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Showing posts with label Adolescent power fantasies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adolescent power fantasies. Show all posts

Thursday, May 01, 2014

The NRA Conference=Incredibly Disturbing

As Jon Stewart notes below, this year's NRA conference was incredibly disturbing.


We've officially moved beyond the stomp down the hallway and into advocacy of armed insurrection.

But, hey, if you want to feel lighthearted about it, play a drinking game in which each time appeal to fear is used in a speech, you have to drink.

You'll be drunk in less than five minutes.

Saturday, February 01, 2014

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Scuhmer V The Cult

Senator Charles Schumer has a great piece up on the Tea Party which is a nice front loader to the SOTU tonight. Here are some of the highlights.

The tea party elites -- with little rebuttal -- have been able to make "government" the boogeyman. They have convinced too much of America that government is the explanation for their ills. Even though most Americans and even most tea party adherents like much of what the government does, the tea party elites proclaim that everything that is wrong, even non-economic and private sector problems, can be blamed on the government.

Yep, it's all the government. And don't you forget it, mister!! In fact, I think it's somehow the government's fault that conservatives have such poor relationships with their parents:)

So, how why are they really like this?

The first and most important force is a phenomenon that Democrats have recently begun to address: the decline in middle-class incomes. It's time we deal with the reality that, for the first time in American history, middle-class American incomes have declined for almost a generation. If middle-class incomes continue to decline, we will have a dramatically different America, a less optimistic, more sour America. 

The second deep-seated force that fueled the emergence of the tea party is the rapid pace of change in America's cultural, technological and demographic makeup. Tea party adherents see an America that's not reflective of themselves, and the America they have known, and they just don't like it. We have entered "the second machine age," a transformation of work, leisure, and life that wouldn't have been recognizable when Reagan entered the White House. The distribution of power is changing to include more women, more African-Americans, and more Latinos.

Those two issues have created the atmosphere we have today. As Senator Schumer notes, we are doing something about the first point. Of course, the resistance to his first point speaks volumes. Take away this inequality and you take away what little raison d'etre the leaders of the conservative movement have. The second point is where the fear comes from. They just can't accept change of any kind and the new world is very, very frightening to them. Schumer draws a correlation to the shift from an agrarian society to a industrial one and I think he is right on the mark here.

Look for the president to hit inequality hard tonight in his speech, touching on the points that Senator Schumer mentions in this piece.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

The Adolescent

I've written previously about the modern day conservative as adolescent but this last week has certainly crystallized this theory and so a new tag is born, "The Adolescent." Once again, I was defriended by a conservative on Facebook. Reverend Jim said sayonara to Markadelphia after long exchanges over health care and race issues. Apparently, he and his wife (my first girlfriend) have had trouble signing up for health insurance on the federal exchange and blame me for it. They were in the individual market and were absolutely apoplectic about what the federal government was "making" them do.

Of course, the act of defriending itself is adolescent and, oddly, senior citizen-y (which is sort of the same thing when you think about it). Doesn't Reverend Jim know that you can delete someone from your news feed still remain friends? Man, working the computer machine is tough! Ah well, at least the bubble's integrity can remain intact. Thank goodness! Odder still, its that they tagged me in their health care rants, calling me a "box of turds" and "an idiot" for supporting the president and a political class that "lords over them, forcing them to live in servitude." The more I responded with the facts, the worse they got. Granted, the missus, who is still friends me with me on FB, has infinite leeway with me because she was the first love of my life but did they honestly want me to not respond? Again, adolescent:)

There were so many irrational and hysterical comments in those threads that it was hard for me to keep track but the one thing that struck me about all of them was how decidedly un-Christian they were. They were so self absorbed with their frustration with the web site, did they ever stop to think about these people? They are bitching about a buggy web site and the people in this link had nothing except life threatening illnesses. When Reverend Jim and the missus finally found out that they qualified for subsidies and would actually save money, suddenly they were happy. My oh my, how the emotions swing with teenagers! All talk of people "spooning off of the American taxpayer" went out the window as they finally happily got signed up.

This selfishness, aside from being un-Christian, is yet another strong indicator of a brain and higher reasoning not fully developed-just like an adolescent). They don't think rationally at all. Reverend Jim bemoans liberals that take offense at everything yet thinks conservatives that take offense at everything are justified. He vilifies our self esteem culture and the fairness for all attitude that goes along with it yet rips me when I say conservatives are far worse than liberals and...(not shockingly) gets massively offended himself. Again, the world revolves around them and only them.

It reminds me a great deal of the conversations I've had over the years with teenagers who take great umbrage with the fact that our society has rules and sometimes they aren't fair. As adults, one would think conservatives would have learned this by now but, as I have stated previously, something must have happened to them in their childhood to have so much trouble with authority. Because these sorts of conversations, with both adolescents and the modern day conservative, invariable end with an outburst followed by a stomp down the hallway, a door slam, and yelling about how I "think I'm so smart" and I'm always "talking down to them" like they are a child.

Well, perhaps they should stop acting like one:)

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Crystal Clear

The release of the report on Adam Lanza inexplicably finds that there is no answer to the question of why he committed mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The media has jumped on board with this line of thought, scratching their heads like the fucking apes they are in wonder at just where things went wrong when it is so completely obvious.

Adam Lanza is a textbook example of what happens when the adolescent power fantasy perpetuated by the Gun Cult and conservatives in general goes very, very dark.

We start with his mother, a "live free or die type" who sought no mental health help for her son. She brought him up in an environment that encouraged anti-government and anti-social behavior, allowing him to stay locked in his room with black garbage bags on the windows and communicated to him only via email. She allowed him access to guns despite the fact that he wrote a book in 5th grade about children being slaughtered and a son shooting his mother in the head. In fact, she was planning on buying him a gun for Christmas last year! Add in the obsession with violent video games and the fact that he was bullied and one can see the perfect cocktail for spree shooting mixed all too well.

There may not have been a criminal motive in the strictest of terms found in this case but it's very clear why it happened. Nancy Lanza was a horrible parent who bought into the myths of the Gun Cult and modern day conservatism. Guns are our God given right and mental health problems should just be ignored and repressed as all that business is just a bunch of liberal, touchy feely nonsense. Young men should be allowed to stomp down the hallway, lock themselves in their room and be rebellious towards all authority!!

It completely astounds me just how fucking stupid Nancy Lanza was in all of this. How many more parents are there like her out there? What kind of a parent doesn't notice the red flag of her son keeping a ledger on all the mass shootings in America? And worshiping Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? Well, as long as her 2nd amendment rights were protected and our country was saved from the gun grabbers. At least she understood what "infringed" meant!


Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Did They Like It?

Lisa Myers current story about the ACA, the president and health insurance is sure to elicit many adolescent "n'yah n'yah's" from the right wing blogsphere. Yet all the hubbub over this is missing an answer to a key question: Did people like their health insurance?

Before we dive into answering that questions, let's remember a few key facts. First, the people in question who are "losing" their insurance are those in the individual market, not the majority of Americans (85-90%) who get their health insurance through their employers. For me, this translates into most Americans not really caring about "Gotcha #538 of Infinity" because it doesn't affect them. If they liked the president before this still will. If they didn't, they won't and will accuse him of being Richard Nixon. Oh well.

Second, people aren't actually having their policies cancelled as they did in the past. They are being brought up to a certain standard so if they do have have health issues at some point in the future, they aren't going to soak the rest of us. This is a correction to a massive flaw that was in the old system of insurance. That leads us to the third point and back to the question I posed at the start of this post. The market for individual coverage sucks. Premiums rise at the whim of the insurance company, people are kicked off plans or not allowed on for preexisting conditions, rates fluctuate wildly resulting 50 percent of the people in this market are churned through it every year.

So, when the president said, if you like your insurance, you get to keep it, I have to wonder, did people actually like their insurance coverage? Of those that did, how many watch Fox News and read right wing blogs? More importantly, did these people know what was in their policies and was it in their best interest to continue with such policy? I realize that bringing up the words "best interests" is sure to cause an explosive adolescent stomp down the hallway but people who make poor choices in terms of health care affect my life, with or without the ACA, so I welcome the regulation.

If the people in the individual market do not like their insurance or have issues with their current policies, that effectively means the president is not a liar. Did they really like it?

No Revolution

I poked my head into Kevin Baker's site, The Smallest Minority, for the first time since I was voted off and found this. Aside from the usual warped and psychotic rightwingblogspeak, I'm trying to figure out what he meant by this...

I'm reminded once again of Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, his magnum opus. I recommend you read (if you haven't) my überpost on it from January, 2010. 

This will not end well.

Obviously it could be the usual bloviating anger and irrational fear  backed up with absolutely nothing (why do they continue to think that posting on blogs makes you powerful and scary?) but I think perhaps that Kevin truly believes that he and his fellow cult members might need to "take back the country." To that, I say this..

There will be no revolution as long as men have titties. 

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The House of Right Wing Bloggers

Yesterday was Exhibit A in terms of what our government would be like if it was run by the right wing blogsphere. Adolescent, chaotic, emotional outbursts, no cohesion, bloviating with no real defined goals ...that was the House of Representatives yesterday. They tried to come up with a plan to counter the Senate's effort to end the shutdown but couldn't do it. Can they even govern anymore?

John Boehner may very well lose his speakership over this but then again he might not. Who else is going to take his place? The GOP is so fractured and splintered now that any power they may have held onto after the 2012 elections is now gone. Like an obstinate teenager, they have not improved their situation politically. They have not made any inroads with women and Latinos nor have they moderated their message to appeal to independents. In fact, their disapproval among independents is now at 70 percent with their approval ratings split 50-50 within their own party!

So, the lesson for folks like Kevin Baker (who oddly commented here recently after voting me off his own site...huh?) is this: you don't know what the fuck you are doing. You are completely out of your depth. You need to go to therapy and work on your problems with authority and losing. Your juvenile emotions cloud any ability you might have to solve our nation's problems. Time for you and your ilk to be sent to military school while the adults (as they always do) take care of the business of America.

In short, say goodbye to GOP control of the House of Representatives.

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Yep

From a friend's Facebook wall...

Oct 2008: "You'll never get elected and pass healthcare."
Nov 2008: "We'll never let you pass healthcare."
Jan 2009: "We're gonna shout you down every time you try to pass healthcare."
July 2009: "We'll fight to death every attempt you make to pass healthcare."
Dec 2009: "We will destroy you if you even consider passing healthcare."
March 2010: "We can't believe you just passed healthcare."
April 2010: "We are going to overturn healthcare."
Sept 2010: "We are going to repeal healthcare."
Jan 2011: "We are going to destroy healthcare."
Feb 2012: "We're gonna elect a candidate who'll revoke healthcare NOW."
June 2012: "We'll go to the Supreme Court, and they will overturn healthcare."

June 2012: "We can't believe the Supreme Court just upheld healthcare."
Aug 2012: "American people'll never re-elect you-they don't want healthcare."
Oct 2012: "We can't wait to win the election and explode healthcare."
Nov 2012: "We can't believe you got re-elected & we can't repeal healthcare."
Feb 2013: "We're still going to vote to obliterate healthcare."
July 2013: "We're going to vote like 35 more times to erase healthcare."
Sept 2013: "We are going to leverage a government shutdown into defunding, destroying, obliterating, overturning, repealing, dismantling, erasing and ripping apart healthcare."
Oct 2013: "WHY AREN'T YOU NEGOTIATING???"

Real Americans

Here is a most excellent piece on how the shutdown is affecting average Americans. Just because it isn't happening to you doesn't mean that shutting down the government indefinitely is an OK thing to do. Here is a great example.

John Skoog owns a roofing company in Newport, Wash. He was one step away from having his firm certified as a government vendor when the process came to a standstill on Tuesday. "I don't know what to do now," said Skoog, who has a pitch meeting scheduled with the Army Corp of Engineers on Oct. 22. "I can meet with them, but they won't consider my company if I'm not fully certified." Skoog said he has no revenue coming in right now because he was confident in the government contracts.

The government is an important part of the economy. People's livelihoods are being affected and conservatives don't seem to care. They'd rather continue with their temper tantrum and hysteria about government spending. Personally, I'd like it if they looked John Skoog in the eye and explained their position to him.

Friday, October 04, 2013

Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Republican Type #3

There's something very familiar about this type...hmm...

Christian Republicans:

These Republicans are hypocrites. They do everything in the name of Christ, while simultaneously acting as un-Christlike as humanly possible. They support the right to carry assault weapons, are pro-war, and completely ignore the fact that the Bible depicts Christ as a liberal who was opposed to capitalism and violence. They sincerely believe that this is God’s country and that God loves us Americans more than anyone else in the world. They think that anyone who is not 100 percent pro-Israel is anti-Semitic. They hate everyone who doesn’t agree with them and think the Bible tells them to… and they hate gay people because they think they are sinners.

The problem with this type of Republican’s views: 

They do terrible things in the name of their Lord. They think that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is damned to hell or hates America. They believe that we are a Christian nation even though the Founding Fathers made sure they did not brand this country as a Christian nation. The Founding Fathers wanted a country of religious freedom, free from religious persecution, but these Republicans will never admit that.

What to remember when debating them: 

There’s a list of all the quotes that prove our Founding Fathers wanted a country of religious freedom. The link is HERE. Another thing to remember is that the Christian Right is neither. Start asking them questions like “how would Jesus feel about war?” “how would Jesus feel about assault rifles?” or “do you REALLY think that America is God’s favorite country, in the ENTIRE universe?” And, of course, these questions should yield a response that thoroughly proves that they are hypocrites, and continuing to argue with them would be a waste of time.

Waste of time...hey! I resemble that remark!!


The best part of this video is the montage of the "liberal" media once again playing the cult of both sides.

Monday, September 30, 2013

You're Not The Boss Of Me!

I've had some pretty interesting emails since I put up the contact form at the right of the page. A common request of late has been for me to explain exactly what the "adolescent power fantasies" tag means. So, without further adieu, here it is.

Conservatives today can be easily explained if you imagine them as 8th grade boys (age 13-14). They hate the government in the same way a teenager hates their parents and the house rules. They are eternally in "You're Not The Boss Of Me!" mode on all the major issues of the day. Take a look at how they react to the budget (they are stealing my hard earned money!), health care (fuck everyone else, I only care about myself), climate change (I'm not going to change my life just because some adults made up some stupid lies to try to force me to do stuff), guns (don't take away my cool toys!), education (stupid liberal teachers telling me what I should and shouldn't do),  or any other issue of the day and it's the same thing: I DON'T WANNA!!!

Like any teenager, they are very distrustful of authority and make overly emotional and ridiculous statements about the federal government....the same government that they are very likely receiving benefits from in more than one way. Again, just like a teenager that doesn't like the house rules and bloviates to his parents in a never ending goal to be contrary.

So, how do you deal with such a mentality? Well, you ignore the adolescent baiting and everything else falls into place after that. The primary goal of any teenager is to get the people they are rebelling against to stoop down to their level. Once that happens, they can play the Cult of Both Sides card and say, "See? Liberals are just as bad." They want the voting public to be confused and angry so they can get away with a bunch of bullshit. Up until the last few years, this has worked quite well. Unfortunately, the issues we face as a nation have become more serious and their solutions (if they even have any), are being revealed for exactly what they are: an ongoing temper tantrum with no concrete action items.

Ultimately, the only real response to the adolescent stomp down the hallway is to remind whomever you are talking to that if they want to stop being treated like a child, then they should stop acting like one.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Thanks Ted!

Ted Cruz is currently providing the nation (and the Democrats in 2014 and 2016) with some fantastic material in his fakebuster on the Senate Floor. He's over 20 hours at this point and his remarks serve as an excellent illustration of how the Right is completely fucking nuts.

Thursday, September 19, 2013


How Fucked Up?

When children throw a temper tantrum, they usually end up breaking something. Mom's dishes or dad's sports memorabilia isn't quite on the level of the US Economy.

Republicans are far more likely to oppose raising the debt limit than anyone else; they say don’t raise it by 61-25. Republicans, however, also believe overwhelmingly that not raising it would cause serious economic harm — by 66-27.

At least we now have confirmation as to just how fucked up the Right is there days.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013