EXAMINING WHAT IS SUPPORTED BY WHOM by Murph

I have been up to my neck in meetings and a questionable public service duty (Grand Jury duty) for two weeks now; and have two more weeks of it, and have spent precious little time researching what I wanted for my next post. On top of all of these time consuming activities, I have an innumerable amount of home project that either need to be finished or started. However, I feel a real need to revisit some points that I think are really important.

This site has a fairly strong leaning toward a more liberal political ideology. I know that most of the steady readers at this site have little or no respect for the neocon politics. I suspect that most voted for all democratic hopefuls in the last election, and with predictability, they got a majority in the house and senate. I further suspect that most of this voting was a denunciation of the neocon agenda, and not necessarily in support of the democratic rhetoric. I predicted before the election that no real changes would occur, and so far, that has turned out to be true. It is true that the democratic majority is addressing some important issues. However, when you make a list of all that needs to be addressed and what has to be done to reverse the damage to this society that Bush and crew has done, it is an overwhelming job. What I fear from that front is more failing social programs from the liberals that cost lots of bucks. What the future holds is open to question.

It appears to me that few people are willing to take a hard look at just what is happening up on the hill. I further suspect that few are willing to put in the time to examine what the neocon and general conservative supporters are saying about what is happening. So I took a couple of hours and wandered through a bunch of the more conservative sites (there are several hundred at least) to see what their take was on the present shenanigans on capital hill. I went through 22 sites and here is a list of some of the current subjects being written about.

1. Nancy Pelosi wearing a scarf when she visited a mosque in the mid east and how stupid and demeaning it was. Talk about BS politics. 2 sites went off on this one.
2. The now democratic control of the House Armed Service Committee is eliminating the wording of “global war on terror” because the dems don’t like the term. The neocons think this is bad bad bad. Diverts our attention from the war on terror and is more political correctness pushed out by the dems.
3. McCain has a new spot on his head and may indicate a return of melanoma.
4. A new movie put out by HBO on voter recount is feared because it won’t be balanced and fair because it is supported and put out by democrats.
5. The Mike Pence (R, Indiana) made a tour of the Shorja market in Bagdad and his statements concerning progress of the surge and how safe the area is. No mention of the snipers and helicopters all over the place and the fact that all the shops close down well before dark. Lol, safe indeed.
6. Article about Bush ripping into politicians over the war funding.
7. One site spent considerable space attacking the 9-11 conspiracy theories with great vigor. Of course, the site was not into answering any of the questions around the event.
8. The site titled “Atlas Shrugs” (from the Ayn Rand) soundly slams everything the Muslims have to say about anything that opposes American policy.
9. One Conservative site took on Ann Coulter for her “raghead” and “faggot” remarks. Said this was entirely inappropriate. At least I can agree with that one.

Frankly, at this point I quit searching around. There were a bunch of other sites I went to that didn’t have anything significant to say about anything that I could find. Mostly just blather and bla bla bla. So, it appears that the conservative sites are bogged down in nonsense issues as well as the more liberal sites.

So then I started to dig around into what the dems are pushing for in bills. Now this really gets interesting. Take a look at this site listing of the spending bills the dems are pushing.
http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/03/27/the-democrat-bill-to-embolden/

What ya think about this information? Let’s see, 24 million for funding new sugar beets? I had no idea we needed that. 3 million to a single co-op in Hawaii for sugar cane? The next one on the list is interesting. 20 million for insect infestation damage in Nevada. Ever been to Nevada? There isn’t enough farm land to hardly count in that state. Looks like the moon at high noon. Some of the stuff on this list looks viable but a bunch sure looks like pork barrel to me.

On top of that, I see almost nothing anywhere pointing out that Polosi and her compatriots are pushing for a new gun ban law. They want to bring back the Clinton gun bans and greatly expand it. Were coming back into the era of: “---my cold dead fingers” again. What is interesting about the reintroduction of this kind of legislation is that when looking at the statistics around the issue, there is no reason to even consider it for any reason other than to polarize dems and repugs. It didn’t work then and won’t work now. It is another example of taking a failed policy and trying it over and over again and expecting a different result. Pure insanity. Not to mention the cost of enforcing it. Somewhat similar is the policy of “war on drugs” that doesn’t work, cannot work, and drains huge amounts of money that could be used for other things. Aw well, it at least keeps the private prisons making a profit.

Now I will admit that I frequent the more liberal sites most of the time, except when I want to induce a head ache of a stomach ache. It’s my more masochistic side I guess. Today I have both.

Let’s take a look at what some of the more popular liberal sites are talking about.

Almost all of them concentrate on bashing the current administration and its policies and agendas. Some get into the more abstract view concerning general population trends, thinking and problems. A lot of them are presenting ‘surges’ in new age thinking, religious concepts and solutions.

I find it distressing that few are making any examination of causality as an overview of the present state of affairs without getting into religion and philosophy. Not all, but much of what I read impresses me as prayers for intervention by deities, general consciousness changes and just another form of denial.

Only one columnist that I have read gets down to the basic causes:-that is us, all of us. Joe Bageant at least is willing to admit complicity and what he is doing about it. But few of the other liberal sites want to deal with this, it seems. It sure looks to me that in the end analysis, the bottom line, we as a society, have brought on this calamitous situation. We have no one else to blame for those we gave power to and their exercising it. There is no one else to blame for our materialism, our dependence on rapidly diminishing resources, the cruelty and killing that is dominating the world at this time. We have gotten exactly what we voted for as a society for the last 200 years. That we try to claim ignorance of the consequences is a weak and stupid defense. We were warned, over and over again of the consequences of the type of thinking and actions that would lead to what we have going on today. Claiming that those that came before us are responsible and that we aren’t responsible because we weren’t born yet, is not a justification for what has been done at the voting booth in the last 50 years. I fear that the only remedy for this is going to be a world wide calamity. When enough stupid decisions take place, the bill will be paid sometime, and there is strong evidence that the bill has come due.

A good friend has repeatedly reminded me that “humans will be as bad as they are allowed to be” without the extrapolation that “humans will be as good as they are allowed to be” as a counter argument. If we can assume that at least at some time in the past, humans were as good as they were allowed, where did it start to swing the other way? There are tentative explanations all over the place, not expressed in that context of course, but nevertheless being concerned with where we went wrong. We can argue all day long over these concepts, but it does little to solve the problem. Nor does it excuse our personal excesses for most of our lives and our contribution to today’s problems.

So to appease the folks that say that if you are going to criticize something, offer a solution, here is mine. The gross and horrible problems we have generated have no political solution. We do have solutions on an individual basis, but politically it is not going to happen. We have allowed the 10 ton shark into the arena and you aren’t going to convince him to leave nor is a consensus that he aught to leave going to work. Most of his friends are there with him and there aren’t enough harpoons in the audience to end it. Sorry I can’t be more positive. Maybe I’m just too pessimistic for my own good.

So Palooka, denial is a big problem. We simply do not want to deal with the reality of our situation as a society on any level. It will bite us on the ass.