Watching tonight on television the charlatans who infest Pennsylvania Avenue gaudily pronounce their saintly motives and their deity-like powers to “guarantee world-class health care for every American” (as one creep put it to a NewsChannel 8 reporter here in DC) makes me want to vomit.
These people look like serious adults; the timber of their voices make them sound like serious adults; and their titles are ones that are assumed to be reserved for serious adults. But, in fact, these people – from Obama to Pelosi to Hoyer to Reid – are nothing of the sort.
If they really believe even a quarter of the things they say, they’re imbeciles. If they aren’t imbeciles, they’re scoundrels. No third alternative is conceivable.
Either way, they’re an utterly detestable bunch.
He’s talking about elected officials. He’s talking about the president of the United States. He calls them “utterly detestable.”
Dialogue and thought lie broken down this much? This is a rant one expects of certified lunatics like Orly Taitz.
Boudreaux, of course, comes from that class of the bourgeois where intellect is so congenital that it’s not even necessary to make a case for why one finds honorable people on the other side of an issue to be in error. To Boudreaux, they’ve gone beyond error. They are “detestable” people. You know, abominable. They are people worthy of hatred.
So, we might imagine, Boudreaux is untroubled by protesters calling Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia) a “n—-r,” and spitting at him and on his colleague, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Missouri). Such racist actions are justified, if Lewis and Cleaver are truly worthy of hatred, no? Boudreaux probably also finds victims of Parkinson’s disease “detestable,” and so would be untroubled by the mob in Columbus, Ohio, sharing Boudreaux’s views on health care, who mocked and tormented the Parkinson’s victim who expressed a different opinion and sat down. “Communist!” they called him.
Demonization. Dehumanization. Objects worthy of hatred (a definition of “detestable) are not people who deserve respect. We don’t need to offer them health care, we don’t need to listen to their views, we don’t need to honor their civil rights.
It’s conduct unbecoming. Is Boudreaux so full of hubris that he cannot even entertain the idea that the bill is a good idea, the idea that Boudreaux may be a little bit in error?
We might also imagine that Don Boudreaux might get a good night’s sleep, wake up on Monday morning and rethink.
Somebody throw them a lifeline. Maybe they can figure it out. Churchill maybe put it best: Democracy is the worst form of government conceived by the mind of man, except for all the others. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes you should lose. Sometimes the people’s wisdom is greater than our own.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I was listening to some talk radio show tonight when I had to run to the store for a few things…So Im sitting in the parking lot..and this guy calls in…talks about his wife being a teacher…and the meno she got about Obamass visiting schools…
It seems the schools..some by force if they dont want a major budget cut..are making the kids write letters to Obamass telling him how proud they are of him..how they hope healt care is past so they will be able to go to good doctors..and how they all promise to serve him.
The kids are all made to learn the history of Obamass with of course all the lies and bs that goes with it…Songs where..it seems..written about him and the children will be singing them before and after the broadcast.
The older students…age 12 and up..will be ask to (forced really or face a bad grade and God knows what else) to sign a pledge to his new government!…
I just sat there for a moment….glad my daughter was out of school and my g/son isnt in yet.
Freedom is another way to God…A corrupt government is a straight way to hell.
How you can tell this is a hoax:
It alleges a guy talking about a memo his teacher wife got; what guy reads his wife’s memos?
School districts are not part of the federal government. Federal funds are a small part of any school district’s budget. No amount of letter writing from a district to the president can affect the district’s budget.
If there were a way for letter writing to affect school budgets, threats of cuts in budgets for political action are a violation of the Hatch Act. Crooks who tried to get around the Hatch Act wouldn’t write a memorandum about it.
No school is forcing kids to learn Obama’s history. History texts take years to write. Generally the newest texts run about four years behind national elections. No, there cannot be a federal curriculum on the topic — that’s against tradition, and against federal law. No agency may write curriculum for local schools — that’s the job of the local school districts.
Music has been cut out of most schools. Who would write a song for the kids to sing to Obama? Who would lead the singing? This hoaxster hasn’t been in the schools in 40 years.
Districts are moving to policies requiring no failing grades. Without pointing fingers to blame anyone, let’s just note that it’s been coming for the last six years. Consequently, a change in policy to require bad grades if kids don’t write a fawning letter to a president, ain’t gonna happen. Besides, if this were doable in any fashion where the federal government has no say in local curriculum, Cheney would have done it years ago for Bush. This Ron Paul fan, Misfit4Peace, has been toking way too much.
Obama’s not on the state test, any state test. What teacher has time to add stuff on Obama when it’s not going to be covered on the test? No principal would stand for that.
Freedom? This guy surrendered his freedom to inanity long ago. Reality isn’t even a memory to these people.
To me they’re merely the latest examples of a phenomenon that might be called Wirtism.
If you find the term unfamiliar, that’s because I just coined it to honor the memory of William A. Wirt. Wirt’s day in the sun came back in 1934, when the obscure Midwestern blowhard placed himself at the center of a political maelstrom by “discovering” a plot by members of Franklin Roosevelt’s Brain Trust to launch a Bolshevik takeover of the United States.
That Wirt’s yarn was transparently absurd didn’t keep it from being taken seriously on the front pages of newspapers coast to coast, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. He gave speeches, wrote a book and went to Washington to give personal testimony at a standing-room-only congressional hearing.
If that reminds you of the overly solicitous treatment given by the press, cable news programs and Republican office holders to purveyors of such lurid claptrap as the Obama birth certificate story or the fantasy of healthcare “death panels,” now you know why it pays to study history.
How did it end? Not soon enough, or well enough, but it ended:
“Roosevelt is only the Kerensky of this revolution,” he quoted them. (Kerensky was the provisional leader of Russia just before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.) The hoodwinked president would be permitted to stay in office, they said, “until we are ready to supplant him with a Stalin.”
Those words caused an immediate sensation. Wirt hedged on naming the treasonous “Brain Trusters” — which only intensified the public mania. Into the vacuum of information poured supposition masquerading as fact (certainly a familiar phenomenon today). This newspaper, then a pillar of Republicanism, gave Wirt the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that “the activities of the ‘brain trust’ during the past year fit neatly into the Communistic scheme” he described — a reminder that the most potent fabrications are those that confirm what the listener wants to believe.
For that’s what Wirt’s story was — a fabrication. Hauled before Congress, he said he heard of the plot during a party at a friend’s home in Virginia. The other guests, mostly low-level government employees without any connection to the Brain Trust, subsequently testified that none of them could have mentioned Kerensky or Stalin even if they wished, because Wirt monopolized the dinner-table conversation with a four-hour harangue about monetary policy.
Now you know. So don’t act stupidly.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
While eyes are on Iran — as best eyes can be on a place where the government has the fog machines turned on high — Vietnam also arrestsed a leading human rights defender, with too few watching.
On Tuesday, according to NPR’s Mark Memmott, Iranian Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi told NPR reporter Davar Iran Ardalan that a prominent human rights lawyer had been arrested by security agents posing as clients.
That lawyer, Abdolfattah Soltani, spoke with Davar just yesterday — telling her that the Iranian government should recount all the votes in last Friday’s disputed presidential election, in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner by a 2-1 margin.
“Once they were inside they immediately confiscated his computer and other documents and they arrested Mr. Soltani,” Ebadi said in today’s interview. “As far as we know, they did not have an arrest warrant.”
And in Vietnam:
On the other side of Asia last weekend, Vietnamese plainclothes security agents entered the offices of the Ho Chi Minh City dispute resolution firm PIAC and arrested US-trained lawyer and former Fulbright scholar Le Cong Dinh. As a lawyer at White & Case in 2003, Dinh defended Vietnamese catfish farmers against US anti-dumping tariffs. Then, in 2007, he served as defense counsel for two Hanoi human rights lawyers, Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, who were ultimately sentenced to several years in prison for spreading information “harmful to the State”. While continuing his corporate and civil work, Dinh also defended the well-known political blogger known as Dieu Cay in 2008, when the blogger was arrested on tax charges.
Dinh was arrested Saturday on charges of “colluding with domestic and foreign reactionaries to sabotage the Vietnamese state.”
But I also want to call attention to this brilliant graphic — a sort of photographic political cartoon, and it’s quietly, subtly, savage:
What things in this photograph were paid for by taxes?
Oh, there are a couple of inaccuracies — the phone lines were probably paid for by the telephone company, but eminent domain was used to get the easements in many cases. (Who did the photo and the captioning? Anyone know?)
Maybe just in time, too. Charles Martin Smith’s movie of Ian Hamilton’s story, “Stone of Destiny,” is just recently released, with dates booked in the UK and Canada. You may have to call your local theatre in the U.S. to ask that they book the film.
Poster for Charles Martin Smith's "Stone of Destiny," based on Ian Hamilton's story.
Hamilton captured the Stone of Destiny, the Stone of Scone, from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1950. The Stone is the traditional seat of power for the throne of Scotland, and its presence in London was a source of irritation to Scot nationalists.
This is where we are: Marylanders who exercised their rights guaranteed under the First Amendment, peacefully gathering to call for changes in law, were labeled “terrorists” by the Maryland State Police, and reported to federal databases that way.
Do you wonder why you get searched every time you fly? Remember that letter you wrote to your Congressman complaining about high taxes? Remember that phone conversation with your brother-in-law over whether either of you would serve in the military today, without the threat of a draft?
Remember that time you taught the Cub Scouts how to fold the flag?
All of these things used to thought of as patriotic participation in government by citizens. But not any more.
All of these things are protected under the First Amendment. But if you use those First Amendment rights, and you’re in Maryland, watch out.
The abuses of the system were discovered and exposed by the Maryland attorney general.
And if you don’t live in Maryland? That doesn’t make you safe. It only means your state’s attorney general has not investigated what the cops are doing.
The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.
Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.
* * * * *
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.
The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.
“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.
“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds … it put me on my knees in seconds.”
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).
“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home … and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”
You read it right. The Army is coming to “take care of you in your home town.”
Were they being deployed to rebuild New Orleans, I’d regard it as a noble undertaking. Am I wrong to worry about what is up with this?
I teach biology and I would like to add a story in encouragement to other biology teachers. About 15 years ago I was teaching a botany course to college sophomores and started discussing the evolution of land plants. Expressions began to harden. Students stopped taking notes. So I stopped and asked if my discussion of evolution was bothering them. Many nodded and one said, “Why do teachers act like evolution is a fact?” At the time I had little experience and had assumed they had a working knowledge of evolution from previous classes at college as well as from high school biology. They did not. I didn’t have much time left that day, but I did explain some of the lines of evidence that support evolution.
The next day, one of my students came in and slammed a stack of books onto her table. She said, “I am so mad! I am so angry!” She looked near tears. She said, “My parents never let me even hear the word, evolution! They said it was all lies! I went to the library last night and got out books about it!” (and here she held up Origin of Species) Then she said, “It makes so much SENSE! I am so angry I never got to learn about it before!”
Now I teach a class entirely about evolution and I think of her often. She still gives me inspiration to keep on trying to open up minds.
In Denver, Colorado, John McCain has an opportunity to stand up and defend the First Amendment and the rest of the Constitution. All he needs to do is issue a statement that he disagrees with the prosecution of the peaceful woman — he could do even more asking the prosecutor to drop the charges.
Today CBS Evening News and other outlets report some enterprising building owner in London who recognized Banksy’s work, preserved it, and has auctioned it away on eBay. It fetched $407,000 US. (CBS video here)
The work, depicting an artist in old-fashioned clothes putting the finishing touches on the word “BANKSY” spray-painted in red, was scrawled on a wall on the Portobello Road in the west London district of Notting Hill.
It was offered for sale on the e-Bay auction site and went for 208,100 pounds after attracting 69 bids.
The winner of the auction may well get the painting and the wall it is on, but they will have to calculate how to get the whole work delivered and pay to replace the wall.
“I am selling the wall because I can’t really justify owning a piece of art worth as much as it is,” said Luti Fagbenle, the owner of the property on which the graffiti is sprayed.
A political cartoon changed the life of one London building owner.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Thomas Nast helped bring down the crooks at Tammany Hall with cartoons. Boss Tweed, the chief antagonist of Nast, crook and leader of the Tammany Gang, understood that Nast’s drawings could do him in better than just hard hitting reporting — the pictures were clear to people who couldn’t read.
But a cartoon has to get to an audience to have an effect.
Here’s one below, a comment on the security wall being built in Israel, that got very little circulation in the west at Christmas time. Can you imagine the impact had this drawing run in newspapers in Europe, the U.S., and Canada?
It’s a mashup of a famous oil painting related to the Christian Nativity, from a London-based artist who goes by the name Banksy. (Warning: Banksy pulls no punches; views shown are quite strong, often very funny, always provocative, generally safe for work unless you work for an authoritarian like Dick Cheney who wants no counter opinions.)
Some people can’t let go of the past, and like the greedy chimpanzee who grasps the rice in the jar, and then is trapped when he cannot pull out his fist nor will he give up his prize to save his freedom, they trap themselves out of a good life.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
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