Quote of the Day -- On Today's Republican Party

From George Orwell, born June 25, 1903

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. 

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. 

We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. 

The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. 

We are not like that. 

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. 

Power is not a means; it is an end. 

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. 

Now you begin to understand me.” 

― George Orwell, "1984"

Screw you, America

What the Republicans did yesterday:

$478B Infrastructure Bill Blocked by Senate GOP

Americans need jobs.

America and Americans need improved, updated infrastructure.

The American economy needs a boost.

You think the Senate Republicans would have any of that?

Oh, hell no.

Republicans don't want you to have better infrastructure, more jobs or any such economic boost.

At least, they don't want you to have any such thing while this president is in the White House or likely, until one of their own is there.

Screw you. It's political party first.  You have to wait, America

Republican Party Priorities

By now, most of the nation has, I think, heard about the 47 Republicans who got together and signed a letter to the Iranian hard liners, saying they--the Republicans--support them and not our own president when it comes to negotiating for peace and keeping Iran from building a nuclear reactor.

It was fairly disgusting.

Moving on from that, local news station KY3, in Springfield, covered a story yesterday that bears some additional notoriety:

MoDOT lacks funding needed to fix bridges in 'critical condition'

This is another story I think most of us are familiar with. I know CBS "60 Minutes" did a story on it, telling of the lack of maintenance and upkeep our nation's roads, bridges, streets and other essential infrastructure have gotten and how they need work and investment. From this story yesterday:

74 Southwest Missouri bridges are currently listed in "critical condition" according to MoDOT, but department officials say the state doesn't have the money to repair those bridges...

And that's just Southwest Missouri bridges, not the entire state. If it were the entire state, that would have been concern enough.

Right now there are 600 bridges in Missouri listed in poor or critical condition, and officials estimate in 2024 there will 1,500 bridges in those categories. Without repairs, MoDOT says many bridges will have to be given weight restrictions or even be shut down completely.

And the great things about a solution to the nation's infrastructure would be that it would give more Americans jobs--good jobs, and for years---and secondly, also importantly, it would give the economy a boost.

Those are some huge benefits.

But instead of doing the nation's business and writing, proposing, voting on and passing an infrastructure bill, what do the Republicans give their time and attention to?

A letter to our enemies, saying they support them. instead of supporting peace negotiations and yes, our president.

The nerve, the stupidity the selfishness is fairly stunning.

We've all known we need to get money to our Highway Fund, too, but it's also neglected. This Congress and our representatives just simply aren't giving their jobs and our country, our nation, the people, the attention it all deserves.

Once again, they've put their political party ahead of the nation and the nation's needs, ahead of the people.

How long are we going to tolerate this nonsense?

Our Representative Emanuel Cleaver's speech earlier this evening at the DNC

Very well received, too, by the way.

Quote of the day

If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power." ~Dwight D Eisenhower, Remarks at the forth annual Republican Women's National Conference (6 March 1956)

The latest thing in jokes

Libertarian jokes. It was inevitable. Q: How many libertarians does it take to change a light bulb? A: None. The free market has chosen darkness and we must not interfere. :) Have a great weekend, y'all.

On cynicism

Having gone over this morning to Midtown Miscreant's blog for another reliable good read (If you haven't seen it, you might want to as it's good, he's funny and he's right, I think:  http://midtownmiscreant.blogspot.com/2011/01/fast-eddie-friday-house-cat-with.html)

It got me to thinking about cynics and cynicism so I looked up a formal definition of cynicism.  I found this on Wikipedia:

Cynicism (Greek: κυνισμός), in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics (Greek: Κυνικοί, Latin: Cynici). Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a simple life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society. Many of these thoughts were later absorbed into Stoicism.


Check that out:  "the purpose of life" is "to live a life of virtue in agreement with nature."  


Zounds.  


That doesn't sound very cynical, at least not by our current usage of the word, does it?  And "rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health" (I don't understand that last one) "and fame, and by living a simple life free from all possessions."  "...happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which" is "natural for humans."  "...the world belonging equally to everyone..." and "...suffering...caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society."


Far from our current ideas of cynicism, this sounds positively virtuous, positive, supportive and democratic (in the bigger, older form of the word, having nothing to do with any political party).


How did this word turn in usage?


Or, to be more specific, how did we get so cynical?


Link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism

Libertarians get my goat

I got a request on Facebook (yes, I'm on Facebook--whatever) to "like" the Libertarian Party and I read and learned some things. To wit: They say they are the "Third Largest Political Party". (Yeah, well, yeehaw, right?, since there have only been, really, two political parties for almost ever?) and they are for the following: --Smaller government --Lower taxes --bringing home American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq and --stopping the rewarding of failed companies with bailouts. All good, right? Of course. Then, there was this, last zinger--they want to "Cut taxes and spending and let the free market work." This, of course, is where they lose me. Don't get me wrong--even as a staunch, Liberal and Democrat (and I mean staunch), I'm all for shrinking the size of the Federal government. I've written that before. We should never have added the Homeland Security Department. I mean, what are the CIA and FBI for, anwyay? But I digress. It's this whole "cutting taxes" now, when we have HUGE deficits that is disturbing. I mean, no, none of us want to pay more or higher taxes, for sure but we do have our obligations, you know? And as for letting "the free market work"--if I hear this one more time, I'm going to scream. (not literally, so don't start). Does the Gulf oil spill mean nothing to anyone? Does the banking industry collapse mean nothing to these people? Do they not want clean water, air and soil? How, exactly, for a specific instance, do you get and keep clean air, water and Earth, if corporations are not forced into it with laws, regulations and government oversight? News flash: The answer is, you don't. You don't get and keep a clean environment, to choose one important issue, if you don't have a Congress pass laws and then a government department who makes sure the corporations do what they are legally supposed to do. It just doesn't happen. So smaller government? Sure. Heck yeah. Bring it on. But very little government and "free market" instead? You'd have to be out of your selfish, pea-picking mind.

Where did "empathy" go wrong?

Question: Since when did empathy become a bad thing?

Answer: Since the Republican Party went into meltdown and irrelevance, circa 2009

From Wikipedia:

"Empathy is the capability to share your feelings and understand another's emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes," or in some way experience what the other person is feeling. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, sympathy, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior.

Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry:em·pa·thy
Pronunciation:\ˈem-pə-thē\
Function:noun
Etymology:Greek empatheia, literally, passion, from empathēs emotional, from em- + pathos feelings, emotion — more at pathos
Date:1850
1: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
2: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner ; also : the capacity for this

See? You can tell, right here, above, what the Republicans would be so totally against, when it comes to empathy and President Obama's thought that empathy would be good in a new Supreme Court Justice.

"Understanding".

"Being sensitive to...", "expressing feelings, thought, and experience of another..."

This is all WAY too "touchy-feely" for Republicans.

WAY too feminine.

Shoot, for that matter, way too intelligent.

Republicans will have none of that.