You stay classy, Bozo

Moron alert - never could've guessed this response!

Well, there was a time when Colin Powell was well-respected and above the fray - even after he was conned into lying his ass off at the UN.  His reputation still survived as a man of integrity - and for any one who served in thr Bush administration that is quite a feat.

To most of us, he still is considered a man of integrity, a general officer with integrity who is willing to do what he thinks is right, not what others want him to do.  Perhaps even more so because he was so dismissively abused by the W regime.  But, of course, in Modern Republican world (you know, I do not think all republicans are idiots - just the ones they pout on TV) all it takes to go from respected to condemned is to be thoughtful, speak your mind, think for yourself, be honest and not toe the party line if you think it sucks. 

Ah, yes, there was a time we were supposed to listen to the generals - still get told to when some numb-nuts is sure the general will agree with him - there was a time when our military heroes deserved our respect without having to comply with the whims of heroes of the home-front.  To most of us, they still do and a man like Powell has earned to right to endorse anyone he so chooses without having to listen to a slug like Sununu give him a ration of shit.  Sure, Sununu has now tried to back away from this - just like every crazed right-wing ideologue has had to issue a next day apology for some sincere but incredibly stupid comment he uttered before he realized that his true opinion was toxic.

This is the world the Republicans and Romneyites live in and want all of us to join them in - that place where you can either agree with them or be denigrated.  That world where you blurt out what you really feel - for cameras or for secretly videotaped rooms of your ultra-rich benefactors - and then deny you meant it.

Integrity - a lost American value.

You stay classy, asshole - you and Ann Coulter - you folks are the perfect example for why Romney should not be elected.

What a jerk-off

Why in hell does anyone even give this shithead the time of day.  This is one SMF, egomanic and attention-whore.

I'd love to write a more insightful post, but this dickhead is not worth it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/donald-trump-announcement_n_2009914.html

Really?

Wow...skinny dude...maybe you should request a refund from Tony Horton and kick up those calories a bit.  See lots of guys like this in the gym, admiring themselves in the mirror and clearly seeing something the rest of us can't see.  Makes a sad statement on the physical fitness of our populace when they look at this and think, "Wow, I wish I could look like that!"  Why, because he's not obese?

And the hat on backward?  Priceless.  Just one of us normal folks.

Ah...for the love of the other 53%: Bow to your masters!

Republicans thought their path to winning this election was calling the president a Muslim, un-American, apologist (failed strategies from 2008) and asking if we were better off now than 4 years ago.  Believing strongly in that strategy, they felt they could nominate an animatronic candidate who lacked humanity and empathy (hence, is right on the Republican message).  Problem is that they are so out of touch, so in the echo chamber that they only talk to each other and had no sense of how bad off most people were 4 years ago and how better off most now think they are; not recovered, not where they want to be, but better off and unwilling to hear about how destitute they are from some rich stick figure.  Most of us remember the Bush years, even if the Republicans prefer that we not do so.  Sure, some 30% of the country, their base, believes that the president is a “foreigner aiming to destroy the nation” – if Obama saved their mother from drowning, they would say his goal was to make her dependent on the “nanny state”.  Still this strategy has thus far failed because one things most people wanting their president is some sense of humanity - something either Romney never had or he has sworn to suppress to stay in the good graces of his party.  Problem is there is much more money to be spent to try to sell him to us and, failing in that, the Republicans have another clandestine strategy that could steal the election via suppression of the vote.  Romney’s high profile gaffs have distracted attention from efforts by Republicans at the state level (e.g., Rick Scott) to, in the name of saving the vote, block average Americans from exercising this most basic right.  Be it new exotic IDs or dropping people form rolls and forcing them to prove they belong, chances are many will be disenfranchised this election; the Republicans involved have brazenly admitted this.  Yes, the party that wraps itself in the flag and Bill of Rights is actively working to deny government “by the people”.  Of course, they admit this and it is logical to the elitist Republican mind, convinced as it is of its moral rectitude; as revealed in Mitt Romney’s 47% fundraising comments, they believe there are people who will always disagree with Republican ideology and they consider that a disqualifying condition - those people hate freedom and thus do not deserve to vote.  Hence, they see nothing wrong in denying the right to vote of those who do not agree with them.  This is the American future the Republicans envision where only their base, their constituency matters.  If this is not reminiscent of the "Hunger Games", I am not sure what is.

To all those burning US Embassies

It is abundantly clear that you have lived under one form or another of totalitarian rule (whether secular or sacred) for many centuries, that most of you now protesting have not known anything else for your whole lives.  You obviously expect a government to tell you how to live, what to say, who to worhip and so on.  Hence your seeming cluelessness about the US - your idea of freedom is terribly immature.  Your behavior evidences your unpreparedness for real freedom - as with many of our own conservatives here, your under-developed idea of freedom begins and ends at what you want, not what others may do.  The freedom to be me and, quite frankly, fuck with you.  I know you might say that you are not so different than those zealots who shoot physicians or bomb their clinics for religious reasons.  I'd like to disagree, but....

I would like to let you in on a secret (it's not really secret, but you - and like minded folks here - don't seem to get it).  Our government here in the US does not tell us what we can say or what religion to practice  or God to pray to (even though some of our own people do not seem to realize this either and frequently seem to bemoan it).  We are free to piss each other off and do so on a regular basis.  Fortunately only a few crazies kill each other over it.  Here in America, any asshole with a camera and a few bucks and a desire to start shit can make any piece of shit film he wants (please note that this looks like it was made by a 5 year old with a video camera - this is not our best work!) and put it on the web.  The government does not control this nor does it censor the web.  I am not sure what is sadder - that jackasses do this or you look at it and think it is art.

To be honest, some of those making such films want nothing more than to cause trouble, create chaos and further their own ends - I am sure they appreciate you joining in their cause by fulfilling their image of you and your religion.  They want you to act just as you are, in a way that most civilized people find abhorrent, to act out their pre-conceived notions and unflattering images.  It may be that the real violence is not your doing, that you are merely content to burn home-made American flags and throw bottles, write catchy slogans on walls, and hang up black banners.  But the violence being done in the name of your outrage does you discredit, just as the bull shit being said in ours does to us.

Man debates chair to a stalemate

Clint Eastwood’s man v. chair improvisational theater was a sad commentary on his current mental status; I guess making movies with a script and time to think and do a second take is easier than extemporaneous character assassination.  But even more than that, it provided a great revelation for anyone who has consistently pondered the Republican (mis)perception of and hyperbolic rhetoric toward the President.  Eastwood’s “debate” with an imaginary President revealed his own biases and his party’s distorted vision of President Obama; it is a perfect metaphor for the ongoing dynamic between the Obama that Republicans rail against versus what many of us see.  If, like me, you have as often as not disagreed with Obama’s choices but have found the vision of him as “Muslim, socialist, unpatriotic hater of America, apologist, not one of us” inaccurate and hyperbolic and bizarre, then take heart - you now have some insight into this clash of perceptions.  Republicans have, for 4 years now, been arguing with and against that empty chair, projecting their fears, frailties and hatred onto it and imbuing it with positions and properties that are untrue and distorted.  That they do so also stokes the fears and frailties of their base, creating a primal, unyielding hatred of a manufactured inaccurate image.  To be honest they have always done this, but this time there is a twist.  Obama is not simply a blank or ambiguous canvas like an empty chair. He is not a neutral stimulus; his distinct defining characteristic (his race) inherently taps into their fears of “the other”, those less definable fears about a changing nation that is racing past them, their diminished place and power in it and the frailty of their vision.  It is hard to divorce their nostalgia for simpler times from the substance of those fears - their America is, for better or worse, a thing of the past and it is not coming back.  They see the enemy they desperately want and need to see in Obama; his race is a symbol of all that frightens them.  They are like small children, seeing shadows in the closet.  The arguments they use against such racial interpretations are impassioned - it is not about race, they assert - but the spectacle was there, nonetheless, and it is Obama's race that gives their attacks substance with those who lap them up.  I am not a Freudian, but even modern cognitive research shows that humans process very few stimuli and do so rapidly in "deciding" how to react to a stimulus.  Such limited but salient stimuli activate certain anticipatory schemata that include behavioral and emotional responses.  It is clear that some political strategists are aware of this process and know how to use it to get the reactions they want from their constituents.  In fact, this process is likely the basis of politics.  Hence, while excruciating to watch if one has ever enjoyed an Eastwood movie, the two empty images debating on stage was an excellent demonstration of a skewed, self-constructed perception of reality and a glimpse into the collective conservative mind that shares it, the fear that they feel and are trying to tap into, and the distorted vision they possess in response to the "Obama-stimulus".  The revelation was not comforting, but it was illuminating.  Indeed it was an entire convention that railed against opposing positions it has created out of thin air using lies it has manufactured from the same; Eastwood simply brought this duplicity into stark relief.

Trials and tribulations of a non-right wing gun owner

I am a veteran.  I am not a democrat, nor am I a republican.  I am not a liberal or a conservative.  Like most people would acknowledge, if they look closely enough, I hold certain ideas that are considered liberal (e.g., would love to see universal health care, see no reason to prohibit gay marriage or contraception) and others that are decidedly conservative (e.g., I have no problem with capital punishment and believe in the second amendment).  I like being thoughtful enough that I do not need a label to describe my perspective and am adult enough to handle this inconsistency; but, damn, does it lead to a rather chaotic life.

A further indication that many could see me as a conservative; I am a gun owner, licensed to carry a concealed weapon, including a firearm, and I carry a pistol everywhere it is legal for me to do so - as is my right.  I do not believe that the solution to gun violence, such as seen at VT or recently in Aurora, is to ban possession of firearms.  If a person is inclined to break the law by slaughtering innocent people, do we really believe that a law would prevent them from obtaining and carrying a weapon?  I think our most dangerous tendency is to feel a false sense of security, to ever feel that we are truly and absolutely safe, to be oblivious to the dangers around us.  In the grand scheme of things, among the general populace, these ideas probably make me sound a bit extreme.

So, what trials and tribulations?  As a gun owner I am a member of several Internet gun forums.  I enjoy talking and learning all I can about concealed carry and personal defense.  Although I was an NRA member, I quite simply could not accept their incessant doomsday rhetoric and scenarios and fear mongering.  It all came to a head for me when Wayne LaPierre, said, basically "We know Obama will destroy our second amendment freedoms because he hasn't done so yet".  I do not know how you get there from here; this is the stuff of insanity.

So, when trying to read about one of my favorite topics, the use of firearms for personal defense  - I am also frequently exposed to rabid, right-wing, Obama is the anti-Christ, a socialist, taking away our freedoms tirades.  There is never any real data on this, no one can give much detail on any of it, just the emotional appeal to the tragedy that "Our America" is being taken away.  What really amazes me is that most were seemingly all right with the 8 years of GWB, the unnecessary wars paid for on credit and an increase in the deficit fed by foolhardy tax cuts.  Why wasn't the deficit a problem then?  Most did not seem to mind his executive orders, his signing statements, his encroachments on our freedoms and defiance of the Constitution, yet somehow can quite clearly see those terrible events now coming true.

I have pondered long how it is that 8 yeas of GWB were cool with these freedom-loving Americans, yet 4 of Obama, with no real curtailment of freedoms that I can see, are a sign of the coming apocalypse.  Oh, is it a loss of freedom to have a health care plan that provides coverage for all and enforces individual responsibility?  Didn't seem so years ago.  I see it as enhancing my freedom not to have to pay for the health care of those who are not covered and do not take responsibility for their own care.

I know how people react when you use the term "racism", but I have not been able to find any other explanation for this.  None of these freedom-lovers seemed to care about such issues when a white redneck was in office, but are now in complete terror when a black intellectual is in office.  Can it be that, just at a time when the census tells us that white Americans are not the majority of births in the country, the election of a black president ignited some primal fear, such a fear that he need only be black to be a threat?

So, I try to read the forums, looking for interesting tips and ideas on how to protect myself and my loved ones in dangerous times.  I wish dearly there were a good, second amendment organization that did not push thoughtful gun owners away.  I try not to wander into those zones where I realize that I am wading in a cesspool among a bunch of people who ignored 8 years of Bush/Cheney power-grabbing, but now see themselves in a cosmic battle of good v. evil.

It ain't easy!