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Thinking Ahead

Today one of the NRO buffla-heads discovers the horrible situation in Uganda. Way back when Obama sent troops to Uganda to help stop the horrific situation in Uganda caused by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, horrid little man and vile lying lunatic Rush Limbaugh accused the President of waging war on Christianity.

It's not just his lies and vile rhetoric about Fluke and contraception, the man, if that's the word I want, is a walking talking example of all that is wrong, vile, and destructive in America's public discourse. And, whatismore, it is not a mistake that he is a conservative culture warrior. All that is vile, wrong and destructive in America's public discourse grows out of the need of the "cultural war" for lies, vile rhetoric, and wrong-headedness.

Rights, Responsibility, And Boycotts

This  vile, lying, cretin, both Maher and Sullivan, "think" ought not be punished because speech is a right. Liberty, the 18th century liberals and radicals, used to say is not  license. Here is a taste of his vile lies and bullshit:



Not one word he utters here about the pill or Fluke is true or has any basis in reality. He is a horrid little man.

see also.

Andrew Sullivan

is just plain silly. Watching how a democratic polity polices unhealthy and undemocratic speech he finds that although

[i]t's a free country. . . [he] get queasy with boycotts to target disgusting but free speech.

So if vile, lying, vindictive, morons spread malicious lies and vitriolic bile on their fellow citizens, Sullivan suggest, the solution is to live and let live; after free speech. This is the kind empty-headed  silliness that insists that the existence of a natural or man-made right means that there can be no consequences for its exercise. Clearly this is wrong. Worse yet just today Limbaugh, show that his infinite capacity for growth is all about girth, (allegedly) read a book and didn't like its conclusion and so he complained of about

all of these young, single, white women, overeducated — doesn’t mean intelligent.

If the man isn't show the error of his ways day after day he will continue to poison the well.

Indeed

Obama, we are told, is a push over for the tough-talking Right wingers:



(video via)

How To Win a Culture War

If the Right loses the ability to lie about other people and then pour vitriol and vile language on their  fellow citizens, the phony "culture war" disappears. Obama, for all his faults, understands or seems to understand this:



Who knows maybe things are look up, all evidence to the contrary.

(video via)

Religious Exceptions

The Right want's to allow moral and religious standards to govern obedience to secular law, at least when it's their ox being gored. How, one wonders, do they view (via) this particular case of the religious objections:

Dozens of Israel Postal Company employees in Ramat Gan refused to distribute thousands of copies of the New Testament to city residents. They claimed such distribution is forbidden according to the halacha laws, and might even be illegal.

This is the kind of situation that arises when nut jobs seek to Balkanize  one nation under God, as it were. On what level do they think that dividing us against ourselves on narrow theological grounds represents 100 percent Americanism.

Failure to Communicate

Over to the NRO Jason Lee Steorts misses the point about the Rights "culture war." He warns that 

[t]he article by Angela Morabito to which Kathryn links is a good example of how conservatives must not sound if they wish to win the debate over the HHS mandate. It suggests that Sandra Fluke has too much sex, says she speaks for “skanks who don’t want to take responsibility for their choices,” and rebukes her for having “missed the ten commandments.” Maybe the author was trying to be funny, but instead she conveys arrogance, condescension, and a total lack of manners. 

But it’s not just about manners. It’s also about making the right arguments. Nothing in this debate hinges on the particular sexual choices of Sandra Fluke, whatever they may be. (She might have been a married student who wished to use contraception with her husband.) And nothing hinges on whether the Catholic teaching about contraception is sound. The fundamental point is twofold: that the government should not dictate to private institutions what sort of health-care coverage they must provide, and that the government should not force a religious institution to violate its conscience. There are a great many people who hold this position but are disgusted by remarks like Morabito’s. They are people we need on our side

.

The Obama administration would like nothing more than to drag opponents of the HHS mandate into debates over the character of a particular young woman or the moral permissibility of contraception. These are traps. Don’t walk into them.

They vitriol and vile name calling are ancillary to the "culture war"; they are the the "cultural war." A reasoned debate about the state's power to set standards for health insurance and the limits of religious and moral convictions in evading these standards is an argument the Right loses, at least in part because of the hysteria they have been whipping up over Sharia.

The non-existent "culture war" can only be waged in the twilight of lies, distortions and invective; once mannered debate and facts come into play, the Right loses its base of rageholics and fails to persuade the average American, who really doesn't care what its neighbors get up to. Most of the Right now this and that's why they lie, distort, and use vile  invective, like the horrid little men and  women they are.

Set For Life

Oddly enough this ended up in my Spam:

Attention:

My name is Mr Ibrahim Abdullahi Lamorde the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) New Executive Officer in Nigeria. I was until  my appointment the Director of Operations of the EFCC. I understand you were expecting your fund sum to be wired to your bank account for so long but your expectation was not met.

I am contacting you to let you know the truth because i know how far you must have gone in trying to get your funds paid out to you under  the leadership of the erstwhile Chairperson Mrs Farida Waziri. Which  has caused you to pay huge sums of money into wrong hands most  especially to Fraudsters who frequently impersonate the identity of real Government and Bank Officials to help make themselves and their  scam appear legitimate.

I will be ready to help in delivering your fund sum to you with your honest and sincere co-operation with my Office.

Sincerely,
Mr Ibrahim Lamorde,
Chairman,
EFCC.

Free at last.

Now That's A Recovery

Via we learn that the top 1 percent absorbed 93 percent of the wealth created during the recent "recovery." Let's hear it for expansionary austerity and Neoliberalism more generally.

Odd Choices

Dr, Suess, it seems, once wanted to be taken seriously as an adult author.  Consequently, he wrote and illustrated a book on the Godiva sisters. The book disappeared without a whimper. Suess claimed that

[he] attempted to draw the sexiest babes [he] could, but they came out looking absurd.

Judge for yourself:

Neoliberalism Explained

Robert Walser[1] once wrote:

I only know that all the poor people work in the factory, perhaps as a punishment for being so poor.

The consensus is that he was being ironical; the Republicans, conservatives, the Right, and Neoliberals more generally mean it and, consequently, work is the punishment for not having Romney's parents.

[1] About whom more later.

Culture War

Rush Limbaugh sort of apologized for being a vile, lying, cretinous bastard, which is to say a proud member of the Conservative Movement. In the course of that apology he continued to distort reality and consequently implied that that his cretinous and vile lies and language we're, in fact, the result of the target of his hate-filled lying and vile nonsense. Some see this as a step in the right direction; others think, rightly in my opinion, that the response is simply one more example of the shameless lying and vileness without which the "culture war" could not continue.

And this is, I think, the point that has to be emphasized: Limbaugh constructed a lie and then became enraged about his lie and consequently attacked an innocent human being in the vilest way he could think of. That he was telling one lie after another is obvious. As one example, there is no  correlation between the number of times anyone has sex and the amount of birth control pills needed. It's not, in other words, like condoms.

The fact of the matter is that there has never been a "culture war" in this country but rather a bunch of dishonest, vile, and contemptuous conservatives who fear freedom and liberty used one lie after another to whip up a  minority of the population.

This isn't, I know, news. It does, sort of, help to remember that the only way the Right wins is to lie in the vilest and most obvious way possible.