Sunday, November 01, 2009
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
TENC Syndrome: the repetition of an idea or view as though it's true, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, derived from Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale, The Emperor's New Clothes. (An emperor who cares too much about clothes hires two swindlers who promise him the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth, they tell him, is invisible to anyone who was either stupid or not fit for his position. The Emperor is nervous about being able to see the cloth himself so he sends his ministers to view it. They see nothing yet praise the cloth. --Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes)
• "Barack Obama is a great orator!" say so many pundits and "folks."
Well, if you like smug, nasal, sentimental, platitudinous, punchy headline-copy delivered with a persisssstent, eardrum-piercing sibilant "s", then, yessssss, he'ssss your man. Having suffered what will be 8 years of GW Bush's verbal illiteracy, the thought of having another President who is unbearable to hear what with his hissing and whistling enunciation of profundity-lite leaves me hopeless.
• This race isn't about race. Hillary and Bill are playing the race card.
After Bill Clinton, smug, slime-bucket that he is in general, "reduced" Obama to Jesse Jackson status (i.e., winner in the S. Carolina primary in '84 and '88, who went on to drop out), the Black vote for Hillary has nearly disappeared. Who played the race card?
Essence.com: In South Carolina, the Democratic campaign took a negative turn with charges and countercharges of injecting race, yet the numbers are indicating that there was a record turnout. Clearly, South Carolina voters weren't completely turned off by the tone of the race in the final days.
Reverend Jesse Jackson: They were inspired by it.
http://www.essence.com/essence/lifestyle/voices/0,16109,1706948,00.html
• Obama can bring us together.
What is he waiting for? If he can't bring his own Party together, why would we think he can unite Republicans & Democrats, young and old, Left and Right, races, genders, whomever?
• Gender isn't an issue in this race.
"Earlier this [February], speaking at Tulane University, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said this about the attacks coming his way from Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY:
'You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out,' Obama said.
The CLAWS come out? Really?
...'I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.'"
-- Jake Tapper, ABC News Blog, Feb. 16, 2008
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/02/is-obama-using.html
Frank Rich, an unabashed Hillary-hater, announced in his March 23rd New York Times opinion piece that, "Race has been America’s transcendent issue...." In its editorial of March 19, 2008, concerning Obama's Race Speech, the New York Times declared "race and religion[,] the two most toxic subjects in politics."
What could be more sexist and toxic than to ignore the toxicity of sexism in politics and every other realm of life in this world? Don't forget, All men are created equal...! Women didn't get to vote until 1920, 50 years after Black men. Sexism applies to 51% of the people in this country; Black or African Americans comprise 12.4% of the population (U.S. Census, 2006)--about half of whom are women. Sexism is the dirty huge secret of the United States. And clearly the "folks" are not ready to transcend it.
• "Barack Obama is a great orator!" say so many pundits and "folks."
• This race isn't about race. Hillary and Bill are playing the race card.
• Obama can bring us together.
• Gender isn't an issue in this race.
These are just a very few examples of the TENC Syndrome, spread and sustained by the major news media. Like the frightened tailors of the Emperor in Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale, the pundits of the nonstop news cycle have fervently and uncritically spread the Obama campaign's claims; Black and white, male and female media monopolizers leap to his defense whenever his fallibility rears up. MSNBC, in particular, hates Hillary Clinton. Chris Mathews can hardly contain his revulsion of her, with his lip-curling, nose-scrunching expression as though he is smelling something fetid whenever he has to mention her.
Obama may be the better Democrat to placate the billion Muslims who rightly fear and loathe the U.S. for our destruction of Iraq, among other grievances. But he's winning on wishful thinking and the fear and loathing of strong, tenacious, outspoken women which lives on in this nation.
Repetition Compulsion as High Risk Behavior
Why the majority of the people permitted George W. Bush, a novice in national and international politics, to take power is why they will again vote for The Attractive Man to lead them, and qualifications be damned. Again.
When we recover from our swoon, we shall see that our Dreamboat, Barack Obama, is a highly skilled, business-as-usual politician of centrist commitment— much like our former Dreamboat, Bill Clinton, who served in somewhat less volatile times.
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Why the majority of the people permitted George W. Bush, a novice in national and international politics, to take power is why they will again vote for The Attractive Man to lead them, and qualifications be damned. Again.
When we recover from our swoon, we shall see that our Dreamboat, Barack Obama, is a highly skilled, business-as-usual politician of centrist commitment— much like our former Dreamboat, Bill Clinton, who served in somewhat less volatile times.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
WHAT THE NEWS MEDIA HAS TOLD US TODAY, 11/29/06
IRAQ TO US: GO HOME.
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has just shown George he's not a top priority.
Dr. Ahmadinejad thinks he's dancing on our graves.
They're working things out among themselves.
A high cost in martyrs, willing and unwilling, a brutish contest in the high heat
is no overstatement. Poor testosterone poisoned boys, band of brother beasts.
Watching the global humiliation of George W. Bush, the Pretender and Failed Son,
isn't as satisfying as I might have imagined.
Baker had to release his report quickly to counter frat-boy-fuck-up going around the Middle East talking about staying as long as it takes.
This public denuding is embarrasing—watching someone being abandoned by his nation, the loss of control of the Congress emboldens involved nations to assert their own interests over "ours" as Bush wanders ever more lost and alone.
AHA! Herr Karl has forgotten to teach George the new talking points (he makes do with only "foment" and "secular violence" to incant), or Karl has forgotten to write them.
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IRAQ TO US: GO HOME.
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has just shown George he's not a top priority.
Dr. Ahmadinejad thinks he's dancing on our graves.
They're working things out among themselves.
A high cost in martyrs, willing and unwilling, a brutish contest in the high heat
is no overstatement. Poor testosterone poisoned boys, band of brother beasts.
Watching the global humiliation of George W. Bush, the Pretender and Failed Son,
isn't as satisfying as I might have imagined.
Baker had to release his report quickly to counter frat-boy-fuck-up going around the Middle East talking about staying as long as it takes.
This public denuding is embarrasing—watching someone being abandoned by his nation, the loss of control of the Congress emboldens involved nations to assert their own interests over "ours" as Bush wanders ever more lost and alone.
AHA! Herr Karl has forgotten to teach George the new talking points (he makes do with only "foment" and "secular violence" to incant), or Karl has forgotten to write them.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
How Republican is the Media?
NOW the news media—mainstream and alternative mainstream—become super critical about ethics. The hatchett job on Nancy Pelosi has begun and promises to be in full swing by the time the new Congressional session begins.
In the short year we've nationally known John Murtha, we see that he's a blunt, bold, realist. Just after the Dems big win, we see him on a 27-year old video of the Abscam sting, turning down a bribe but keeping the door open for another day. Which never came.
Why is this even in the news?
The Press, spinning her smart action supporting Murtha's obviously doomed chance of becoming Majority Leader (she can certainly count) in order to send a clear signal that her top priority is getting the US out of Iraq quickly, has unanimously concluded that she blundered, miscalculated the always-unruly Dems, and is weakened in presiding over a split Party.
Not over her 100-hour agenda they're not. And why isn't the media covering the myriad aspects of that agenda? Let's have a daily discussion (not derision) of the issues and implications of raising the minimum wage, making college tuition tax deductible (unbelievable that it isn't already!), cutting student loan interest rates in half (they went up 50% last year under Republican supervision), stripping the mask off the insurance company robbers wreaking such havoc on the health of US citizens to begin the complete overhaul of our thinking about healthcare.
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Next post will discuss our troops, as part of the ongoing mission of rethinking to which the unbrainwashed are committed.
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NOW the news media—mainstream and alternative mainstream—become super critical about ethics. The hatchett job on Nancy Pelosi has begun and promises to be in full swing by the time the new Congressional session begins.
In the short year we've nationally known John Murtha, we see that he's a blunt, bold, realist. Just after the Dems big win, we see him on a 27-year old video of the Abscam sting, turning down a bribe but keeping the door open for another day. Which never came.
Why is this even in the news?
The Press, spinning her smart action supporting Murtha's obviously doomed chance of becoming Majority Leader (she can certainly count) in order to send a clear signal that her top priority is getting the US out of Iraq quickly, has unanimously concluded that she blundered, miscalculated the always-unruly Dems, and is weakened in presiding over a split Party.
Not over her 100-hour agenda they're not. And why isn't the media covering the myriad aspects of that agenda? Let's have a daily discussion (not derision) of the issues and implications of raising the minimum wage, making college tuition tax deductible (unbelievable that it isn't already!), cutting student loan interest rates in half (they went up 50% last year under Republican supervision), stripping the mask off the insurance company robbers wreaking such havoc on the health of US citizens to begin the complete overhaul of our thinking about healthcare.
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Next post will discuss our troops, as part of the ongoing mission of rethinking to which the unbrainwashed are committed.
Friday, November 12, 2004
DEFEND THE UNITED STATES AGAINST TRAITORS TO THE CONSTITUTION.
...........................................................................................................
The basis for the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
...........................................................................................................
Constitution of the United States of America
"Preamble
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Notice any mention of insuring Biblical norms as one of the purposes of the Constitution? In fact, such an act is explicitly disallowed:"Amendment I
Ratified on 12/15/1791
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Yet, President G. W. Bush has given his support to establishing his and his supporters' religious beliefs as the law of the land by legislating a Constitutional Amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
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The Miami Herald, Posted on Fri, Nov. 12, 2004
Associated Press
"GREENVILLE, S.C. - Bob Jones III, president of the fundamentalist college that bears his name, has told President Bush he should use his electoral mandate to appoint conservative judges and approve legislation 'defined by biblical norm.'...
Jones wrote that Bush will 'have the opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech and limited government.'
In February 2000, Bush spoke at Bob Jones University when he was running for his first term in the White House. At the time, the school banned interracial dating and included anti-Roman Catholic material on its Web site."
(http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/10158683.htm?1c)
Christians, like Muslims, Jews, Jains, Wiccans, atheists, and agnostics, are protected from the legal imposition of another's "biblical norms."
Millions of U. S. citizens do not want to be governed by fundamentalist Christian biblical norms.
Elected officials are required to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Failure to do so is in violation of the law and any such official who defies the Constitution must be impeached.
DEFEND THE UNITED STATES AGAINST TRAITORS TO THE CONSTITUTION.
...........................................................................................................
The basis for the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
...........................................................................................................
Sunday, November 07, 2004
............................................
A Decent Society
Evangelical Republicans say a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage is necessary to ensure a decent society.
Christianity is undone by those who in its name bomb noncombatants killing and making homeless thousands of human beings.
Freedom is undone by denying it to homosexuals.
Freedom is undone when the beliefs of one group are forced onto the whole.
Enforced evangelicism is indecent.
The denial of equal rights is indecent.
Both are illegal.
.........................................
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A Decent Society
Evangelical Republicans say a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage is necessary to ensure a decent society.
Christianity is undone by those who in its name bomb noncombatants killing and making homeless thousands of human beings.
Freedom is undone by denying it to homosexuals.
Freedom is undone when the beliefs of one group are forced onto the whole.
Enforced evangelicism is indecent.
The denial of equal rights is indecent.
Both are illegal.
.........................................
Saturday, July 17, 2004
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Who Exactly Is Redefining Marriage?
Republican Senators have a mantra——they are so much better than Democrats at boiling hatred into simple-minded sound bites for the cognitively shrunken (i.e., vast majority of Americans):
"A small group of UNELECTED ACTIVIST JUDGES are REDEFINING MARRIAGE against the will of the American people" [referring to the Massachusetts high court which on February 3, 2004 found that denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates the Massachusetts state constitution].
Of course ACTIVISM of any sort is bad in the view of power-crazed patriarchal crooked control freaks, which pretty well describes most Republicans. Passivism is the desired role we the people (especially women people) must take. And given the barely 50% of the eligible voters who take that little action every few years, we the people have complied well with the passivity preferred of us by the party in power.
Language is a constantly and, usually, gradually evolving function of human social interaction. But is it these ACTIVIST JUDGES who are suddenly changing the meaning of "marriage"? Or are they actively doing their constitutional duty of interpreting and upholding the Constitutions of their state and country?
To the everlasting disgrace of Bill Clinton for signing the absurdly named Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and all those cowards (like NY Senator Chuck Shumer, but not John Kerry) and blindered members of Congress who voted for it, that statute codified a newly restrictive definition of marriage. Defining marriage as "the union of one man and one woman" as DOMA does, ignores the essential meaning of marriage: a close and intimate union.
The Republican/Puritan's newly constrictive redefinition of marriage eliminates such notions as "the marriage of music and dance" or "a marriage of ideas" from the common language, and thus the mind. We already gender everything and limit our understanding of gender to only two possibilities, male and female. The absurdity of this dominant paradigm of mainstream consciousness keeps us nicely busy idiotically allocating. Who's the guy, music or dance? Which ideas are married, a male idea and a female idea, or is it a transgressive pairing of same-sex ideas——or horrors! more than two ideas married at once!
The Bush/Frist/Hatch/Santorum (Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania who'd best be in a sanitorium in Transylvania) attempt at making narrow-mindedness Constitutional shames the slave-owning founders further and further sets back the advancement of equal rights, mutual respect, and individual freedom over which the United States remains at civil war.
It isn't activist judges who are redefining marriage.
It's the narrow minds elected by the narrowed minds which the Republicans have been wildly successful at constricting since Ronald Reagan made greed good, ketchup a vegetable, and thinking and questioning bad (following in the footsteps of Republican former Vice President Spiro—no lo contendre—Agnew), who are the ones trying to redefine—and demean—the meaning of marriage by narrowing it.
...................
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Who Exactly Is Redefining Marriage?
Republican Senators have a mantra——they are so much better than Democrats at boiling hatred into simple-minded sound bites for the cognitively shrunken (i.e., vast majority of Americans):
"A small group of UNELECTED ACTIVIST JUDGES are REDEFINING MARRIAGE against the will of the American people" [referring to the Massachusetts high court which on February 3, 2004 found that denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates the Massachusetts state constitution].
Of course ACTIVISM of any sort is bad in the view of power-crazed patriarchal crooked control freaks, which pretty well describes most Republicans. Passivism is the desired role we the people (especially women people) must take. And given the barely 50% of the eligible voters who take that little action every few years, we the people have complied well with the passivity preferred of us by the party in power.
Language is a constantly and, usually, gradually evolving function of human social interaction. But is it these ACTIVIST JUDGES who are suddenly changing the meaning of "marriage"? Or are they actively doing their constitutional duty of interpreting and upholding the Constitutions of their state and country?
To the everlasting disgrace of Bill Clinton for signing the absurdly named Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and all those cowards (like NY Senator Chuck Shumer, but not John Kerry) and blindered members of Congress who voted for it, that statute codified a newly restrictive definition of marriage. Defining marriage as "the union of one man and one woman" as DOMA does, ignores the essential meaning of marriage: a close and intimate union.
The Republican/Puritan's newly constrictive redefinition of marriage eliminates such notions as "the marriage of music and dance" or "a marriage of ideas" from the common language, and thus the mind. We already gender everything and limit our understanding of gender to only two possibilities, male and female. The absurdity of this dominant paradigm of mainstream consciousness keeps us nicely busy idiotically allocating. Who's the guy, music or dance? Which ideas are married, a male idea and a female idea, or is it a transgressive pairing of same-sex ideas——or horrors! more than two ideas married at once!
The Bush/Frist/Hatch/Santorum (Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania who'd best be in a sanitorium in Transylvania) attempt at making narrow-mindedness Constitutional shames the slave-owning founders further and further sets back the advancement of equal rights, mutual respect, and individual freedom over which the United States remains at civil war.
It isn't activist judges who are redefining marriage.
It's the narrow minds elected by the narrowed minds which the Republicans have been wildly successful at constricting since Ronald Reagan made greed good, ketchup a vegetable, and thinking and questioning bad (following in the footsteps of Republican former Vice President Spiro—no lo contendre—Agnew), who are the ones trying to redefine—and demean—the meaning of marriage by narrowing it.
...................
