Quote of the day

"Why do you grant a BULLY special status upon his death?" --Andrew Brietbart

Andrew Breitbart, 1969-2012

With conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart's sudden, surprising death last evening of a heart attack, I think two things need to be noted. First is that it's a bit surprising--not tremendously but somewhat--that the idea is already "out there" that this President's Administration was "no doubt" responsible for it is sad, a bit scary and extremely unfortunate. Hopefully that will end soon but I don't look for that. The idea that the Clinton Administration had their attorney assassinated is still, to this day, floating around out there, crazy as that is. I look for this to have a similar, disappointingly long lifespan. The second thing to note on this event is that divisive, ugly, angry, emotional discord in any country--this or any other--is not healthy or productive, period, and that goes for any political camp or viewpoint. Discussions and facts and statistics and data and reasoned, calm, intelligent debate naturally makes sense and needs to be promoted. People that take this route do their country no good service. This nation sorely needs the day back of calm, quiet, reasoned but still passionate conservatives of the likes of William F. Buckley, not what we're given to today. Links: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/andrew_breitbart/index.html; http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9156

On fear as a tool in America

“It’s not hard to bring out the worst in large numbers of citizens by constantly pressing their buttons; fear, hate, greed, false pride and blind loyalty are the main emotions used to manipulate people so much these last years. Reversing this process and empowering people through courage, love, generosity, humility and critical thinking is harder but it can and must be done.” -- Coleen Rowley for RootsAction; FBI whistle blower


Link:  http://rootsaction.org/

Network, then and now

Look how much is just the same then as it is now, with "Network" having been made so long ago in 1976.

The precursor, I think, to Fox "News". 

And the Tea Party.

And "birthers".

Americans seem to learn very little, if anything at all.

R.E.M.--Losing our religion (and 2 other things)

No, not the band, though they're terrific, of course. I put this up because Glenn Beck represents three things we owe it to ourselves to get out of our politics. To wit:

The first is religion. We need to get it--all religion and religions--out of our politics and government. Before anyone gets started, I want to make perfectly clear that this absolutely doesn't mean morals. It just means everyone's "god" or "God" needs to be extracted. If you let one in, you have to let them all in and that's just not workable. We have to disconnect these two--organized religions and government--so we don't have theocracies and so we can get to defining and solving our problems without fighting, in the meantime, about whose god is correct and all that other nonsense.

The second thing we have to get out of politics and government is emotionalism. (See above). We need to logically, clearly and calmly, again, define our problems, prioritize them and then define and select solutions. If tears and crying and whining and other obfuscating emotions get thrown into the mix, we lose sight of where we are and what needs to be done. It's only an ugly distraction, at least. The one who is most sincere (e.g., crying or wailing, etc.) is not necessarily correct.

Finally, the last thing we need to get out of our government and politics is money, for sure. And we can do this, too, for those who don't think we can. Here's how it could happen: 1) Get true, stringent campaign finance reform so lobbyists, corporations and other "fat cats" can't give money to our politicians to run for office. We need to make this illegal, not condone it with laws giving ways it can be done; 2) Shorten the campaign season by law, as Britain did long ago (can we learn nothing?) so the big money isn't needed by politicians for these absurdly long, annoying and ridiculous campaigns that annoy the daylights out of us anyway.

It just wouldn't be that difficult. We'd have to demand that our representatives do this. It's possible. We can do this. But it will take work.

It likely won't happen but we could do this.