Libel, Slander, and the lies the GOP tells to get the Tea Party into bed

Unaccountable is one word, what’s funny to me is that you’ll have Tea Party folks voting Mitt Romney, even though he won’t say which tax loopholes he plans to close.  Listen I’m all for a flat tax.  I think it would be great, close all the loopholes.  Everyone pays 25% on all earnings, no matter how they were made, if you have money in your pocket that showed up in that pocket this year, 25% of that goes to Uncle Sam and no one, no person or company gets deductions for anything.  However, Mitt’s answer is more along the lines of I promise I want to close loop holes, but really I want government to keep sucking you tea partiers dry, I’ll keep my exorbitant tax breaks and provide all the tax breaks to the big firms I own in some part (i.e. JP Morgan) and those that funded my election.  Oh and what is he going to cut from government other than the recently created efficiencies from healthcare?  Certainly won’t be a lot of deductions to the bloated defense budget.

If tea party folks had half a brain they’d stop listening to the rhetoric, look at the facts, and realize that the deficit was raised and government grew under George W. Bush, exponentially more than under Obama.  He’s working to make things more efficient, but he inherited a mess and real work and real solutions take time.  He’s not just promising the moon and assuring us all it won’t cost anything.  He’s saying look, I know how we get the welfare rate down, we clean up the healthcare system, provide birth control to the impoverished and in 10 years you can thank me because with the drop in birth rate among the poor and uneducated, we’re now experiencing a new historic low for welfare claims and it keeps dropping every day.  Why, because all those unwanted pregnancies who would become children and then adults on welfare or in prison were never created!

The real trouble is we need to make lying to the public illegal.  That’s the real law that needs to change.  The fact that my cousin can work for History channel and produce a show called swamp people and admit that he just makes shit up when writing the narration is the problem.  His way of putting it, as long as I don’t know it’s not true, I’m in the clear.  Slander and Libel laws need to be updated.  Being ignorant of the truth should be removed as an excuse.  Seriously drug companies aren’t allowed to do this, why are news networks, politicians and Super PACs any different?  If the truth could be easily found or is publicly available, say through a simple google search, or a trip to a library, the party publishing the information needs to be accountable for researching their material prior to publishing false statements.  Simply saying, ‘oh I wasn’t aware of that’, should not be a legal defense for printing or disseminating false information to the public.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, you’re worried about what all those poor Fox news pundits do when they’re out of a job?  Answer:  Pry the same thing they’re doing today.  Cry, bitch, moan, lie and whine like middle school girls.  Only the American public won’t have to suffer the consequences of listening to and basing voting decisions on their moronic, false and bigoted diatribe.

Ayn Rand and Capitalism, Ideals for America

Dear Paul Ryan,

Ayn Rand has many very compelling points that she makes in her stories.  No doubt she is one of the greatest authors in recent history if not all time.  I first read her work when I myself was just a young impressionable idealistic college student looking at life and all the great possibilities that lay before me.  I myself, like so many others, took what she wrote at face value and subscribed to her theories and ideals as undisputed truths.

It wasn’t until years later that I started to think critically about it and realized that I had missed a key word when drawing my own logical conclusions.  The key word everyone skips in arguing for or against Ayn Rand’s ideals is the word ‘stories’.  It wasn’t until I thought about that word, that I started to realize that while her written arguments are compelling, they’re still just stories and fiction, not facts.  And because it’s fiction, she didn’t have to provide any real world studies, facts, or scientific data to back up her claims.  Instead, she was able to tailor her stories to an ideal and leave out the parts where one would logically start to see the cracks and holes.

For instance, she sees the economy as purely rational and logical, which would be great, except the economy is comprised entirely of humans and humans aren’t entirely rational individuals.  We aren’t robots running a program that dictates we find the best logical outcome and move toward that goal.  We are human and that means we are at different points both logical AND emotional beings.  Many cultures have centuries old proverbs calling out what Ayn Rand would very much like to ignore.  Even modern psychology widely accepts the Freud’s structural model of ‘id’ and ‘ego’ as fact.  Still, my favorite is the Cherokee version…

An elder Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life.  He said to them, ‘A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, guilt, resentment, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, inferiority, false pride, lies, and ego. The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on within you and every other person too.’

They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, ‘Which wolf will win?’

The Old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’

It’s Rand’s choice to pretend that ‘id’ doesn’t exist in society, which leads to the largest flaw in all of her books.  The biggest hole of all is her refusal to address violence as a logical outcome of a situation.  She pretends that when driven into a corner between life and death, that desperate human beings will not resort to any means possible to survive.  That when society collapses and people are starving on the street that they wouldn’t break into your home and slit your throat in order to eat your food and cloth themselves.  The real world travesty that occurred in Louisiana during hurricane Katrina demonstrated that the real world version of Atlas would have a much different ending.

For these reasons, when I see your quotes demonstrating your blind following and belief in what Ayn Rand wrote to be scripture of some sort, it concerns me deeply.  So, while I still truly believe that many of Ayn Rand’s ideas, most specifically free market capitalism, will prove to be true in some form.  I don’t truly believe you’re ready to lead the free world until… 

Hmmm…  let’s see how to put this in a way you’d understand?  Well you like stories right?  So maybe another famous story / screenplay?  How about Good will Hunting... you’ll be playing the role of Clark in this one.  Mitt will be playing the role of one of your ‘do what your told’, silver spoon fed, my daddies reputation got me into college, ivy league buddies laughing idiotically in the background.  As for Will?  Well let’s just say I wish the 24 hour news networks were still doing their job these days and informing the public, in which case they could play Will, but as it stands, those folks who still have values and higher moral purpose working in the world of TV may have died out with Reagan.

“Will: My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the southern colonies, could be most aptly described as agrarian pre-capitalist.

Will: Of course that's your contention. You're a first-year grad student; you just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably. You're gonna be convinced of that 'till next month when you get to James Lemon. Then you're going to be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year; you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

Clark: Well, as a matter of fact, I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social...

Will: "Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth"? You got that from Vickers' "Work in Essex County," page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter?” ”

In other words Paul, don’t be Clark.  Learn to think for yourself.  Expand your mind, study and read non-fiction history, science and economics literature to improve your understanding of the world.  Draw your conclusions and draft your policy based on real world data sets and scientific facts.  Then use these facts and truths to put in place policy reforms that will lead to the betterment of all of American society and the world.  Don’t get me wrong many of Ayn Rand’s points may prove true in practice Until you are able to do that, until you can put down the storybook fiction of childhood and join us in the real world, you are not ready to be the president and leader this great country needs.

Sincerely,

A concerned American

Rick Santorum, Sweater Vests and Sex

The most closeted homosexual in all of America?

The constant talk about sex, the sweater vests, the overly religious attempts to bury his true identity, the ugly wife who clearly isn’t sleeping with him for pleasure…

How do you think that happens?

What has to go wrong in your early childhood development that you end up like that?

So far I’ve brainstormed the following:

-          Beatings from a drunken Father for expressing the wish to play with an easy bake oven?

-          Incestuous inappropriate relationship with his mother?

-          Bullying from classmates?

-          Raped by a priest?  Uncle, aunt, cousin?

-          Extremely small penis?

The fact that he got elected to any office outside of South Dakota is scary enough, but the idea that extremely messed up weirdo could actually become President scares the shit out of me.