GOP // Current TV

Billionaire has spilled the beans on the 1%'s dirty little secret.

Billionaire has spilled the beans on the 1%'s dirty little secret. The rich are... more

thinkingblue
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10 days ago
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14 comments

‘Racist’ Ron Paul Sends 15% Black and Hispanic GOP Delegation to Tampa

In a party that tends to be old and white, Ron Paul and his views are attracting... more

Radical_Centrist
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10 days ago
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Mississippi keeping it classy as always

And people wonder why this state ranks at the bottom of everything nationally. This is... more

AreOh
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11 days ago
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3 comments

Doubts About Scouts, Part III: EXCLUSIVE -- Vatican Air Force Surveillance Photos Of Soviet-Style Girl Scout Encampments In Cuba and North Korea

Scandal grows

mfb1949
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11 days ago
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It's A Fact - Right-Wingers Have No Compassion!

We always knew this but now we know why.

The below article is the BEST explanation I have come upon so far that explains why the GOP/TP seems to exhibit such hate toward everything and everybody that does not share their warped opinion of reality. It is a must read if you seek help for the anquish that has built up in the brains of those of us who think. thinkingblue

PS: Notice the date is February 17, 2012, I never did get to blog this for some reason but it's too good to let stand idle in my blogging folder.

EXCERPT FROM :http://www.alternet.org/story/154194/a_conservative_explains_why_right-wingers_have_no_compassion

A Conservative Explains Why Right-Wingers Have No Compassion
A former Republican Senate Congressional staffer on why right-wingers think people without insurance deserve to die.

February 17, 2012 |

Although Mitt Romney used the word "conservative" 19 times in a short speech at the February 10, 2012, Conservative Political Action Conference, the audience he used this word to appeal to was not conservative by any traditional definition. It was right wing. Despite the common American practice of using "conservative" and "right wing" interchangeably, right wing is not a synonym for conservative and not even a true variant of conservatism - although the right wing will opportunistically borrow conservative themes as required.

Right-wingers have occasioned much recent comment. Their behavior in the Republican debates has caused even jaded observers to react like an Oxford don stumbling upon a tribe of headhunting cannibals. In those debates where the moderators did not enforce decorum, these right-wingers, the Republican base, behaved with a single lack of dignity. For a group that displays its supposed pro-life credentials like a neon sign, the biggest applause lines resulted from their hearing about executions or the prospect of someone dying without health insurance.

Who are these people and what motivates them? To answer, one must leave the field of conventional political theory and enter the realm of psychopathology. Three books may serve as field guides to the farther shores of American politics and the netherworld of the true believer.

Most estimates calculate the percentage of Republican voters who are religious fundamentalists at around 40 percent; in some key political contests, such as the Iowa caucuses, the percentage is closer to 60. Because of their social cohesion, ease of political mobilization and high election turnout, fundamentalists have political weight even beyond their raw numbers. An understanding of their leaders, infrastructure and political goals is warranted. Max Blumenthal has done the work in his book "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party." Blumenthal investigates politicized fundamentalism and provides capsule bios of such movement luminaries as James Dobson, Tony Perkins, John Hagee and Ted Haggard. The reader will conclude that these authority figures and the flocks they command are driven by a binary, Manichean vision of life and a hunger for conflict. Their minds appear to have no more give and take than that of a terrier staring down a rat hole.

Blumenthal examines the childhoods of these religious-right celebrities and reveals a significant quotient of physical and mental abuse suffered at the hands of parents. His analysis of the obvious sadomasochistic element in Mel Gibson's films - so lionized by the right wing - is enough to give one the creeps. But the book is by no means a uniformly depressing slog: the chapter titled "Satan in a Porsche," about fundamentalist attempts to ban pornography, approaches slapstick.

According to the author, the inner life of fundamentalist true believers is the farthest thing from that of a stuffily proper Goody Two Shoes. They seem tormented by demons that those in the reality-based community scarcely experience. That may explain their extraordinary latitude in absolving their political and ecclesiastical heroes of their sins: while most of us might regard George W. Bush as a dry drunk resentful of his father, Newt Gingrich as a sociopathic serial adulterer and Ted Haggard as a pathetic specimen in terminal denial, their followers on the right apparently believe that the greater the sin, the more impressive the salvation - so long as the magic words are uttered and the penitent sinner is washed in the Blood of the Lamb. This explains why people like Gingrich can attend "values voter" forums and both he and the audience manage to keep straight faces. Far from being a purpose-driven life, the existence of many true believers is a crisis-driven life that seeks release, as Blumenthal asserts, in an "escape from freedom."We always knew this but now we know why. The below article is the BEST explanation... more

thinkingblue
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11 days ago
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Rewritten Headlines: Dale Earnhardt Jr. to Robot Arm

Tony D rewrites today's headlines.

TonyDiGerolamo
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11 days ago
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House GOP Throws Out Entire Summer Of Debt Ceiling Negotiations In Less Than 10 Minutes

Last August, debt ceiling negotiations between House Republicans and Senate Democrats... more

jeffissleeping
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12 days ago
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46 comments

Why 'President Romney' Would Be a Disaster for Women

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FreeSpiritMuse
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12 days ago
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What's So Strange About Mormonism?

Today, I came across the above image on facebook and thought at first, HOW SILLY that people who believe in this Mormon faith would actually wear magic underwear to protect them from danger. Then I thought, IT'S NO CRAZIER THAN SOME OF THE OTHER suppositions that religions teach their flocks to assert as true; thus, today's blog.

The magic underwear (or undergarment) is just another fairytale belief from a supernatural and superstitious world that religions EVERYWHERE project. Mormonism, in my ‘book’ is not any stranger than the other belief systems that rely on some enchanted faith. They all tell their followers to TRUST ME AND YOU WILL BE REWARDED IN AN AFTERLIFE. Now who in the HELL can disprove that??? The sycophants of MOST religions are led to believe that they will win the lottery once their earthly existence has expired. Why and how can they possibly believe in such a ridiculous delusion?

Because it was written down on parchment or paper by some other delusional (but educated enough to know how to write) human being and these antiquated essays were gathered together through the years, put in a binder and labeled SCRIPTURE.

Well, for me, I’d rather view a sunset and feel gloriously part of the greatest mystery mankind can experience; the unfathomable, unknowable truth of existence.

So please, don't subject to ridicule another person's belief system when you, yourself believe in the same ridiculous notions of the supernatural in your own orthodoxy. thinkingblue

PS: I once knew a very religious (Catholic) person who would make endless fun of those who believed in UFO's and aliens from another planet... WTF?

Excerpt below from this article: http://davewhittle.net/2012/04/05/truth/what-mormons-really-believe-get-ready-for-the-anti-mormon-bigotry-parade

EXCERPT: “Do Mormons REALLY believe all that?”

The answer is usually no – but I’ll admit: we Mormons believe some rather strange things. For example, we believe God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to a 14-year old boy in upstate New York in 1820. We believe that same boy, with the utterly unremarkable name of Joseph Smith, received engraved plates of gold from an angel and, through revelation, translated those plates, published the translation that is now The Book of Mormon, and established a church with hundreds of adherents – all before he reached the age of 25. We believe in modern prophets and in personal revelation. The practice of our religion makes us objects of ridicule as well. No coffee, tea, tobacco or alcohol? No pre-marital or extramarital sex? Mormons in good standing pay a full tithe? Once polygamy was OK but now it’s not? A previous policy preventing the blacks from receiving the Priesthood that was rescinded by revelation as recently as 1978? Proxy baptisms for our deceased ancestors and other secret (we say sacred) ceremonies inside temples? Ceremonial undergarments as a remembrance of our temple covenants? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.Today, I came across the above image on facebook and thought at first, HOW SILLY that... more

thinkingblue
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12 days ago
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197 comments

An Answer to the Republican War on Women: The GOP Anti-Boner Ring

Our new device will end the War on Women immediately. Let's all hold Mitt... more

StewSteve
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12 days ago
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0 comments

Wisconsin GOP: ‘Right-To-Work’ Legislation Drafted, Ready To Go (VIDEO)

The Wisconsin GOP has been especially bold in their plans to hand the state over to... more

FreeSpiritMuse
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13 days ago
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1 comment

The TED Talk that TED Thought Was a Bad Idea to Share

In a stunning move, TED curator Chris Anderson told his colleagues that a talk given... more

TheAmbivalante
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13 days ago
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5 comments

This is an Example of a 'Bully Pulpit' We Don't Need the President Speaking From

Conservatives: Giant Bullies Who Abuse the Weak
Mitt Romney is a bully. And he's just right for the GOP.
May 14, 2012 |

Mitt Romney says he likes being able to fire people. Mitt Romney takes a drive with a terrified family pet strapped to the roof of his car. Mitt Romney assaulted a gay student while in prep school. Mitt Romney tricked a blind teacher, apparently one he "liked," letting the man walk into a glass door. He is a bully. Mitt Romney is also the presumed presidential nominee for a political party of unapologetic bullies. Ergo, he is a near-perfect leader for the Tea Party GOP.

American politics in the age of Obama is beset by deep divides in partisanship, ideology and political values. These debates are about more than policy. They have devolved into disagreements about the very nature of empirical reality, facts and science. We're having fights over whether global warming is real; whether tax cuts for the rich trickle down to the rest of us; whether Barack Obama is a United States citizen.

According to the right-wing media echo chamber, Democrats and progressives are not just wrong on almost every major political and social issue. No, they are treasonous, deserving of death, and want to destroy the country.

Interestingly, research has found that the diametrically opposed worldviews of conservatives and liberals can be a function of differences in biology, brain structure and political personality types. For example, researchers have discovered that the fear centers of conservatives' brains are over-developed. This in turn makes them highly susceptible to anxieties about social change and threat, and creates a hostility toward people conservatives perceive to be the Other.

Moreover, conservatives tend to defer to authority and hierarchy, fearful of change, closed off to new experiences, possessed of a binary world view, attracted to simple moral appeals (right and wrong, good guys vs. bad guys) and highly intolerant of ambiguity. These traits are a formula for authoritarian thinking, which according to the book, Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, has a broad impact on public opinion regarding such topics as immigration, privacy, women's reproductive rights, national security, gay marriage, and matters of race and racial inequality.

In all, these differences in political worldviews can be crystallized into one key divide: conservatives and liberals are radically different in how empathy impacts their political decision-making.

The University of Southern California's Ravi Iyer demonstrates this divide with the following chart:

The more empathetic a liberal is, the more likely she or he is to be interested in politics. The opposite holds true for conservatives: the less empathetic they are, the more likely a given conservative is to show interest in political matters. This is a damning reveal; it explains much of the Ayn Rand, dystopian, destroy the social safety net, one against many, politics of the Republican Party. By implication, those who show little empathy are rendered grossly incapable of even working through how either the Common Good or the Good Society should be values in the political calculus of governance, citizenship and leadership.

The Republican presidential primary season has provided ample evidence of how the GOP has become a party possessed by a deep lack of empathy. During the debates audience members laughed at the prospect of uninsured people dying. They mocked a gay soldier who was serving his country abroad. It was also suggested during the debates that Muslim Americans should be openly harassed and racially profiled (not one candidate intervened or suggested this was unconstitutional) and that undocumented citizens should be deported and/or the United States surrounded by electric fences.

In the conservative worldview, the poor are surplus people who are "unproductive," a "drain" on American society, and who leech off of the rich and "normal" Americans. The social safety net should be destroyed as "entitlements" like Social Security and unemployment insurance encourage laziness and sloth. Support for hungry children, public education, the unemployed, and the poor should be cut to ensure tax cuts for the rich.
Continue at link: http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/155420/conservatives%3A_giant_bullies_who_abuse_the_weak/Conservatives: Giant Bullies Who Abuse the Weak Mitt Romney is a bully. And he's... more