Open Thread - Politics Plus

Bill and Hillary did a piss poor job of raising their daughter. Many decades ago when our sons were very young, I tore out a yellow page out of a public telephone book, and my older son scolded me for doing that. I returned it to the book.

My closer cousins are catholic. What they think now, I don't know. They're pretty good people, very much non racist. They might even be in turmoil, but we don't talk at that length now, afar.

Osso
There are millions of wonderful, compassionate catholics. When I said "despicable people" I was referring to those I mentioned (catholic and protestant).

If you recall the anti-bomb and anti-war movements of the sixties, senior catholic figures were all over the place in those groups. But the christian right in America worked assiduously to marginalize such individuals and ideas. The communitarianism and the empathy of that period morphed into what we now see.

Francis is, of course, deeply influenced by notions common to the region where he lived. Liberation theology had a profound influence on his values. And he is a smart, independent-minded, and educated man who, for example, studies and listens to very smart members of the science community. He is not a good fit for modern American rightwing fanaticism.

I'm afraid you've completely lost me with that last post.

Nods.
My girl cousin helped drive in Mississipi..

As we said to each other, years later, me - I'm very liberal with a touch of libertarian;
she: I'm very conservative, with a touch of liberal.

Or words to that effect.

Yes. I'm an atheist but I regularly find myself defending religious behavior and groups because much of it reflects good stuff in us as individuals and as groups. And because religious behavior is extremely diverse and complex.

Complex like the general population. However, as a group, most are good people.

Yes. And complex as a social phenomenon. Religion is everywhere and everywhen. There's a LOT going on with religious behaviors.

I lived in religion for a long time, then worried over it, then renounced it wham bang, great adamancy, and I then moved back to a more temperate view, not that I re-believed, but that I could understand (complicated). Bonnie helped me, she got there first - one of my smartass girl group, then a VA nurse. Now I'm an atheist of many years, but I get other people better.

I think most of us have a life path than moves in and out of proximity to theological notions and presumptions. I was raised Mennonite and believed. I became a more thoughtful and questioning young person and concluded (at about 13) those ideas were bunkum. Later in life, I had dalliances with various religious notions (though not accepting the standard western notion of a singular and caring deity). I think I'm normal in that sort of wobbliness.

And I have little problem when others hold a belief I don't hold. Unless, for example, they might try to enforce rules in society based on their beliefs which I then must adhere to. I've some other criteria for protest but won't get into that here.

But we are social animals and we seek ways to group. Religion provides a powerful means to achieve that. Bad consequences can result (as we all know) and good consequence can as well. We would not have Aretha Franklin without having religious grouping.

Anyway, it's a very big story and I'll end off there.

Yes to Aretha. There is a woman.

On the rest, I take your points.

Last thing tonight.

You folks will surely recall that after Obama had won the first election and, if I recall correctly, even before he'd been sworn in, Rush Limbaugh said, "I hope Obama fails. And he will fail". That thought is really quite seditious, obviously, but this isn't my point.

Where I was writing at that point in time, I advised folks to watch this one because the trajectory of it was entirely predictable. There would be three steps:
1) Obama will fail
2) Obama is failing
3) Obama has failed

The GOP and conservatism now has no other optional trajectory in its
rhetoric. They have to say this. Because they believe that they hold the only legitimate notion of governance, they cannot allow that success might or does arise under a Democratic administration.

This is the blind determination to hold power. It is the authoritarian urge in a pure form. It is the need to dominate.

To get a good sense of how pathological this is, consider another scenario in another sphere. Say there are two teams of science researchers working on a particular problem, say, the role of a particular protein as key to causing many sorts of cancer in cells. Because researchers read science publications related to their field or investigative subjects and go to conferences where such are discussed, they commonly know what other teams are working on. So, in our scenario, one team in the US knows that another team in Switzerland is working on the same question and making good progress. And the Swiss team know that about the US team too. Both hope they will get there first (esteem, accomplishment, increased research budgets, etc) but neither hopes the other will fail. Because they aren't concerned with power and domination. Their concern is intellectual curiosity and, in the end, alleviating misery.

If you have a political party or ideology that concerns itself primarily with power and domination, you have something very pathological and destructive.

I gather I was busy being pleased.

Ugh, You make me type too much.

You are being a tad disingenuous on this. According to Conservative principles, many of which I ascribe to, Obama is a failure and he was failing all through his Presidency.

Obama was basically Bush III in most of the things he did so I had few problems with him. Note the Gitmo is still open, Drones are killing Arabs in greater and greater numbers, we are still involved in wars in the Middle East, Terrorism is still the talk of the day, etc...

But, look at the National Debt, it's crazy and probably hopeless of ever being eradicated in my lifetime. Obamacare has severely damaged employment and the middle class, government regulations continue to inundate America's employers.

Did Obama keep any of his campaign promises?

I know. This allows me the time and space to court men's wives.

Circumstances are not relevant. No other conception is possible, which, of course, is precisely my point. Take what just happened with the new Iranian accord...
http://wapo.st/1Pjpleu
This was 100% predictable both in "He fails" and in the the Churchill/Chamberlain framing of "capitulation". It's boiler-plate. It happens every time.

Let's tease that apart. You approved of Obama because he continued some Bush policies. Is that the meaning? Do we take from this that you praised Obama for his political and strategic perspicacity on these matters and wrote about that here? That he was successful as a President in each of these things? Or are we to read this quite differently - ie "Obama failed to keep promises, failed even to be a progressive?" Your final sentence answers that quite clearly.

As to the second to last graph, all of that is boiler-plate and entirely predictable. Conservatives, modernly, can say nothing else, can conceive of nothing else. It's all locked in. If the stock market tumbles, it is Obama's fault. If the stock market goes up, it has nothing to do with Obama. And it surely can not be a consequence of progressive policies being effective and helpful for citizens.

Germans offering training courses to intolerant refugees in light of mass sexual assaults and rapes in Cologne.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/16/germans-accept-arabs?CMP=fb_gu

Winter is not a season. It is a long, drawn out, and intensive military campaign against living things.

The new Benghazi film is going to be loved (and promoted) by right wing media, of course. Not many, if any, of them will forward this admission by the director...
http://bit.ly/1ZtuAy0

And if you read this Vox piece on the film, you'll appreciate the certainty that the militia types up in Oregon (and elsewhere) are going to experience a huge, rolling, mutual orgasm when they watch it.

It was about 20 or 25 years ago I first began to bump into media mention of some big corporations researching the privatization of education. The amount of money involved in America's educational system is huge. Donald Trump HUGE. At that time, the corporations looking at this included Boeing and Northrop Grumman and that was what caught my attention.

These entities weren't trying to make America better through a viable and productive system to educate American youth. They weren't doing that sort of research. What they were doing was more like casing a bank.

I did not "praise" Obama, I considered it real life meeting liberal principles. Obama got into office after making promises he couldn't keep once he found out the truth of what was going on in the world. It's typical liberal "pie in the sky" meets the actual truth of life.

Obama was all hope and change and ended up realizing that he could offer neither.



It all depend on why. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.