Bill Maher (via azspot)

Sawickipedia: Argh.  Bill Maher is such a hypocrite.  It’s okay to demonize the other side of the fence himself, make it personal, etc. but woooaah criticize the great progressive hope? Now that’s below the belt.  Sure the birther stuff is nutzo but so was a lot of anti-bush hysteria from the left.  Bill Maher needs to look in the mirror and get off his pejorative high horse.

(via sawickipedia)

Rafer sez:
I have a hard time comparing “crazy because you think he’s a Kenyan-born Islamic deep-cover spy” and “hysterical because Cheney/Rove/Bush/et al lied about what the CIA told them to start a multimillion casualty and trillion dollar war whose only purpose is to line the pockets of their military petro pals.”

Those aren’t the same thing.

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Saying Bush stole the election in FL is akin to the birth certificate insanity.  Calling Bush Hitler is the same as calling Obama Stalin.  Regardless Maher helped fan the anti-Bush hysteria in unhelpful ways.

(via sawickipedia)

Rafer sez:
I’m uncomfortable with the term “hysteria” in this context. People in office perform clearly illegal acts and there are no consequences for them. They don’t even get tried. Their immunity isn’t even debated.

I don’t think Maher has anything to do with it. The Teabaggers would still be acting crazy, no matter who was in office. Their families’ lives have gone to shit since the mid-1980s, and it’s gotten so bad that they’ll blame whoever is in power for it. Their levers are just as well angled to blame a President McCain as a President Obama.

On the other specifics, Bush isn’t Hitler in terms of deaths caused, but he’s catching up on Idi Amin pretty damn quickly. He and his crew (bosses?) deserved to be tried as war criminals. It won’t ever happen or even be discussed seriously. That’s the main problem with the rule of law, here and elsewhere, and contributes to the populist fury born of helplessness.

Further, the Florida vote does still upset me terribly , but it’s clear that the individual to be angry with is Gore not Bush. And I am and will remain so. 

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Sawickipedia: I will concede the birthers seem more hysterical but I would argue that Bush Derangement Syndrome was just as hysterical. I won’t try to talk you down from the war crimes beef because as you point out it’s not going to go anywhere.

But moving on to a different point - you are aware every recount done by supposedly neutral observers in FL (ie. FL journalists, etc.) shows Bush would have won making Gore’s concession and SCOTUS ruling in the end moot?

And at the end of the day the real problem is the Big Fucking Lie each political side spouts.  Democrats lie that Medicare/Soc Security as is are sustainable.  Republicans lie that you can get not pay taxes and yet afford a government.  Maher refuses to hold his side of the fence accountable for their particular Lie.  That is damaging.

(via sawickipedia)

Rafer sez:
I’m not worried about the Big Lie. I’m worried about people’s version of the underlying societal Big Truth. We figured out in LA a few years ago that we don’t agree on that.

The Dems is, “We need to find some way of being responsible for the most vulnerable in a formal, legal way. Here’s the way we’ve got; we’re sticking with it (maybe irrationally, but that’s how our consciences and sense of responsibility work) until there is a workable alternative.” The GOP’s is (with some notable exceptions), “No, fuck you, you’re on your own. If you can’t hack it, you deserve misery, you Darwinian reject. Everyone who wishes to conceive themselves as exceptional, follow us, though 99%+ of you are wrong, you idiots who can’t do math because our deity Reagan shot the education system.”

My issue on Florida is that Gore bailed before anyone could know what was really going on. His voters and their rights weren’t worth fighting for. That makes him Eighth Circle, baby. 

(via rafer)

Sawickipedia: Yep we are largely polar opposites on the Big Truth which I find fascinating because fundamentally your view of the Big Truth creates the top down socio-political conditions that in your professional life you despise - top down corporatist cronyism.

Yes through their own rose colored point of view, Dems believe they are doing good with that philosophy but from a more critical perspective one could easily say that Dem’s believe in doing things that feel good versus doing actual good. The M.O. is thus: We see a problem therefore we MUST do something. Doing something makes us feel better about our ourselves because feeling better about ourselves is more important then if the problem is actually fixed.  The problem is failing to ask the question whether doing anything is really necessary or whether problems will fix themselves on their own much like ear infections (and fixing on their own could mean group A forms a group to solve group B’s problem through a private charity, etc.).  You see by doing something - ie. throwing antibiotics at them - we actually not only don’t solve the problem we instead create a bigger problem in the rising plague of antibiotic resistant bacteria.  Left alone ear infections get better all on their own. Sure it’s painful for a few days, but we don’t create a plague as a result.  Yes government can do a very good job of solving commons problems but irrationally believing in an unsustainable model still drives us over the cliff to ruin in the end.  Spending money on the Chinese Credit Card until the credit limit is maxed out doesn’t necessarily justify the spending no matter how well intended.

The problem with your highly critical view of Republicans is that the facts don’t support your Darwinian hypothesis.  Republicans give to charities at a FAR higher rate than Democrats.  Yes, Republicans believe in a certain social Darwinism but that social Darwinism is built into the social and political fabric of this country - it’s a founding principle (and likely as a result you are more of Europhile).  If Republicans gave less to charity then Dems while consistently pushing for lower taxes (as a proxy in theory for smaller government), then yes the destructive Darwinism hypotheses might have more truth.

You are avowed pacifist and I know you hate that your tax dollars pay for armed conflicts especially like those sponsored by the U.S. right now.  What I find fascinating is that the pro-government to help the world philosophy that the Dems buy into actually creates a structure that allows for your tax dollars to fund one of the biggest government activities you despise (and I say that not in a perjorative sense at all as I’m no militarist by any stretch of the imagination).  The potential best way to reduce the U.S.’s militaristic footprint and tendencies would be to shrink the federal government (which shrinks the military as well) thus leaving you the individually ability to choose the social services you wanted to fund via donations.  (I might still yet turn you into a libertarian - at least my non-Rand/non-Paul version of it)

And lastly - not sure how you can say that Reagan ruined the education system when spending per pupil even on an inflation adjusted basis is the highest in modern history.  What’s destroyed education in this country arguably are the bureaucrats and the teachers union who in a purely corporatist fashion are using the system to their benefit and not for the benefits of students. It’s amazing that again and again private schools at about 40% less cost per pupil outscore their public counterparts. Reagan’s not the problem - Randi Weingarten is the problem.