiculous that sounds?”
The whole point of the article was how the majority can be wrong, not just most of the time, but all of the time. Misinformation was used effectively in Nazi Germany too.
I can hear Goering now, “The majority of Germans support the construction of concentration camps, yet you oppose them? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?”
But who needs 1930s Germany? Look no further than the people who chose VHS over Beta, IBM over Mac, and Jordin Sparks over Sanjaya. Heck, we even chose Bush over ‘anyone with a pulse’ in ‘04. Oh, that’s right Kerry…er, never mind. The majority of people, when subjected to a wide array of misinformation (otherwise known as Fox News), can get it wrong every time. After a few more Tea Party rallies the majority of Americans will believe Obama’s a Muslim, he was born in Kenya, and Sanjaya will probably end up on a celebrity no fly list (CNFL).
I still believe, Sanjaya!
Your only argument that comes anywhere near the mark is my position on the mosque debate. I certainly sound like “the anointed one” on this score. But here’s the thing, we must pick and choose our battles wisely. Defending the Constitution against Sharia Law is a MUST. Solidarity with Danish cartoonists to defend our 1st Amendment rights is worth any backlash. On the shadow side—brought to you by those fighting Foxeteers—we’ve got Christian fundamentalists burning the Koran, and the terminally misinformed protesting a mosque (a trumped-up story created to score nothing more than political points). It’s not just wrong, it’s dangerous. Being fodder for Al-Jazeera, stoking hatred unnecessarily, and increasing suicide bomber lines for bull shit is a good way to further damage the freedom and security you supposedly hold so dear.
What the right’s demagoguery on the Cordoba mosque really represents is a lack of seriousness in the war on terror. They are playing right into the Jihadists’ hands.
—Andrew Sullivan The Daily Dish Aug 14, 2010
Currently, Fox News is the 24/7 mosque debate channel. They invented it, they spun it, and now they are scoring political points with the unwary. And, as for yours truly being Mr. Spock, exploiting anxiety and negative emotion is not the ideal way to live long and fatwa.
As for your stirring piece on, yours truly, “taking the opposite position of the vast majority of Americans” …well, even when I didn’t get most things right, I always wanted an aristocracy of some sort. An aristocracy doesn’t have to be a bad word. To some degree, you always hire someone you think will do the best job and let them get to it, or, in Obama’s case, go golfing. Putting everything to a vote is great way to get things wrong. Why is this, you ask? American citizens may be great at whatever they do, but are they the best to decide every foreign, domestic, and economic decision we make?
OK, by a show of hands, should we emphasize international environments to allow domestic development as the Soviet Union remains concentrated on other emergent situations, which could allow China to stabilize East Asia for the predictable future?
Good luck with that. Another shining example of Hannity’s America. At least the wise have a firm grasp on how much they don’t know.
The only truth is in knowing that you know nothing
– Bill S. Preston, Esq., quoting some textbook, requoting Socrates
Besides, popularity contests get Palins in office. Do you know who my High School student class president was? What an asshole! OK, not really, but I had a cool high school, but most of em’…wow! At the end of the day, if we put everything to a vote, Rupert Murdoch is now president. Good luck with that too.
As an integralist, I differ from traditionally liberal views quite often. So I ask again, do you have any position where you stray an iota from the Fox playbook? And you still don’t think this is a coincidence? Especially taking into consideration their track record in recent years? 80% of Fox’s listening audience believes all of their bullshit. This is the problem. It’s that Pavlov’s blogs thing again…
Oh, and I did offer a solution about Fox News (See: John Cusack). Kidding. After his statement about Fox this week, I’m glad I got his doppelganger interrogated by the Riverhead Police Dept a few years back (long story, but damn funny). The 1st Amendment demands we leave Fox alone. Just move it to Comedy Central where it belongs. So ultimately, Crankko it’s not stupidity, it’s misinformation.
Of course, “Stop blaming Bush for the economy” is the Fox mantra. Sure. But here’s some simple non-Foxinian mathematics: after the 1929 collapse, what did the economy look like in 1931? It took 4 years before the beginnings of an inkling of a recovery started. The stock market followed the same pattern in 2008 as in 1929 and only stopped, just shy of the very bottom, after TARP and the spendulus arrived on the scene.
No one on either side of the aisle was going to let this country slip into the abyss without at least trying Operation Monopoly $$$. Bush started it, Obama continued it, and unless a truly independent party was involved, which it wasn’t, this was all inevitable. Besides, if all of our car companies tanked at the same time (The Crank Plan) then who would make our tanks? And, of course, the Chinese, during a ground war in Asia, would be happy to sell us spare parts for our Hummers, right? They own that now, remember? Aren’t Republicans into security anymore? Sure they are, they’re just not good at the whole connecting the dots thing. But a depression would do wonders for our security, right? Maybe Bin Laden would feel so sorry of us, that he’ll pull that Mission Accomplished banner down from his cave mouth.
If Republicans had won in 2008, they would have done the same thing, but they would still be saying “deficits don’t matter,” so you wouldn’t be worrying as much about pesky things like “reality.” Well, at least not until the next Dem arrived in office. “Holy shit! Look at these deficits!” Give me a break.
Then I get this graph from the Crank via email. It states the stimulus cost more than all 8 years of the Iraq war.
First, I wasn’t for the stimulus (certainly not to this extent). Second, the majority of economists agree the stimulus averted a depression. Third, the Iraq war was a huge chunk of cash, the combined cost of which is only slightly under the stimulus, and why did we go there again? What did it accomplish? Oh, yeah, it helped Iran, and Al Qaeda. That’s good right? They’re our allies, right?
The Bush tax cuts rocketed our deficits more than any other single item. Add to it one extraneous war and the housing collapse (which Bush may not have caused, but certainly presided over) and, well, my boy Fareed said it best:
The simple fact is this: all the Bush tax cuts were unaffordable. They were an irresponsible act of hubris enacted during an economic boom. Conservatives thought they would force us to shrink the government. But with Republicans controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, did reduced taxes cause reduced spending? No, they led to ever-increasing borrowing and a ballooning deficit.
—Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, Aug 1, 2010
The Fox Business Channel has never mentioned this simple, yet stunning fact, and they never will. And you say I have no solutions? Your solution is to vote in a guy, twice, who tanked us, and then demand a depression.
“Sorry, but I believe my poor voting record indicates that I should receive a depression with my Happy Meal and, well, I’m kind of stuck in this jobless recession, so I was kind of wondering if I could downgrade?”
The stimulus was a reaction to a cluster fuck—granted, it went overboard—but it was a response, not a cause. The Iraq war was part of the cause—part of why the spendulus was spawned! It’s like bitching about the nuke that diverted the planet killing asteroid because all the radioactivity now in the stratosphere.
Then, for the cherry on the sundae, you said, “Obama IS the worst president ever.” Where did you hear that, I wonder? Hmmm. First off, Obama’s currently ranked somewhere in the middle, but who’s counting. Fox is never having to check your numbers. Besides, if Obama continues to slide he’s likely to be a one-term president. Sorry, but voting in the worst of the worst for two terms and not learning anything from one’s mistakes is more of a Republican thing.
