I like to watch Bill Mahr, sometimes laughing about this stuff is a real alternative to crying. This episode had Sandy Rios as one of his "panelists." I felt like a mouse staring at a cobra.
Sandy Rios, for those who didn't see this, is a self-described Christian. Conservative Christian. Maybe it was Christian Conservative. Christian seemed real important to her, anyhow. Now I make no such claims, but I am quite informed, educated even, about Christianity. There is a part of Christianity that I am quite impressed by, that is the direct quotes of Jesus Christ. As I listened to Sandy defend the Bush administration my memory kept looking at those quotes. It seems that according to her interpretation of Christianity, there's no problem with killing people and torture is all right as long as it's called coercion. She seemed to be right at home with Revelations, that's odd, to me. That book is the most post-Christ one in the Bible, it was included after some real debate, and to the idle reader seems more like the ravings of a hallucinigen ingensting loon than serious Scripture. It seemed noteworthy to her that "Christ would return as a warrior." Funny idea for the guy who advocated "turning the other cheek."
Now the part of this that I take quite seriously is that these people are the same ones who denigrate Islam as a violent religion. Now I'm not non-violent and I also don't claim to be a Christian or a Muslim; nor in fact any "-ism or -ian or -ist," but I'd like it explained to me exactly what the difference is between the terrorists and these people. The terrorists kill innocent people to make a political gain, seems to me the Bushites are doing that, the terrorists torture people, um McCain, et al, just said that's ok to George II, the terrorists aren't bound by the rule of law - ummm...
Other than the fact that she didn't have a bag over her head, I can not see the difference between Sandy Rios and those scumbag terrorists. The same holds true for this Administration, all they lack is the "-al-" in their names, oh maybe there are some alcohol or drug differences...
This might sound pretty cold hearted, we've lost quite a few lives in defence of our freedom, the 3000 lost in September 2001 pales in comparison, and for that paltry number we're losing our freedom and our integrity. Let's get very real about this, 3000 died on that one day, over 20,000 died in one day at Antitem, maybe that one's a bit ancient, how about D-Day? If the fact that they were soldiers bothers you in that equation, how about the toll we exacted in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki... God and Country is not an excuse to act any damn way you want to, it's supposed to mean something. I'm not going to tell you about God, my hot line has static, but Country doesn't mean "the dirt" it means the intangibles that direct our actions, the outcomes of having a Declaration of Independence, a Constitution, and a Bill of Rights.
So here we are, the Christian terrorists are robbing us of our freedom, they spread fear and loathing through lies and deceits, they kill wantonly and indeterminately detain and torture those who fall into their bloodsoaked hands. Have a nice day :)
Showing posts with label Mahr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mahr. Show all posts
Monday, September 25, 2006
Saturday, September 02, 2006
George W Bush is not an idiot ???
Rep Issen R-CA on Bill Mahr's "Real Time" said that "this President is not an idiot" ... paraphrase - 'he listens to the wrong people.' Ok, Rep Issen is running for Congress as a Republican so saying GWB is an idiot might not be politic.
Now I say the guy (ok, the President) is of moderate intelligence, but that he is seriously challenged in the intellect department. Look, he didn't quite fail at an Ivy League College and he didn't manage to fly a fighter jet into the dirt, so he's not retarded. Apparently he can manage the words in books I read in 9th Grade so the neurons are connected and every once in awhile full sentences don't challenge him, especially if they hearken to an old western. So we can quit calling him a moron.
Seriously challenged in the intellect is a different matter, this involves critical thinking and synergizing information into decisions. A critical thinker will look at information and ideas and take them apart into their relevant pieces and look at the pieces. Information and ideas are a great deal like jigsaw puzzles, they come to you as a pretty picture on the box but they're made up of many odd shapes and colors that have meaning. It is your job to make sense of those pieces, even though somebody has already given you the picture. I don't care if people have been paid to analyze something, you still need to pay enough attention to it to be sure you understand how the analysis was arrived at and that you've considered opposing analysis. This does mean that you need outside sources of information if you're inside an organization or "point of view."
Synergy is hugely important, nothing that is given as an argument for an idea contains the elements of other points of view and those view points may contain important information and ideas whether you are in agreement with their conclusions or not. No serious argument undertaken by an opposing view point can come from "thin air." It must be founded on something and that something could easily be of import to your decision. Consideration of those elements and their inclusion or modification for inclusion into a decision can be a make or break proposition for successful implementation of a decision process.
GWB is a failure as a President not because he's a moron, he's a failure because he's ignorant, and what's worse, proud of it. The man has surrounded himself with ideologues and pays no attention to anything else, while they pay no attention to anything except their inflated egos. Any particular piece of stupidity can have backers for it, there are plenty of people who will state quite seriously that the moon landings were faked, no evidence will convince them otherwise, they listen to each other and that's it. The President was surrounded by people who quite seriously believed that you could impose democracy at the point of a gun on people with no experience of it. Yes, we did that to Japan. We did it after we showed them in very simple terms that extermination was their alternative. Now this is important, the one time it has been accomplished was under the umbrella of two mushroom clouds, fire bombings and the near total destruction of infrastructure didn't do it, battlefield slaughter didn't do it, none of the usual accoutrements of warfare accomplished that end. The clear prospect of annihilation did.
Now I say the guy (ok, the President) is of moderate intelligence, but that he is seriously challenged in the intellect department. Look, he didn't quite fail at an Ivy League College and he didn't manage to fly a fighter jet into the dirt, so he's not retarded. Apparently he can manage the words in books I read in 9th Grade so the neurons are connected and every once in awhile full sentences don't challenge him, especially if they hearken to an old western. So we can quit calling him a moron.
Seriously challenged in the intellect is a different matter, this involves critical thinking and synergizing information into decisions. A critical thinker will look at information and ideas and take them apart into their relevant pieces and look at the pieces. Information and ideas are a great deal like jigsaw puzzles, they come to you as a pretty picture on the box but they're made up of many odd shapes and colors that have meaning. It is your job to make sense of those pieces, even though somebody has already given you the picture. I don't care if people have been paid to analyze something, you still need to pay enough attention to it to be sure you understand how the analysis was arrived at and that you've considered opposing analysis. This does mean that you need outside sources of information if you're inside an organization or "point of view."
Synergy is hugely important, nothing that is given as an argument for an idea contains the elements of other points of view and those view points may contain important information and ideas whether you are in agreement with their conclusions or not. No serious argument undertaken by an opposing view point can come from "thin air." It must be founded on something and that something could easily be of import to your decision. Consideration of those elements and their inclusion or modification for inclusion into a decision can be a make or break proposition for successful implementation of a decision process.
GWB is a failure as a President not because he's a moron, he's a failure because he's ignorant, and what's worse, proud of it. The man has surrounded himself with ideologues and pays no attention to anything else, while they pay no attention to anything except their inflated egos. Any particular piece of stupidity can have backers for it, there are plenty of people who will state quite seriously that the moon landings were faked, no evidence will convince them otherwise, they listen to each other and that's it. The President was surrounded by people who quite seriously believed that you could impose democracy at the point of a gun on people with no experience of it. Yes, we did that to Japan. We did it after we showed them in very simple terms that extermination was their alternative. Now this is important, the one time it has been accomplished was under the umbrella of two mushroom clouds, fire bombings and the near total destruction of infrastructure didn't do it, battlefield slaughter didn't do it, none of the usual accoutrements of warfare accomplished that end. The clear prospect of annihilation did.
Who wasn't paying attention?
You can run the list of Bush failures and find a commonality in every one, closed mindedness. No, this is not a sign of retardation, but idiotic...hmmm.
Fellow lefties, there's something here to pay attention to in regard to ourselves.
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