Please note, as you look at this, that I am not claiming that Obama’s policies have or will necessarily work, but that it is WAY TOO SOON to tell.  I can already picture it, though.  If these policies start working by this time next year, but the GOP wins back the Congress, all the improvements after that will be stolen by the GOP for credit.  Politics.  Hacks.  Pathetic on all sides.

[Unemployment numbers are from the government's website.  Inflation numbers are frominflationdata.com. DOW numbers from Google.]

From Sweetness & Light: “And from the professional America-haters known as the Iraq Veterans Against the War”

Michelle Malkin’s website, a comment: “That isn’t how cowardly thugs like these [angry Gays] operate. They’re not going to stare down the muzzle of your gun; they’re going to wait until you’re sleeping and try to burn your house down with you and your family in it.

When you stand in the way of their sick vision of Utopia [i.e. legalized Gay Marriage], their regard for your humanity is the same as their concern for an egg when they want to make an omlette.”

There’s far more of this Right Wing nonsense, go check it out at some of those blogs.  I would say that I don’t want to spread their ideas around, but if you can’t see through their BS then perhaps you just aren’t smart enough to cast a wise vote.  George W. Bush was right when he said that “if this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”  But we live in a free society with a free press.  That is why the Conservative liars can keep spreading their lies.  Same with the Liberals liars when Bush was in office.  It’s funny.  It always seems like the other side is as bad as their enemies say they are and as good as their friend say they are.  It all depends on what evidence is presented.

It really is too bad that so many people blurt out the first thing that comes to mind and don’t bother to actually think the issues through and don’t strive for logical consistency.  Rhetoric is much easier and is a short cut to thinking.  And strawmen will always be easy to defeat.  Remember when Investor’s Business Daily said that Stephen Hawkins would have died in the UK Health system, but later had to retract that statement when they discovered that Stephen Hawkins was actually saved by that system?  That was funny.  Hawkins said the NHS saved his life.  Apparently, the ignorant IBD didn’t bother to fact check before going to print.  Sounds like some other sources I see.  How is it that Brits keep getting lumped in as Americans?

Today’s Conservatives see the world as black and white.  Hence why they are so in love with Sarah Palin.  They see people as “for us or against us” and by “us” they mean Conservative Christians.  They don’t mean “white.”  They are happy to have blacks on board, just as long as they’re Conservative and Christian.  They see people as either “Conservative” or “Liberal” and they are incapable of seeing anything in between.  Remember that Republican in NY who was forced off the ticket because she was not “Conservative enough.”  If you aren’t Conservative enough, you must be a Commie, Liberal, Socialist, pig.  People are less important to them than are ideologies.  They want to claim the same about everyone who is not a Conservative, i.e. supposed “Liberal” (interestingly, most non-Conservatives aren’t actually Liberals), but as we saw post 911, most people, regardless of party, supported George W. Bush… until he took everyone’s support and threw it out the window in order to pursue a Neo-Con agenda.  I can tell you with relative certainty that if an attack on the US happened today, Obama would not receive the same level of support.  It isn’t that Bush did a good job– after all, he disappeared and then quote scripture at the us, as if we all needed to here from the Bible at a time like that– but that Conservatives do not care about supporting the president at a time of crisis, regardless of party; they care about scoring political points.  Take a look around the web and you can see them using the tragedy at Fort Hood to score political points as we speak.  They put ideology ahead of country.  They point their own selfish agenda ahead of everyone else.  But then they go to church and donate a dime or two and claim to be Christian.  Convenient Christians currently rule the Conservative “movement” and it is going to backfire terribly.

Today’s Conservatives think that Gay Marriage is something that should be decided by a vote of the people.  But they don’t bother to note that that same argument would mean if a majority of people supported slavery, slavery should be the rule of law.  That is not Conservative, that’s just plain thoughtless.  Should a vote of the people also allow you to stone me to death?  Should you be allowed to get a majority vote to bar me from attending a public school in your district?

But what do you expect from this same group that supposedly hates Socialism, but has yet to propose ending Medicare, Social Security, Socialized Education, Socialize Fire Departments, Socialize Police, etc.  Less than 8 years ago they support George W. Bush who massively expanded Medicare, which is a Socialist program.  Hypocrites through and through.

Today’s “Conservatives” believe that if you don’t wave a flag everywhere you go, you hate America.  What they fail to realize is that waving a flag at home is easy, superficial, and tells you nothing.  I used to put out a flag every 4th of July, but when 9-11 happened and I saw all the shallow “patriots” come out of the woodwork with their phony patriotism, I knew there was no point.  Waving a flag tells you nothing, unless you are waving that flag in a hostile environment.  The US is not hostile to its own flag and only a rhetorical Conservative fighting a strawman believes otherwise.

The vocal Conservatives of today use the “I’m rubber and you’re glue” argument when they call Obama a Nazi, compare his policies to Nazi, support filibusters (against Democrats ONLY), etc. , etc., etc.  The thinkers realize AND STATE that these comparisons were BS when made about Bush and they don’t approve of them about Obama either, and they didn’t support filibusters then or now.

About those filibusters… Conservatives have hidden behind “Bush didn’t have a filibuster proof majority” as an excuse for his not passing Social Security reform and drilling in ANWAR, though neither came to a vote, but they don’t consider it to be a legitimate reason now.  They disapproved of filibusters before, but approve of them now.  Again, this is UNPRINCIPLED opposition.  Hacks.  Hacks. And more hacks.

But these are the same Conservative hacks who keep claiming that the Health Care reform that the Democrats are trying to pass is a “government take-over.”  That is false.  They know it is false.  But they lack a real reform legislation themselves.  I’ve already dealt with their legislation, you can read it elsewhere on this site.

These “Conservatives” oppose “interfering” in out of state elections, unless it is a Conservative doing it.  But if you point that out they come up with false comparisons and more strawmen.

From where I stand, the Conservatives have lost their way.  They are collapsing under the weight of their own house of cards.  But what should we expect?  Today the DOW hit 10,226 and the Conservatives only seek ways to downplay it.  If their man was in, they’d scream it from the rooftops.

These are the same Conservatives with their lack of principled arguments who are unable to recognize that legalized drugs that are taxed, would reduce the cost of enforcement, fund programs to fight addiction, and focus our police on more important issues, like stopping criminals from killing other people.

But these “Conservatives” are the same people who think that oppressing Gays is the same as pointing out that belief in God has no basis in reality.  They complain if religion is attacked, but only Christian religion.  They are fine with attacking the Muslim Faith.  They also say that certain behaviors are “typical” of other races, but then claim not to be racists.  They have not educated themselves.  They have not read.  They have only sought to further their agenda, no matter what the reality is.  They support bans on Gay marriage, but cry if atheists support removing “God” from our currency.  They are unlearned beasts, not far removed from cattle.  And they usually travel in herds.  They claim to be “freedom loving” while opposing freedom in marriage, drugs, prostitution, religion, etc.  They don’t love freedom; they love their agenda.

These Conservatives are incapable of piecing together sound arguments.  They don’t have the principled foundation from which to argue.  They have rhetoric.  They have political Faith.  They have religious Faith.  Faith is the sand upon which their houses are built.  We all know where they will end up; it is just a question of how many of us they end up killing along the way.

These “Conservatives” try to say that if you haven’t come out screaming about the atrocities at Fort Hood, you “hate the military.”  The problem is that these same people haven’t taken the time to get out of their own sheltered world of Conservatism to realize that the vast majority of liberal websites already have condemned the attack.  But when you lack a principled argument, you have to rely on rhetoric.  The attack on Fort Hood is an awful criminal act that can and will be punished.  But they want us all to scream about Muslim Terrorists without ever taking time to actually unpack that claim.  First, saying that an attack on the military is “terrorism” simply devalues the word, since terrorism is attacking civilians.  Second, was this guy actually motivated by religion?  Some say so, and I wouldn’t put it past him, but he was a Major in the army.  You don’t become a Major after a day, a week, or even five years.  It goes 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lieutenant, Captain, Major.  Each step has years involved in it.  That means that this guy was in the military for a long time.  Probably he was in the military before 911.  If he was a Muslim the entire time, what has changed?  Did he become more radical?  Perhaps.  But when the military has someone like this in its mist for that length of time, it is well worth investigating the situation completely and not just looking for more hollow rhetoric to hang your flag on.

Of course, this is from the same group of people who actually made excuses for Tim McVeigh.  McVeigh, a Christian, never dealt with a religious label.  McVeigh, a Right Wing radical, never even dealt with that title.  I don’t recall hearing, “Right Wing Radical Tim McVeigh Blew Up a Day Care full of children,” even though that is exactly what he did.  Instead, the Right made excuses for his murders.  And make no mistake about it, Tim McVeigh was not a terrorist.  His target was a government building and government employees.  Therefore, by the standards we use when we bombed Baghdad,  it was a legitimate military target and the innocent children killed were simply “collateral damage.”  That’s exactly how McVeigh described it.  Certainly that doesn’t make McVeigh’s murders justified.  This Major down in Fort Hood isn’t justified either, but let’s not devalue the term “terrorism” by misusing it.  If the only building attacked on 911 had been the Pentagon, that would not have been terrorism.  What made it terrorism were the Twin Towers.  Of course this doesn’t devalue or minimize the tragedy of 911, but it certainly should put it in perspective.  But for the mindless on the Right to understand that distinction would take their actually thinking with their brains instead of their rectums.

Time and time and time and time again on this blog I have pointed out when each side goes a bit wacky.  I have argued from a principled position.  I have consistently argued for and against policies based on the what I think will best transform America into a better, freer, deeper, healthier country.  I have supported the Right and I have supported the Left.  I have criticized Obama and Bush.  I have argued for policies that Liberals hate and others that Conservatives hate.  What drives me nuts is watching people, who I thought were wiser and better researched than, apparently, they actually are, turn into a bunch of robotic, rhetorical, hacks.  Conservatism is in need of a major overhaul.  You can’t claim that Glenn Beck is a “minor” player on the fringe (dismissively) when you also laud him on your blog or website, especially when you show videos of his that have been proven to be false and you keep it as is without comment or dissent simply because it fits your agenda.