wildflowersoul

Hey, if tapping into those fears worked to get a triumph of mediocrity into a MA senate seat, why not?

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Srsly.

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faux-eonix.livejournal.com

I'm tempted to boycott the Discovery Channel, as they have signed her up for a multi-episode reality show called Sarah Palin's Alaska.

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Noooooooooo!! Not with a new season of Deadliest Catch coming on soon! Argh. I can only hope that Palin's media saturation means that she wants money more than she wants to ever run for office again. Right?

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faux-eonix.livejournal.com

Wrong.

She wants power, and she's savvy enough to realize that how to use the media to give her a voice.

What scares me so much about her, is that I think she'd prefer to live in a country that looks more like A Handmaid's Tale than I could ever be comfortable with. Unfortunately, with the recent Texas Textbook decision, we're moving in that direction, despite ourselves.

I don't know why exactly, but she reminds me of Octomom and Kate Gosling.

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Oh god, I re-read that book last year and it scared the pants off me even more than it had before.

I can see the Octomom/Kate resemblance- they are media whores who do not seem like they're very good people. And that's Palin!

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This is funny because I had just recently started to rewatch my conservative friend on FB, who I quickly had to stop watching because he posted stuff like this: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2010/03/24/bozell-column-tainting-tea-party

I made a comment that he hasn't responded to about how both the left and right make a lot of hyperbolic accusations and that an article pointing fingers at the left does not help prevent that behavior. *sigh*

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Wait, what?

I seem to recall that any critique of the Bush administration or its policies after 9/11 and well into the Iraq war led to accusations of American-hating liberalism. The media gave Bush a pass until it was clear that he was utterly out of favor.

By all means, let's ask the Dixie Chicks how much support Natalie Maines comments concerning the president received from the media.

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I am right there with ya! Oh, revisionist history, you are so convenient for other people.

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Granted, MSNBC features Olberman's alarmist screeds, but all I'm getting from that site is "ZOMG, there is other media besides FOX News!!"

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But don't you know? The media is liberal! LIBERAL damn it! Also, progressives are evil now - right along with socialists.

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Progress is evil! Shouldn't tea partiers now be burning their computers and ditching their cars for horses, using only candle light and wood fires, like the Founding Fathers did? The Founding Fathers didn't use plastics, and we need to be true patriots and all.

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Ok, I'm having a hard time getting pas the first paragraph- in what world were these people living in where the news media supported protests of G.W. and his policies?? I was not living in that world, and I would have liked it there. I swear, the level that these people are disconnected from reality is mind-boggling. I seriously worry about violence from the right now, they are already targeting congresspeople's homes (or, in the case of really stupid teabaggers, accidentally targeting a congressman's brother's home... where they cut the gas line going into the house).

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I try to read these things so that I can have an even minded debate with him, but then he puts up drawings of Obama giving the finger with a "We the People" banner on it. It is so crazy making.
And yeah, their claims are no where near my experience. I often want to say "Where was your whining and complaining during 2000-2008?" but I figure it just isn't worth it. Gah.

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Also, I just read the NYT article about the tea baggers putting the wrong address on a website. It also pointed out that the pic you posted had gun targets posted on the districts. Interesting commentary. How can people argue that the conservatives are getting a bad rap? Ugh.

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Yeah, the gun targets are what blow my mind. On officially endorsed Palin propaganda. WTF, people?

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I'm apparently numb and missed it. The use of the founding fathers was extra annoying after spending some time in DC reflecting on our history. I thought multiple times that many of these people would roll over in their graves if they knew of the things people say in their names.

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Totally. And of course these fine patriots only love the founding fathers that they agree with. According to Texas, Jefferson can go to hell. That, coupled with what I've read recently about how Texas textbook decisions impact the textbook decisions in the entire country, makes me grit my teeth for the job we're going to have to do to make sure our kid is actually educated.

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Yeah, I know. The fact that Texas can influence what the rest of the country learns is a scary realization indeed. Man, the whole thing is incredibly frustrating. This is why I can't live in DC. I'm already saturated in it. It would be worse if I lived there!

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theres just one word for all of this: HYPOCRISY!!!

The people on the right have no idea what they are upset about....You ask them about the Health Bill and they will go into long rants about becoming socialists, taking away freedoms, etc....they have no idea what its about....There was a woman last year i remember who came on MSNBC who was crazy against Health Reform only because her husband told her to be...she had a $5000 deductible on her insurance and she couldnt afford it and she thought the bill was about taking her right away to keep her over priced Health Care...when the MSNBC people told her that Obama's plan would reduce her deductible by more than half, she didnt know what to say...she got all confused and just started saying again Obama is taking away our rights....SHE HAD NO CLUE...and this is what these people are....they just have no clue....

Its really simple really, ask every single American do they want Health Care costs to go down....the answer probably is 95% yes....next you ask, do you feel the super wealthy should pay a little more taxes to help others less fortunate....bet its about 65-70% yes.....i mean hes taxing people who make 200-250k a year about 2-4% more....2-4% is nothing when your making more than 250k.....

plus how many million of jobs can be created by adding 35 million people into the health system...more facilities will need to open, more doctors needed, more schooling, etc etc....Health Reform helps the economy in the long run.....

but the crazies on the Right fail to realize this, they dont care, they want anything Obama does to fail.....it doesnt matter what he tries to do, they want him to fail and a lot of it has to do with racism....not all of it, but theres definitely Racist aspects to the hate against Obama that is stirring up more hate & violence....

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Amen!

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and to top it all off, did you know who the Obama Health Care Plan gets a lot of ideas from....ONE PERSON: Richard Nixon!

Richard Nixon called to introduce that a mandate to all business employers to purchase Health Insurance for all their Employees, and that any American could join this health system and the prices are based on a scale of their income........HOLY SHIT!!! wait, read that again....MANDATE ALL EMPLOYERS to PURCHASE health insurance to all their employees and any American could join based on a pricing scale of their income....

THIS WAS RICHARD NIXON!!!! a REPUBLICAN!!!!!! and this is very very close to what the Obama Administration is trying to do...It was a republican idea..

But do you ever hear any Republican talk about this??? no!!! Do any News Programs mention this....NO!!!! And actually Ted Kennedy back in 1974 rejected this plan, but later said he made a huge mistake because he realized that it was the right step to reform health care....

but no one acknowledges this.....its just crazy!!! i mean, it drives me nuts.

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Yeah, I was reading about the Nixon healthcare stuff the other day. What scares me the most is that somehow this country has been dragged so far to the right that Nixon seems center. I've said it to my crazy teabagger mother many times- Obama is not left/liberal enough for the left, he is a centrist! These people have no freaking clue about anything, and yet somehow they're the ones whose voices get heard and magnified in the media. Grrrrr-argh!!!!!

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I'm reminded of something said on The West Wing about the hatred that conservatives feel for the left and the contempt liberals feel for the right...

I'll step up and say that I favor universal health care. It is my belief that this is a clear extension of a government's responsibility to see to the well being of the body politic. That said, I don't think there is anything simple about health care reform, and I don't think that speculative statistics assist in arguing in its favor. This plan shares a lot of characteristics with what was enacted in Massachusetts, and so far what we've seen here has been an overall increase in costs and no answer to the shortage of nurses and nursing instructors. Health care providers have not seen an appreciable increase in revenue. Health care insurers, on the other hand, have. It remains to be seen if these are simply the result of hidden costs now being put on the table or symptoms of things getting worse before they get better. In any case, I'd caution over throwing out claims based solely on spin from the other side of the aisle.

The reason why this has been such an issue is because there are genuine concerns on either side of the argument. A good many people who were the bill's most vocal opponents lacked a clear grasp of what they were arguing about, but I've not been convinced that the most vocal supporters have been much better informed.

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True, i do agree the bill isnt perfect by any means, but the idea is correct if implemented correctly without corruption & greed which is extremely hard to do....

in theory, if people have to buy insurance and they can add 30-40 million more people, costs should go down because 30-40 million people would give Insurance companies WAY MORE MONEY than they are getting now....Insurance Companies should love this....

But the problem is corruption and greed that if the CEOs of the health insurance companies want to pocket more profits for themselves and not invest it into the system, then we have a problem.

Thats why i think Health Care needs to be more Government run like Medicare is....70-80% people on medicare love it....its been around 40-50 years...Countries like Canada & Europe have systems that government runs their health care and for the most part it works...I met some people from Canada recently and they love their health care....sure its probably not perfect, theres no perfect system, but i think it would function better if Government could regulate it and run it....Thats why the public option should of been added, the Obama plan didnt go far enough, but he couldnt get enough conservative Dems to agree to it probably because of corruption & lobbyists making deals to save their asses in elections....Any Legislation is about making deals, its not really about helping the American people....its about helping Politicians get re-elected, making money for their friends who run Billion Dollar companies....

This country in a lot of ways is like how France was back before the United States was founded...There is no middle class, theres rich and theres the poor....Most of the middle class lives paycheck to paycheck...they cant save any money and everything they have is on credit or owned by the bank....thats not how the middle class should be...so the middle is technically poor....thats atleast my view on it....

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Hold on. Ambitious and corrupt centrist democrats who are presumably in the pockets of industry lobbyists are the problem now, not ill-informed conservative wingnuts?

What percentage of the 70-80% of Medicare recipients who are in favor of the program are also part of the 65% of the 95% who believe taxes should be raised to help support the program? Tangentially related, do you have any idea what percentage of Medicare recipients are suffering from some form of dementia?

What worries me is that there's a whole lot of shouting without a whole lot of substance. They claim that health care reform is a call for a socialist nanny-state. We claim that the arguments against it are based on ignorance or corruption. I think there might be some fact-based middle ground to play on somewhere between FOX News polemic and the parody of The Daily Show.

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The whole system is fucked up and corrupted....its not just the Right or Left. Ted Kennedy in a interview about a year before he passed away was asked "What is the difference between government & Politics now, to when your brother JFK was in office?"...he said 1 word, "money!".....That is not about the people and their well being, its about who has the most money, and who can make deals to get re-elected.

Eric Cantor today came out blasting Dems were using the violence headlines to gain politcal advantages....But look at the fucking dude from Texas who shouted "baby killer" the other day, and about 24 hours after his Baby Killer shout out, he was selling T-Shirts with his Baby Killer quote on them to raise money for his campaign.....Its just beyond ridiculous!

in the News media, the problem is they are ONLY covering the "juicy" news and not the real issues that effect peoples lives......No News media outlet ever clearly stated what the Health Bill does...NONE...NOT ONE! Thats why a lot of Americans dont like the Bill...they dont understand it, they dont know what it does....And they arent going to go online and read the 3 million or whatever pages of the bill...Both sides fucked this up...Dems couldnt explain the bill, Repubs couldnt explain it either and offered no other solutions. so they rely of scare tactics and lies to gain political support.

I Dont really care about Fox vs. CNN or whatever....they both gear themselves to their audiences, its obvious...But not even local News could explain anything in simple terms...and thats what needs to be done, explain in simple terms...One of my beefs about Obama is that yes he can write a beautiful speech, but so many people dont understand what hes saying because its just too hard for them to understand....I think Clinton and Regan were much better at explaining things in their speeches...people understood them....I wish Obama would talk a little more simply.

the Medicare people, most dont know or realize its a Government run program...they dont understand it...they just know they have the coverage when the reach a certain age....Because watching a lot of Town Halls when older people are told that "do they realize their Medicare is Government run", they act shocked and some dont even believe it....they think they are being lied to and they dont get it....and just the words "raise taxes" scares people to death....doesnt matter if the taxes being raised only to Millionaries or people makeing 250k....the words "raising taxes" is a sin in a lot of people minds....most of these people at the town halls on medicare arent making 250k....not even close...so they got no idea....

And if you are making 250k or more it would be nice to be Patriotic and help out your fellow Americans who are making far less in this brutal economy...Thats what a lot of our forefathers envisioned we could do when this country was built....it was about "We the People"...not "I the individual".....We are supposed to help each other when we can....

And then when the government bailed out banks and businesses last year they were all screaming about this is wrong...But when their checks came in the mail, i didnt see one person give them back....Governors were threatening they wouldnt accept the money like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana...but when the checks came, he took them...

so its all Hypocrisy....both sides are drowning just drowning in Hypocrisy.

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Please don't make the assumption that politics in this country (or the Kennedys, for that matter) were free from the taint of money until after Jack's magical presidency. For all the high minded ideals make up our national mythology, the American Revolution was fueled by a protest over taxation. And to use an even grosser example, we fought the Civil War over slavery, an issue that the framers of the Constitution tabled because a fair number of them represented states with a vested financial interest in maintaining the institution.

"We the People" wasn't about radical philanthropy. The opening to the Constitution was a bold statement that showed that the framers wrote on behalf of the people they represented. The framers were almost all lawyers and merchants with conflicting ideals which they compromised on in order to form a nation out of a rebellion. What they accomplished is stunning, but most assumptions over the purity of their ethics are about as helpful as the contention that they intended us to be a Christian nation or that the Constitution was supposed to be static.

I disagree that simple terms are what's needed. Simple terms lead us to Sarah Palin's "death panels" or Glenn Beck's social justice as a catchword for totalitarianism. Simple terms make it unpatriotic and naive to question the application of torture. I believe that the level of discourse should be elevated, and I'll stick to the idea of informed debate regardless of what side of the aisle the argument is coming.

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Peter, hopefully i wasnt coming across as arguing with you about anything. I wasn't at all.....i was just expressing my frustrations with politics, absolutely nothing with arguing with you....I liked your posts, i just tend to go into rants a lot when i find things frustrating and disturbing....

all my best,
-Brian (Catherine's husband)

:)

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No worries. I understand your frustrations and have to confess having to tune out for part of the Bush presidency because I got stressed out enough over what was happening that it was causing physical ills. I have opinions. :\

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yep, Discovery is now banned...what are they thinking?

im so pissed at what Brown did to Maddow that i want to move back to Boston just to vote his ass out in 2012.....

Palin, if she does some sort of reality show, maybe it will be her final downfall...most of those reality shows wind up making people look even worse....i certainly wont be even giving 1 second to watching it, but it will give all the comedy shows and 30 Rock just more material to work with....im curious, if Tina Fey and Palin went up against each other in an election, what would be the final outcome?

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Heh. I'd certainly vote for Tina Fey. Or anyone else with a couple of brain cells rubbing together. I like Mike Rowe and the crab fishermen too much to boycott Discovery, but I will not watch a second of Palin's show. I'll be curious to see how the advertising on the channel changes (or doesn't) to reflect her audience.

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yah, i just dont really get it....I mean hasnt Discovery channel had shows on preserving and helping endangered species like Polar Bears, who she is known for hunting?

I dont get how morally they could let her be on their channel....plus they probably have had shows about Climate Change as well, and shes definitely against any belief in that....

i mean, unless management has changed and its some crazy right winger running the channel now....but i dont really think it is...

maybe they feel they can expose her for who she really is and maybe help becoming part of her downfall....thats what i hope...

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oops, that was my remark, LJ didnt log me in

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agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com

I'm just realizing that there's no real reason to associate with people based solely on their world views.

Against gay marriage? Not my friend.
Anti-Choice?^*? Not my friend.
Involved in the Tea Party movement? Not my friend.

I cut a person off facebook solely for being a fan of Palin.

*this is NOT the same thing as being pro-life. I've come to solid grips with the pro-life movement. We're cool. The 59,000 nuns who signed that petition for healthcare reform because giving insurance to pregnant women being the real pro-life stance? LOVE THEM and their bad selves.

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Your way is the way of sanity and low blood pressure!

I think what makes me feel even more blood-boiling mad when I read about Tea Partiers is knowing the my mother and her husband believe every single horrible thing the Tea Partiers shout about. And there is no amount of talking sense, logic, or facts that will ever convince them otherwise. It is literally like talking to a wall, except a wall doesn't come back with "oh yeah, well, illegal immigrants, blah blah blah." It is very frustrating to feel like I should be able to change their minds if I just use the right combination of words.

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agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com

This reminds me of a quote from Utah Philips which, since I can't find it online, I will quasi-paraphrase:

Talking to a Republican is like talking to a refrigerator. It turns on. It turns off. It really doesn't do anything it's not programmed to. So I'm about as likely to talk to one as I would my refrigerator."

Of course he then goes on to talk about how Democrats spend all their time rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...

I think I've got his entire spoken word/remixed by Ani DiFranco on box.net somewhere...
Good stuff.

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doplar.livejournal.com

I had the pleasure of talking Obama healthcare plan with a couple of old blue collar workers in a bar last weekend - their main gripes were illegal immigrants getting healthcare and further loving their free ride in america and the government 'death' panels deciding that operations for old dudes are not worth it and its cheaper to deny coverage. I had my few minutes of talking to them about the fact emergency rooms are obligated to serve illegals anyway and how we save money by providing insurance for regular doctors visits to prevent costly er visits and how could they possibly trust the government less than private healht insurance companies who'll cut off your coverage in a second if you suddenly need expensive procedures (looking for lies on your application, preexisting conditions, ANYTHING to deny deny deny). Anyhow, not my best debate day (i.e. not attaching the untruths of their premises) though I did get called a bleeding heart.

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I suppose judging by how teabaggers have been behaving lately, being called a bleeding heart is not too bad! Man, I'd love to get into a good debate in a bar, but people tend to not talk to us when we're out and about. I think I give off "leave me alone" vibes (Drew totally gets into conversations with random strangers when he's out by himself).

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starflow.livejournal.com

ha! It doesn't help to tell them "we're not with you guys." (said with love! I love going out and about with you.)

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Ha ha, I know! I still can't believe how awkward and uncool I was there! Oh well, it was a Fark meetup and thus vastly inferior to the internet meetups I attend =)

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i usually don't initiate conversations with strangers but there is a bartender whose really friendly so if I tell her what I'm up to that day and someone else chimes in, its a good segway if I'm in the mood and the chimer-inner isn't totally creepy.

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