Mike's Blog Roundup
If you missed Bob Cesca's post earlier this morning on the wingnut response to Earth Hour, scroll down and read it. It highlights what is probably the biggest difference - leaving aside the Right's pathological dishonesty - between liberals and conservatives: A lot of conservatives are really, really stupid.
Scott Horton: The Spanish national security court has opened a criminal probe focusing on Bush Administration lawyers who pioneered the descent into torture at the prison in Guantánamo.
The Mudflats: In exposing the identity of Mudflats, Rep. Mike Doogan exposes himself
The Mahatma X Files: One of the best kept secrets in the Occupied Territories
Bitch Ph.D.: The chastity and purity of America's young boys is being threatened!
Bracket of Evil: In addition to college basketball's NCAA National Championship tournament, there is a tournament for the National Championship of Evil. It's down to the Elite Eight! Go and vote for the most malevolent forces in American politics and check out the recaps for earlier rounds.
Right save the earth in one hour by twittering... "wha ya doin?"
"Were saving the earth..beers free"
the Mudflats saga. What the hell gives any politician the right to publicly name somebody from the internet? Talk about the net getting to the point of ridiculous. From arrests using people's Facebook's and Myspace "evidence" to this kind of crap. So much for the internet being a free public forum. Corporate America now owns this stuff completely. Welcome to Orwell's world.
Leaving aside my automatic "yeah, they certainly are", the roots of that stupidity seem to be psychological rather than an inadequate intellect.
I've just read Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians", all 261 pages of the PDF file. As you no doubt know, Altermeyer's work was the basis for John Dean's "The Conscience of a Conservative".
Altermeyer describes RWAs (Right Wing Authoritarians) in detail and then at the end of his book he ADDS people to the RWA stew who test high in "social dominance" in other tests that others have conducted.
He comes to some fascinating and grim conclusions by combining these two "types". He thinks GW was such a "combo" personality (though I personally wonder if Cheney wasn't the driving force behind many of GW's actions). But maybe it doesn't matter, the two characteristics of right wing authoritarianism and social dominance were combined in the figurehead that GW was.
The RWA leader is obsessed with leading groups of people down the path S/HE thinks everybody should follow -- the RWA is "self-righteous". The SD wants power OVER large groups of people. Combined, they're deadly, according to Altermeyer.
They do NOT function at the level of a free observation of reality and respond in rational ways. They are blinded by their obsessions, their self-righteousness, the thrill of being able to move groups of people to have a huge impact on the greater population. These "combo people" are the insane ones who will push the nuclear button and if there's another combo person on the receiving end, then it's MAD. They will truly destroy themselves and everybody else rather than give up their world-view.
If you found John Dean's CoaC enlightening, Altermeyer's work will be of interest too, since he covers some areas I don't recall that Dean did and conducted many tests that he describes as the basis for his findings.
If you are the average Joe or Josephine, these kinds of people are incomprehensible unless you keep their "raison d'etre" in your consciousness. You can't expect them to show the kind of smarts that would get them and us out of trouble. You have to get them out of governing and leadership positions before sanity can reign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_pe...
http://www.amazon.com/Authoritarian-Personali...
http://www.psychologistworld.com/influence_pe...
What is Earth hour? When is it? Best I can make out is people shutting off their power for an hour.
Hell Klaatu did that over 50 years ago, and didn't do much good.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
No one noticed.
Earth Day being the prime example.
Free hot dogs and balloons for the kids!
he should have just unleashed Gort to finish off all the bad guys when he had the chance!!
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
Corporate Orwellian nightmare on our hands as it is.
Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!
clip
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
slide in the mud at Earth day blada blada
"The chastity and purity of America's young boys is being threatened!"
Run, Foley's on the loose again!
Generally speaking I don't trust anyone making over 150K a year.
Kind of like those Earth day rallies where they have to hire a team of illegals to clean up all the rubbish left behind afterwards?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
to what they deem the atheistic nihilism of the Left.
I'm an Absurdist
Except when I'm feeling pretensious
Then I say I'm a Discordian.
Did you know you can hear hidden messages when you play Lady of Spain Backwards on your accordion?
It's yells of, "You suck!!!"
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
The US media ignores and censors with silence any talk of peaceful Palestinians for the same reason it deliberately falsified Ahmedinajad's words about Israel or how it ignored Ahmedinajad's predecessor as being "politically impotent" despite having the same job.
If you don't acknowledge the existence of such people and movements, you can pretend they don't exist. If the US media acknowledges them and then ignores them, the fault lies with the media, not with the Palestinians.
Related to the "Bracket of Evil", The Consumerist is doing its annual "Worst Company In America" in a 32 slime-bag bracket.
http://consumerist.com/
The moronic financial firms are the favorites this year, though I would call the monstrous Peanut Corp of America the dark horse, in both possible meanings of the phrase.
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