Americans are idiots. It sounds “ranty”, but this is actually a serious problem. A few years ago I assumed the far-right conservatives within the United States were simply experiencing something akin to hormone-driven teenagers going through an anger phase (due to a black man being elected President)… but now… I’m not so certain. I think it’s become a permanent affliction.

There are a lot of people in this country who think and behave beyond irrational anger: they’ve become permanent idiots. Angry, blind stupidity has become hardwired into their brains.

We can’t precisely pinpoint at what point this wacky gun-toting faction of our country mutated from a relatively stable crowd that liked to wear funny hats into a horde of masquerading nitwits totally incapable of understanding hypocrisy, irony, contradiction, and manipulation. From what we can tell, it basically happened progressively over the last 4 or 5 years – a result of the constant, unbridled barrage of hate speech and republican conspiracy theories from the far right republican information bubble.

Right-wing America has become a group of Tweedledees and Tweedledumbs who refuse to admit that 2 + 2 = 4… unless some guy called Glenn Beck tells them it’s OK… and they buy his pants.

Anger makes people say and do dumb things. We all know that.

In the United States, however, the far-right wing factions have been angry for so long  that it has changed the way they think on a fundamental level. The neurons in their brains have made permanent connections between “bad, evil, threats, danger” and “democrats, Obama”. Their hatred is an addiction. It makes them feel better just like shooting up does to a heroine addict.

It’s in the brain chemistry and make-up – sort of like depression. If people are depressed for a long time, then the brain starts to wire itself to that default feeling. It’s the same with being a political-policy idiot who blames Obama for everything and anything that happens in Washington. The far right don’t just do dumb things, they have literally become dumb things… primarily as a result of being weak-brains who have been exposed to the extended duration and intensity of the Obama-hatred being thrown at them from the cultural extremist in the right-wing media…. and Wayne LaPierre… we must never forget the political terrorist Wayne LaPierre.

This is an actual ad running right now. They don’t even know what ObamaCare IS and yet this is the sort of advertising that’s spewing from Republicanland. It’s selling nothing more than hatred. That’s what it means to be a republican American: hate others to feel better about yourself.

All of us are idiots for allowing right-wing paranoia to rule the decisions of our government… not just those who actually occupy the extreme right-wing and embrace every conspiracy theory spewed by their (false, false flag) idols.

(… but if you wear a flag pin… and wrap yourself in the flag…then apparently that’s a free pass to allow wholly holy patriotic ignorance… it really is amazing on a psychological level… )

Why All Americans Are Idiots (not just the extreme right-wing).

Most Americans tend to prance around as entitled, arrogant, under-educated, zombie-fied, morons. We’re basically sustaining the empire on the successes of the past. Our schools rank lower than most Western countries, our infrastructure is falling apart, and our personal greed overrules any hope of repair. In government, facts are optional and Money casts the deciding vote. The nation’s wealth is dangerously concentrating into a small percentage of American nobility… and to top it off (with many cherries on top): 1 in 3 adults are obese while 1 in 5 children in go hungry… Yet we shout loudly, with a flag pin on our breasts and guns in both hands, “America is the best country in the world!!!” … Yeah… Americans are idiots. It’s a fertile a land with a strong history, but currently America is occupied by very stupid, very selfish, and very ignorant people.

The problem: the rest of us (the “not totally bat-crap insane” in America) allowed this to happen. In real America we can’t censor stupidity. We can’t mandate that the extreme right  stop defining “Freedom!!!” as their own religion (ONLY their own religion),  their guns, and straight marriage. We can’t shut off people like Glenn Beck or the crazy “false flag” guy who swears  that the US government is behind the Boston Marathon Bombing… and who has convinced republicans in Congress to “I’m only asking questions” about his latest conspiracy theory on national television.

We can’t un-elect idiotic Senators who buy into the Drudge Report and believe that “the government” (of which they are a part) is buying up all the ammunition so that Obama can take over the country as some sort of devil-spawned dictator… then Obama will put a black man, a gay man, an EPA official, and a cardboard cutout of Rachel Maddow and Nancy Pelosi in every house in America!!!

This hyperbole isn’t coming from me… this is what idiot Americans believe…. because the sane people in America have not felt it necessary to counter the insanity from the right. It’s like we’ve been ignoring an annoying tooth ache… we can’t anymore.The sane people who have been ignoring the right-wing crazy problem are just as much a problem as the conspiracy theory embracing, war-mongering, put an Evangelical preacher into the White House “conservative movement.”

We can’t stop crazy speech… but we can at least work to educate people and provide Facts, not conspiracies, and “I’m just asking questions…”. We ought to be throwing facts like flyers in a war zone. Help make people more aware of how their unbridled hatred has caused them to turn into zombies of the right. We cannot stop the hate-ranting, but we must counter it with Truth.

We’re all to blame for being stupid Americans. We’re all to blame for a recent poll that found that 44% of republicans think that “an armed revolution” might be necessary in the next couple years…. a revolution against what, exactly?  They have no idea!. All they say is “Obama”, “Obamacare” or “Guns.” But when asked for details… Ask them about “Universal background checks” and they support it. Ask them about specific policies in the Affordable Care Act and they embrace them… but hint at “Obama” or “democrats” and their eyes Glenn-Beck-Glaze then they pull the guns from their holsters. ALL they know is hating the Other and parroting what the right-wing media tells them.

The rest of us are at fault for allowing it to happen. Of course, Obama for America tries to teach people… but that’s impossible to fix the problem: their brains are now literally wired to hate all things Obama. Their all-encompassing hatred of all things President Obama is a medical condition similar to alcoholism. With what does that leave us, then? Intervention. When someone is losing control, the family needs to intervene and help them admit they have a problem. That means that all of us who have been sitting on the sidelines and thinking, “Can you believe how crazy that is?!?” have to stop ask that questions and start doing something to fix it. Education. Intervention. That’s the only hope we have. Remember: these people are fighting against ghosts. 44% think they might need an armed revolution against made up threats. If we don’t start teaching them the truth: what’s the stop them from pulling their guns on those ghosts? Americans are idiots. Especially the ones who sit on the side lines and do nothing to help stop the insanity on the far right.

When Did Americans Become Total Idiots? appeared first on BlareShare.

Are the 3 people who died in the Boston bombings more important than the 26 who died at Sandy Hook? Republicans think so. Killing 26 with one gun requires no action whatsoever by our politicians, but killing 3 with two bombs shuts down an entire city.

It doesn’t make sense.

I’m not claiming that the Boston bombing wasn’t terrible. It was absolutely horrible; no denying. What I am claiming, however, is that so are all the other acts of mass killing that Americans ignore simply because they’re done with guns instead of bombs. Why is a gun that kills dozens of people not a weapon of mass destruction, whereas a pressure cooker bomb that kills three people is?

More people died at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, and Tucson.

Ten times more people die every single day from gun violence than people who died in Boston Marathon explosions.

More people were injured with by the two bombs, but fewer people died than any other “mass violence” event since 9/11. All the other acts of terror have been performed with the weapon of mass destruction of choice: guns… and in all those other terror events more people were killed than were in Boston.

Had these two brothers been in possession of semi-automatic assault weapons with high capacity magazines: they would have killed more people than they did with two bombs. We all know that’s the case… and yet republicans won’t even allow universal background checks or gun trafficking laws. It’s mind-boggling.

Why is the country reacting in to bomb violence vs. gun violence in entirely different ways? Why is bomb terrorism something the Republican Party is more than happy to trounce on with policy, but filibuster every policy that might even mention the word gun? Guns are mythical in the Republican Party. Guns are God.

Why are the people of the United States allowing that level of hypocrisy? Guns kill more than “terrorists”, so why aren’t we placing strong restrictions on gun ownership?

Americans only call it terrorism when the weapon is a bomb and the act motivated by very extreme (and misinterpreted) Islam. That’s where the problem starts.

Do you think they would have shut Boston down if they killed with guns? Would the possible links to religious extremism overseas seem somehow less “scary” if they killed with guns instead of bombs? Why is a suicide bomber scarier than a suicide gunner?

It makes no sense whatsoever – but that’s how Americans think and feel: killing 26 people with guns requires no action by the government – but killing 3 people with a bomb shuts down an entire city.

The one argument I will grant the other side of this is that bombs are scary because they can be anonymous, and yes, they can kill a lot all at once. But once again I ask: When more people have been killed by acts of gun violence than by bombs, why do we let unregulated guns continue as the norm in America? Are the three people who died in the Boston bombings more important than the 26 who died at Sandy Hook?

CAN a bomb kill more than a gun? Sure, but in tallying up the numbers, guns held by terrorists cause thousands more deaths than bombs do – yet no meaningful regulation on guns can be achieved due to the gun lobby and boogymen created by the NRA – republicans and their illogical love of guns.

No matter how you shape it: it doesn’t make sense. Americans look at bombs differently than they do guns – even though guns kill ten times more people every single day than these bombs did.

Changing perspective on guns vs. other mass killing weapons.

When a society (or in this case certain conservative pockets of a society) adopts change, it is most often achieved by changing one’s perspective; sometimes one person at a time.

The far right view guns as a personal liberty and a freedom-imperative… but they don’t view bombs that way. Our culture has developed those two distinctions. Now we have to change the perception so that guns are in the same category as bombs in the minds of the super-conservative.

Those who are Second Amendment purists look at guns as an individual right, but not the effect of guns as a matter of public safety. THAT is the perception that we need to change in the minds of gun-loving Americans: personal freedom vs. public safety. To them, guns are personal, and that personal right outweighs the impact on public safety. However, bombs are not personal (mainly because for some reason they won’t want to own them… not as cool to hold in your hands and take photos with, I guess). Since bombs are not a personal “thing” they seem to want as deeply as they have been taught to want guns, their minds make the judgment based on a larger criteria: safety of the general public. As such, they’re perfectly fine siding with most people in the country in saying that people really shouldn’t have bombs.

We need to change how gun lovers perceive guns’ impact on public safety. We need to get Second Amendment purists to change where they place the threshold ana balance between weapon possession and the weapon’s impact on public safety. Super-conservatives concede that bombs are bad for the public, but they don’t see that guns are even worse – because for them it’s still a personal liberty and a freedom-imperative to stockpiled guns. That’s the perception that must be changed.

Ten times more people die every day than died at the Boston Marathon Bombing, and yet republicans in the Senate filibuster every gun they can. It’s up to the rest of us to teach them the truth and change their perception.

More People Died at Sandy Hook than Boston Marathon Bombing. Gun Death vs. Bomb Death. appeared first on BlareShare.

Maybe the parts of America “democrats want to destroy” actually need to be destroyed… so we can fix them.

Democrats whine, cower, and adapt. Republicans shout, point fingers, and build bunkers. That basically sums up The American Way of the 21st Century.

These types of “democrats will destroy the world!!!” Internet searches continue to come into BlareShare – the far right paranoia and fear of change are impressive  indeed.

While I know that the republican brain loves conspiracies… sorry to break it to y’all, but it’s simply not true: Democrats are not destroying the country – they simply accept the fact that the world turns, the galaxy spins, the Universe expands, and things change.

People change, empires fall, and humanity moves on. Heck, even gods change (if you’re able to live long enough it’ll happen yet again, I promise you – it’s all part of the human cycle. If you deny that fact than you have a very serious ego problem).

Democrats also tend to care about people who exist outside their own immediate circle of experiences… which apparently is an impossibility for most extreme, far right republicans, and therefore a trigger for all these “ruin all things American!!” tag lines by the far-right media, bumpersticker and commemorative plate makers.

The answer remains the same: democrats are not ruining the American way… it’s people who think and SHOUT that democrats are ruining the American way who are ruining the American way. (I know that’s a complicated sentence, but give it some leeway; we’re not dealing with sane issues here.) It’s the paranoia and fighting against ghosts that’s causing political and sociological tension, which has lead to the current dysfunction of US government (let along family dinners).

However, there’s another aspect of the “the far right hates Obama and all democrats” story in this country is arising. It has to do with the fact that more and more people are sitting down at their web browsers and actually taking the time to search for reasons why democrats and Obama are ruining the United States of America.

I used to think that was bad: that more people were being paranoid… but maybe we should look at it as an opportunity – maybe they’re no longer taking the extreme right wing media talking points at face value, which is why the searchings for “how” democrats are destroying America has been increasing.

There are two ways to interpret what the increase of such searching means: either they’re not so certain anymore, or they are finally asking the question for themselves rather than taking it at face value from those who spew such things on right-wing radio, television, and blogs.

Both of those options are promising. The best thing that can ever happen when there is an entire pocket of a country who is totally out of touch with reality due to the republican information bubble their political party has created… is that those lost souls start thinking for themselves. They start searching and researching for themselves – they start to educate themselves and think on their own.

That, my friends, is promising.

I used to get very frustrated and a wee bit angry whenever I saw these sorts of “democrats will destroy America!!!” searches happening online. “How in the world can these people actually believe this crap?!?” (I woud proclaim) But now… now that we see a trend of these searches increasing there’s the slightest chance that people who believe the insanity are starting to doubt… and starting to ask “How?” which is always the first step.

As such: there is a job for all the rest of us: make sure they find the correct information: without conspiracy theories and without hate and without flat out lies to sell someone a bunker, a gun, or a 50 gallon barrel full of mayonnaise.

The far right still controls the Internet because besides Fox News, it’s the only place where they can post the wacky theories about the end of the world brought on by Obama and the democrats. As such… when people search online, they mostly encounter lies and products. It’s our job to write, and post, and comment, and direct towards facts, not fervor.

The lost are starting to seek out the Truth: we cannot let them down. Start writing, start posting, start talking and start sharing. Share FACTS and not conspiracies everywhere you can. The more you do, the better chance we have or regaining sanity in this country.

Favorite Search: How democrats are ruining the American way appeared first on BlareShare.

It’s time for the people, the “news personalities”, and the fear-based businesses who have been exploiting The Afraid and The Paranoid in this country to stop pumping toxins into our metaphorical water. It’s time to get responsible.

Just calm down everyone! Count to ten. Take a breath.

Senator Shelby (Alabama), Senator Wicker (Mississippi) and President Obama have been sent ricin letters. Senator Manchin‘s office in W. Virginia also apparently received a suspicious package. (Manchin is a leader of the background checks bill… Motive behind these “coat-tail attacks” is clear.)

All the letters were easily intercepted in this “clumsy” attempt at scaring people. Two were sent by a person from (no surprise) Mississippi…. who is a likely avid viewer of the NRA webcasts.

I’m quickly losing hope for the general mental stability of the marginalized within American society. (I’m taking about you extreme far-right, gun toting pockets of America. You need help.)

Time to stop the right-wing play time.

As you might know about BlareShare: we care about MOTIVATION, not necessarily specific acts. Stopping the “Catalyst of Crazy” is the only way to stop the acts of crazy. Focussing solutions on single events is nothing more than putting band aids on the problem of growing extremism in the United States. You have to stop it at the root.

I cannot remember any instances of schoolyards past when even kindergartners acted as illogically, explosively, and with rabid copycat escalation as extremists in America are now; all revolving around hatred of Obama, hatred the Democratic Party by proxy, and the religious-like belief that the ability to own unlimited guns somehow defines freedom.

Business and the right-wing media have been playing with the intelligence and paranoia of the far right wing. It’s a business. In many ways that’s OK, but all business must be responsible in the end. Just like a giant manufacturer eventually decides to decrease the amount of carcinogens they pump into water during the Industrial Revolution, so too must media and fear-mongering business models when what they “manufacturer” starts to get out of control.

It’s time for the people, the “news personalities”, and the fear-based businesses who have been exploiting the Afraid and the Paranoid in this country to stop pumping toxins into our metaphorical water. It’s time to get responsible. Video games and music don’t cause hate crimes, hate speech and “fight back” speech cause hate crimes.

To the political terrorist of America: calm the F down. Honestly. You are tiresome. What you’re doing is not unique. Every time there is a large event, we get throngs of paranoid wackos who piggyback onto the cause and start trying to terrorize society.

To the nervous public who are on the verge of freaking out because things feel unstable: calm the F down. Honestly. If you start to panic, you’ll just add to the  fear already in this fear-packed society.

The coat-tailing statement “attacks” like this that we always see after a large event are a pain and they cause a dark feeling: that’s the point of them. I’m sure there are a lot of people who have a sinking feeling right now due to a feeling that the world feels “out of control” – but you will lose. Eventually, you will lose.

Political terrorism never lasts: coat-tailing always fades.

By its nature political terrorism is an act of coat-tailing. Only religious terrorism lasts (bigger issue for another post). What are created here in America by radical groups like the NRA (other than abortion clinic bombings) are not religious terrorists: they are scared political terrorists who are being preached to and emboldened to “fight back” against imaginary monsters. Political terrorists always lose, because eventually – very slowly – common sense will prevail. Thankfully, that will even happen with much of our religious terrorism in America because their issues have been made political issues by the extreme political groups in the United States.

Terrorism is marketing… you all know this, right? It’s no different than a television commercial showing pictures of dead people to try and motivate you to by Viagra. There is no connection to these ricin letters to republican senator Shelby and Obama and the Boston bombings. It’s a political terrorist coat-tailing on the events in Boston.

These acts are done by crazy people. I am in no way being hyperbolic: sane people don’t mail ricin letters to members of the Senate, nor to the President of the United States (especially using their own return mailing address). Let’s say that again: these people are crazy. People who are political terrorist are crazy. They are marginalized, they are scared, they are paranoid, and they are desperate.

End the conspiracies and teach facts to overcome political terrorism. Teach them that the evil Santa Clause they all believe isn’t real.

If you are one of the people out there who are feeling like the government and the U.N. are about to burn down your house: calm down. Start reading news and opinions that exist outside of profit-driven partisanship . You are being manipulated for the purpose of selling products. That’s it. People are trying to sell you something, and they’re using Obama hatred and anti-government rants to do it – so calm down. Get control of yourselves, educate yourselves, and try not to believe what “news channels” and bloggers who live in the woods tell you from the confines of their own information bubbles.

In truth, it doesn’t really matter who sent the ricin letters to President Obama and Senator Shelby. What matters is that people who do such things are unstable, misdirected – and they need help.

Do coat-tail ricin “attacks”  make people more afraid? Yes. That’s the purpose. But rather than run away from it, we need to fix it: educate those who refuse to accept the truth about the US government. It’s not tyrannical  and the UN won’t take over their homeschool, and stockpiling guns doesn’t make you “more” free. We all have crazies in our own families, right? Talk to them. Send them articles. Send them FACTS. Help get them out of the caves of paranoia.

Take away the canvas of the scared masses onto which whose psyches the NRA and fear mongers paint their monsters.

Educate them. Kill the conspiracies. Bring them out of the margins of society. Stop the cycle of stupidity.

Who Sent Senators Shelby, Wicker, and President Obama Ricin Letters? Time to Stop the Crazy. appeared first on BlareShare.

Wayne LaPierre: the radical Gun-slim cleric who incites anger, fear, and promotes “fighting back against the U.S. government.” How is that different than people we already put on trial for inciting violence and other acts of terror?

Political and social theorists are circling the wagons to say who is responsible for the bombing in Boston. We should care more about who motivated it. Fix the motivation and stop the problem.

Who or what motivates and encourages an extremist to perform acts of terror assumes some responsibility for the actual terrorist act. People who teach extremism are at fault for perpetuating extremism.

- – - Update - – -

Full disclosure: I’m a bit aggressive about the topic of what defines a terrorist and who creates their hate: I lived in, and still love Boston (“Sweet Caroline” holds a special place in my heart). I was in NYC when the buildings fell and the entire City felt as though it had collapsed. I lost a friend who was shot and killed by her husband, and I had a student who was a shooting victim at Columbine… I hope that affords some leeway on terror tenor. This article was written the same day of the bombing in Boston. Since that day we have learned a lot about the people (…kids, really) involved in the act. However, the message remains the same: when people preach extremism, and cause isolation as a result, they create extremists. It doesn’t matter if it’s a radical religious preacher, or radical second amendment, anti-government preacher – the end result is the same: creating people who are capable of terrorism. That’s the point of this post – and the point remains true.

- – - – - -

For many events like the explosions in Boston we (“Western” countries) tend to assign blame to religious extremists who recruit, create, and incite… so who do we blame for creating extreme political terrorism in the United States? We cannot give a free pass to those who teach, encourage, and create extremism simply because they’re inside our own borders: murder is murder.

An explosion in Boston on Tax day (Tea Party remake?), on Patriots Day no less, after months of gun debate fervor, years of Obama hate, immigration reform around the corner – and Wayne LaPierre doing everything he can to convince people that the U.S. government will take over everything. The NRA: the radical Gun Lobby Cleric.

The NRA didn’t physically plant the bomb, but if it ends up being an act of domestic terrorism, they might very well be partially responsible: because what the NRA does is no different than the rantings of radical clerics who most Americans jump at the chance to demonize. They preach “FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THE US GOVERNMENT” just as much – if not more – than the most wanted radical Muslim cleric.

For the sake of argument, let’s say the person responsible for the Boston bombing is a domestic, far-right or far-left terrorist or group. We should assume this for the duration it takes to read this post in order to make an important point.

Wayne LaPierre and the NRA help to create domestic terrorists by teaching paranoid people that the U.S. Government is evil: just like the radical religious clerics we all demand “are brought to justice.” He has the right to free speech, but he has crossed the line: knowingly. That he knows the results of his extreme political rants, and yet continues to do so is why he and the NRA are also responsible for acts of domestic terrorism.

Wayne LaPierre is a radical Gun-slim, Anti-Government cleric. He uses his platform to create hate and incite violence. If we as a country demand that people like Abu Hamaz al-Masri should be held responsible for the role played in global terrorism (pictured above. The U.S. had him extradited from the UK and his trial began earlier this year in NYC) … then we must demand the same of Wayne LaPierre. He is no different: he creates political terrorist with his rousing speeches and he KNOWS that’s exactly what he’s doing… he might be crazy, but LaPierre isn’t stupid. He knows the effects of his inflammatory rhetoric (it scares people and makes them buy more weapons), which is why he’s partially to blame.

How to stop the cycle of human violence: stop the people who preach and teach it.

I don’t know about the rest of you (speaking to Americans specifically), but I’m pretty damn tired of the increase of violence in this country. It is the lowest form of animal co-existence and our brains are far too big to resort to it by default, which is what the NRA demands. The increase of violence is directly proportional with the NRA’s increase of inflammatory, inciting language for gun owners of America to stockpile weapons “to protect themselves.”

Here’s the problem: most people are stupid. Me and you, too. There is a very, very good chance that Wayne LaPierre and the more shady people within the gun lobby are fully aware that their inflammatory methods create extremists. It’s their business. What they do is the perfect analog of shouting fire in a crowded theatre full of paranoid, trigger-happy, marginalized people.

… and so on Tax Day, during the Boston Marathon… some insane person (or people) decided to have their own version of the Boston Tea Party to “fight against” the evils the NRA shouts about every day. Who is to blame?

To the extreme political factions out there: do you blame extreme Islamic clerics for creating “those kinds” of terrorists? Do you think Abu Hamaz al-Masri should be held accountable for inciting violence? Is his trial and incarceration justified? Do you hate how he shouts about the evil of America? If you do – then you should feel the same about Wayne LaPierre.

There are only two possible answers to this right-wing hypocrisy: either you don’t think foreign terrorist should be held accountable for inciting violence, or you do think that Wayne LaPierre should. You cannot think both, because what they do is one and the same. If you cannot see that, then you’re incapable of seeing Truth, and are therefore part of the problem that the NRA and extremists in the Right and Super-conservative religious movement in America have created: extreme political and religious terrorists who murder Americans.

Yes, Wayne LaPierre has the right to free speech, but there are limitations when it comes to hate speech that directly results in violence. We all know that. If we’re honest with ourselves and our souls, we all agree to that.

Step out of the forced political polarity demanded by the self-identity tags of “republican” and “democrat” and think like a human being for a moment.

If you still cannot see that Wayne LaPierre is no different than Abu Hamaz al-Masri: print out a picture of Abu Hamaz al-Masri – look at it for a long time – stick it on a wall – and ask yourself if you think he should be held accountable for his actions in creating extremists. If you do, even in the slightest way: then so should Wayne LaPierre.

Update (04-15-2012 :: 6:00PM PST ): At the 8:50pm EST press conference in Boston the first person to ask a question was yet another paranoid extreme right-wing “reporter” who asked if the explosions during the Boston Marathon were some sort of conspiracy to prevent people from being able to own guns. “Is this just another conspiracy by the government to take away our guns?” If this wasn’t about guns, then we would send them to a shrink… but America gives a free pass and accepts craziness if it’s about the Second Amendment. Conspiracy against the government has become the new religion of the extreme political right… and when religion takes over – jihads always come soon thereafter… only this time it will be by white men emboldened by AR-15s and high-capacity magazines as their religious text.

Is Wayne LaPierre / NRA Responsible for Creating Extremism & Terrorists? appeared first on BlareShare.

What’s wrong with most democrats? They’re metaphorically left-handed while trying to negotiate in a right-handed world. The result:  a never-ending decision tree where little ever gets done.

Most days, democrats as an Idea make me think of the spunky runt puppy of a very large litter. The one whose eyes are a little bit too big for its head, but the thing is just so darn cute! You can’t help but making one of those tightly-pursed, smiling-frown expressions that humans are so good at creating when directed towards little creatures who are trying with all their might, but not quite making it: “Awwee, bless his sweet little heart.”

That is what’s wrong with democrats. Bless ‘em. Trying so hard with those big ‘ole eyes, but just can’t make it out of the play pin.

Unlike the runt of the litter, however, the runtishness of the average democrat (politician) has nothing to do with his or her physical stature or eye-to-head size ratio. (…though my personal studies seem to identify eye-spacing differences between republicans and democrats…)

Democrats’ runt-like mentality when approaching negotiations

One problem with democrats in general is that they do possess many runt-like characteristics: always requiring help to move forward, taking the safe route, afraid to start a fight, afraid to do anything on their own.  A person with a runt mentality requires a coalition and at least one, very large, dog on its side before entering a fight. Nancy Pelosi is one of the few exceptions to the “runt-democrat” rule, which is why the Republican Party was hell bent on getting her out of the Speaker’s chair… a strong-in-the-arm democrat!?!? That’s horrifying for republicans who regularly count on democrats to throw in the towel on a regular basis. Knowing that democrats are weak when by themselves has been part of the republican negation plan for decades. It’s boilerplate Washington politics.

Studies seem to show that democrats use the intuitive part(s) of their brains when making decisions while republicans use the part of their brain that is more risk vs. gain in a tangible, more math-like analysis of the situation. This, too, is a problem with democrats when forced to negotiate and win.

To understand why, we need to briefly compare with “the Other” (those equally-as-pesky republicans). Put simply, math doesn’t feel bad. Cost-benefit analysis decides a winner and forever justifies it using its own net-gain criteria. There’s no second-guessing the decision. This is why former VP and über-grumpy-old-man Dick Cheney is so surefooted and cannot even conceive that he’s ever made a mistake in his life: there is no such thing as second guessing that type of decision paradigm. For the life of himself, using the brain Dick Cheney has in that head of his and the neurons with which it makes decisions… once a decision is made it quite literally cannot ever be wrong thereafter. Options can be wrong before one is converted into the decision… but once pen is put to paper the republican brain sees its own outcomes as, quite literally, infallible.

No wonder republicans have such problems letting go of conspiracy theories: once an opinion is made inside the brain of a republican, it becomes infallible truth based on how their brain works.

A problem with democrats: their decisions are never final

People who use intuition, gut feelings and empathy, however – those cute, big-eyed democrats – for them second-guessing decisions is the norm. There’s no such thing as a wholly correct, everlasting decision. Decisions get made, but all that does is change the dynamic of all the various pieces of the puzzle.  It’s not their fault, it’s just how their brains work.

For democrats in Washington in particular, making a decision doesn’t end the issue at hand; it adds the decision’s effects to the equation. On the good side, that means that a democrat is more prone to study the implications of decisions they make (say… like going to war… but also thinking about and planning an exit strategy, rather than just going to war and stopping the thought process there where it feels good…). On the bad side that means decisions are made much more slowly and far fewer are ever actually made because it’s impossible to see all the way down the chain reaction of resulting effects. The more they want to do long-lasting good… that harder it is for a democrat to actually make a decision. (In contrast, since the republican brain tends to focus more on short-term goals, they love making decisions – lots of them – and the success of that decisions is measured only by its immediate impacts, not by the long term effects.)

One life lesson the runt of a little learns very quickly, is not to offend. If you offend the bigger puppies, they’re gonna give you a hard time – and the runt always loses. Democrats tend to have this problem as well: the desire not to offend. Add that desire to the brain of the average democrat and inaction is often the result (or in Washington’s case, another committee to study, study, study).

Democrats are packed full of empathy. In many ways, empathy is the common thread that defines all democrats. The problem with empathy in politics, unfortunately, is that it doesn’t work when dealing with difficult issues. It serves as an excellent moral compass and catalyst for addressing issues, but it also makes people keenly aware of not stepping on the toes of others… which is what politics is: working hard to get what you want, which is always something that the other side does not want. In politics there’s always a loser; especially in a nation of well over 300 million people. Democrats hate creating losers, so they’re always trapped between the desire to push policy, and trying not keep their adversaries happy. It’s just not possible. While Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House, she was the rare democrat who didn’t mind making a loser of the republicans on the other side of the isle.

If the problem with democrats is that a mind that bases its decisions on intuition with a pinch of emotion results in a never-ending decision tree… can progressive policy actually exist in the real world?

Thankfully, there is always the exception to the problem with democrats: the ambidextrous democrat.

I’ll mention her name again: Nancy Pelosi is an ambidextrous democrat. She uses both her intuition and brute force to push policies through Congress. That’s why republicans demonetize her so: she’s effective like a republican, but empathetic like a democrat. Every now and again we see a democrat who uses both parts of their brain to get stuff done in Washington. It’s rare, but it’s quite a thing to watch. In many ways Bill Clinton is an ambidextrous democrat (the beltway called it “triangulation” but they like to sound smarter than I generally care to). Bill Clinton could empathize, but he also used the finite risk assessment part of his brain much more effectively than most runts of the human litter.

If there’s a problem with democrats, it’s that the Democratic Party isn’t seeking out “warrior democrats” who can swing s sword with both hands, kick a skateboard with both feet, and make decisions using both sides of their brain.

Maybe if the Democratic Party sought more “ambi” and less “empath” in its candidates, they might get more done in Washington.

What’s Wrong with Democrats? appeared first on BlareShare.

Washington made great strides late in the week by deciding not to filibuster the (poor excuse of a) gun safety bill. On a 68 to 31 vote, the Senate managed to allow debate…

We live in an odd and sad country when simply allowing debate is a major accomplishment in politics. Thank you, Republican Party of the Obama era; we tip our hats to thee for being such worthy leaders (with fingers crossed and the smell of rotten eggs in our noses).

Keep that point mind: the Senate has allowed debate (i.e. did not filibuster). They haven’t passed anything, and most definitely not even hinting that anything will get through the House – the House which is still very much controlled by the more extreme factions of the Republican Party. Here, I’m addressing only the extremes. There are plenty of reasonable people in Republicanland, but the problem is they’re too comfortable and are letting the crazies run the party – so that’s where I focus this post.

There is a chance that something will get thought the House, but by the time the poor bill makes it through it will not only be riddled with holes, but it will have so many amendments that it will likely do more harm than good. The country will probably get a very weak law called universal background checks, but it will only apply to one additional area: gun shows. Private sales, straw purchases  all that activity that gets guns into the hands of the wrong people will still go on. Mainly because the NRA and Republicanland have been so good in the last decade or so developing the ‘slipper slope” argument around any and all issues: guns, marriage, religion, food, everything. It’s a simple argument that simple people cling to, so it works well for the republican base.

We also must not forget that this is the same group of politicians (republicans in the Senate) who sided with Syria, North Korea, and Iran in voting against a U.N. treaty to help prevent the sale of weapons to known terrorists… you know… because republicans want to sell guns to terrorists?

Republican gun paranoia context

This photo is prized by the ultra-conservative right. Posted all over the place with countless “F the UN!” on every comment (no kidding: one forum had hundreds of comments, all different people, but not one of them was longer than a couple sentences and all had variations of “F the UN!”) This is what we’re dealing with here: hyper-paranoid hate combined with delusions of “patriotic” self-defense against made-up ghosts. If they were minors, we’d send them all to a shrink… but they’re adults with a lot of guns, so all we can do is hope they don’t snap. These people are convinced the UN will take over America, and convinced Obama is some sort of anti-christ, foreign-born dictator… which is why even the mention of a gun law, to them, is a threat to… everything. Fight to the death for the sake of fighting to the death!

Make another note of that issue: the U.N. treaty is entirely about INTERNATIONAL weapons sales to known and suspected terrorists – it has nothing whatsoever to do with how the Second Amendment applies to sales and citizens int he United States…. unless you’re trying to buy a gun from Iran… The extreme right-wing of the Republican Party has built up such a demon in the U.N. that they have now refused to ratify two treaties: one that encourages all countries to improve disability access (republicans voted against that because they think that would mean the UN will come into their homes and kidnap their children). That treaty was modeled on the Americans with Disabilities Act… and is less strict… hence meaning the treaty has no impact in the U.S.A… but republicans in the Senate voted against it anyway. Now, republicans are siding with the three worst countries when it comes to “respectable government insofar as it doesn’t kill its own people” in not supporting a treaty that says, “Hey… let’s not sell guns to terrorists.”  They are so terrified of the U.N. for some unknown reason that they’d rather side with countries who regularly kill their own citizens for sport. Literally, those are the republican bedfellows: Syria, Iran, and North Korea. The republican base is terrified of the U.N., which is one reason why they are increasingly ”unlimited gun rights.”

There’s your context: republicans in the Senate side with Syrian, Iran, and North Korea when it comes to gun sales. And those are Senators: they’re the responsible ones in Washington, DC!

The gun safety legislation is already very weak. At best we can hope for stronger background checks and finally saying to one another  “you know what? gun trafficking is probably a bad thing.” However, we must never overestimate the paranoia of the republican ideologue. Every single gun law that we started with was 100% logical, reasonable, and was constitutional. The stripped-down version we have now is entirely due to republican fear of losing in primaries. If anything actually gets out of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, John Boehner will be very hard pressed to get the crazies in the House to give a majority. He can’t get his own bills passed that are non-controversial… how in the world do we think he’ll get even the weakest gun laws passed?

Will gun laws ever pass in Congress? Yes… but not now. Democrats have to win back the House first. Background checks might make it, but there will be so many loop holes that it will only be a “feel better about ourselves” sort of bill. We don’t get a law that means anything, or a law that will actually do anything until we get rid of the extreme right in politics.

Right now we have a Republican Party who are giving speeches about racial inclusion by referencing Abraham Lincoln, we have over 300 laws just in 2013 of republicans trying to put even more restrictions on abortion… there’s no way with that level of ultra-conservative lashing out that meaningful gun laws will get passed. It’s what is. This is what happens when the first black man becomes president: hyper-intense old-white-world backlash to legislate every last über-conservative “value” they can – because the world is changing. The country will age out of it, but lordy… I hope America grows out of the white conservative backlash soon… say by 2016?

Will The Gun Bill Pass Congress? Background Checks. appeared first on BlareShare.

Now that the incredibly weak “gun bill” has gotten out of committee (but likely won’t go any further than that this round), we’re pretty certain that there will be further runs on guns at the local gun shops of America. I won’t even get into how meager this bill actually is, mainly because the NRA has done its job to convince gun lovers that it’s the end of all gun rights (and America) as they know it: so buy, buy, buy while you still can!!! Buy! Buy! Buy!

Why are republicans so crazy about guns? First, we must be fair: not all republicans have a (rather awkward and in need of seeing a shrink) love affair with their guns, but nearly all rabid gun lovers are republicans. The NRA has positions the Republican Party in such a way that if someone is a single-issue voter on guns, then they must be a republican (because all evidence being to the contrary “democrats will storm into your house and take away all your guns!”… just like that U.N. plot with those black helicopters). It’s not a truth without exceptions – lots of democrats like guns, too – but rabid gun lovers are always republicans because of how the NRA has shaped the party and manipulated the perception of the Democratic Party over the last few decades.

Granting the fact that not all republicans are wacky about guns, we still need to look into why, exactly, guns symbolize freedom. That’s the odd part in the wacky world of republican gunland: when and how did they come to believe that in order to be free, you must own an arsenal of weapons?

The NRA annexed the anti-government movement and made it about gun rights

There have always been small pockets of the U.S. population who are anti-government. Usually they just moved to Alaska or had cabins in the woods; they didn’t like taxes and had issues about privacy. We could co-exists without any problems.

But the NRA and the gun lobby changed that.

The NRA saw an opportunity to annex the anti-government groups in the same way the Republican Party annexed the Tea Party movement. They took the message and mutated it into the larger, extremely conservative dialog. What was once on the far, far, outskirts of political belief (that the government will take away all your guns and all your freedoms) has now become a common belief within the extreme far right wing in this country. It was done intentionally, deliberately, and with a profit motive by the NRA.

The more paranoid people are, the more they will buy. That’s the NRA business, operations, and marketing model all wrapped into one philosophy.

Whereas the anti-government groups had a plethora of different reasons to distrust government, the gun rights issue wasn’t the center reason. Owning guns was part of their defense, but it wasn’t the main reason why they hated the government. That’s the part that the NRA has been successful changing. Now, it’s all about guns.

The right to own as many guns and whatever type of guns as one wants is the primary, secondary, and tertiary reason to hate the U.S. government, and the National Rifle Association is very, very good and injecting that paranoid into the already paranoid.

All republicans aren’t necessarily crazy about guns, but they’re crazy about protecting themselves, and the NRA has convinced them hook, line, and sinker that owning the biggest, baddest guns possible is the only way to protect one’s family and property.

The more the paranoid, über-conservative right are convinced the government will take away the one and only thing with which they can protect themselves (the big, bad-ass gun), the more the tension builds, the more people lash out in fear (and gun buying runs). The more people lash out in fear, the gun violence there it… and therefore… in response to all the increased gun violence… the government is forced to address gun violence with laws. It’s a perfect cycle created single-handedly by the gun lobby.

When people start showing off their guns like they do their kids, then we have a problem.

There’s an increasing number of photos on the Internet of people laying out their guns on a towel or on their beds then taking photos of them. Proud of their weapons. The photos scream a sort of defiance coupled with anger – bad combination when the thing in their hands can kill with a simple pull of the trigger.

That’s the other aspect of the NRA’s marketing campaigns that has made ultra-republicans love their guns so much: create pride in the defiance against anything and anyone who might dare even mention gun safety or gun control. The NRA has created that solidarity among gun lovers, which does one thing: increase the intensity with which they “defend” themselves. That’s not cool given that the NRA has been creating ghosts to scare these people for so long.

Keep an eye on the gun photos on the Internet. The more you see people taking photos and posting them as if they’re photos of their own children, the bigger this problem will be. Some crazy gun lovers actually do value their guns as much as their children, so the thought of losing them, not matter how fabricated that fear, causes them to lash out.

Panic + guns. That’s what they intentionally create every day. Thank you NRA for creating such a wonderfully dangerous and stupid combination.

Why Are Republicans Crazy About Guns? appeared first on BlareShare.

If curiosity killed the cat, fear and paranoia kills the crazed, ideological gun lover… and those around him.

Given the world Wayne LaPierre shouts about… how else will this crazed gun run end? Logic and reason clearly don’t work. How do you stop their self-fulfilling prophesies?

I’ve been talking with a lot of people about crowd psychology in relation to the NRA and extreme right-wing, anti-government rhetoric lately. What strikes me is a distinct difference in how much those who consider themselves “true conservatives” are blinded by their own self-fulfilling conspiracy theories than they used to be. The psychology of the ultra-conservative needs to be understood before we can find a way out of this mess.

Democrats see it, independents and moderates see it, progressives love it, but every time I mention how the “end of the world” won’t be due to Obama and those crazy democrats, it will be because of all the misguided hatred of Obama and those crazy democrats… hard core conservatives only have one answer: they repeat themselves. They repeat “Obama is a dictator who is half-way to taking over this country! We must strike back against government oppression!” “You’ll see! And you’ll be sorry when they come after you!” Extreme ideologs never listen, they only repeat.

We must all remember one important point: crowds are stupid. Mobs are even dumber than crowds. Scared and angry people, like scared cows, do dumb things. We all do. From riots, to patting down granny at the airport, to extreme religious cults: when groups of people start creating demons, then believing in the demons they created… there’s basically no way to reason with them. It’s a lost cause. It’s the siege at Waco, TX. It’s the NRA. It’s the anti-government crazies in America.

But how the heck do we stop it? No one, either side of this wacky gun debate enjoys the tension that exists lately (except the people selling the guns, of course).

Fear binds, and anger blinds

We all know creating fear has been a political tool for decades in this country. The right side of the isle is particularly keen on using that tactic. The gun lobby is the king of it. Wayne LaPierre literally tells every microphone that monsters are standing outside the bedroom doors of all Americans. Literally. He uses the words monsters, crazy, insane, killers, etc. His singular goal has been to scare the crap out of the everyday American citizen so that they, in turn, will buy more guns to “protect themselves.”

Start there: for decades pro gun organizations, lead by the NRA, have been intentionally creating fear in American. It doesn’t even matter if that which creates the fear (robbers, rapists or rappers) is real or not – what matters is that for over a generation, fear has been created and injected and fueled and pumped into the psyche of an entire population. Intentionally.

All that fear mongering brings people together. People who are afraid of the same thing always join forces. It’s how alliances between nations have been built, and it’s how neighborhoods create neighborhood watches. Common fear = organize to protect against it.

Then people get angry. Fear and anger are bad bed partners. If you can make people afraid… then convince them that the only thing, the ONLY thing that they can use to protect themselves will be literally stripped away from them by the very entity of which they are afraid… boy howdy is it going to get ugly. That’s basically where we are in America right now. Once again, enter the gun lobby and Wayne LaPierre: a man who has spent his entire career creating terrifying monsters to scare fathers, mothers, and children everywhere. Mosters under the beds or all Americans. Wayne LaPierre has gone far over the line this time; creating the U.S. Government as the monster, fueling the fire of fear, creating panic, and giving them a target around which to organize. People get angry… and when people are angry they don’t think clearly. When people are scared and angry… then they get stupid.

People lash out when fear and anger govern their actions

Anti-government is already out there: this is what the NRA encourages. Add the masses that hate Obama with all their hearts, and the fear is out of control. How can the cycle be stopped if the NRA refuses to act responsibly?

This is not a secret. Everyone knows this to be a fact of human nature. When we think we’re cornered, when we’re scared and angry: we lash out. Moreover, we freak out. Enter the extreme right, gun-crazed pockets of the United States of America.

Freak out when afraid? Take fire for instance: we all know fire will hurt and can kill us. Like guns, we’re both drawn to and scared of fire. If there are thousands of us in a room and a giant fire breaks out: we run like crazy. We’re scared. In this case the ultra-conservative republican has been instilled with the belief that the U.S. Government (and Obama in particular) is even more dangerous to them than fire is to the rest of us. Their fear of the government and Obama is more real to them than their own mortality. As such, they are on the brink of freaking out. They are freaking out. Call me crazy, but I prefer to stay very, very far away from heavily armed people who are in freak out mode.

In a crazed crowd state of mind, once again enters Wayne LaPierre (why won’t he just go away!?!?) doing his best to create more fear, more hate, and more anger. As time marches on I’m more and more convinced that Wayne LaPierre is the most irresponsible human being in America. He is doing everything he can to incite violence, because more violence means people buy more guns. That’s his job. He’s a professional.

Democrats, moderates, independents… they all seem to identify the cycle that the NRA has created. They create fear, people buy more guns, more guns means more gun violence, then the NRA walks out onto the stage again, points to the new violence, and says people need to buy more guns. But those on the far right… the proud government haters… they don’t see the cycle. They’re stuck in the cycle which is why they repeat themselves so often; repeat their mantra, repeat their fear, buy more guns.

To solve it… we have to stop the cycle  which means stopping the NRA. Put the NRA out of business. All cycles can end if everyone just realizes they are trapped in the loop and decides to step out of it. But the NRA will never let that happen. There are already throngs of ultra-conservatives building bunkers, hoarding food, planning “US Government Free Zones” and their own damn cities where gun ownership is mandatory… all to fight against a villain that isn’t even attacking them. It’s all in their heads (which is why it’s so hard to stop the cycle).

Democrats will destroy America!

That democrats and Obama will “destroy” America is one of the most popular search phrases on BlareShare – no kidding. “Destroy” is the word most used. However inappropriate the comparison may be, this is true: what an ultra-conservative is taught to believe is no different than what the typical North Korean is taught to believe. (Prove me wrong.) Both are taught to fear invasion by the US government. The US government is evil, and the US government will take over their lives. The only difference is in the US the anti-government groups get to blog about it… because of the freedom the government they hate so much provides them.

Due to the parallel between the ultra-conservative teachings and North Korea, we’re forced to look to North Korea and its actions for further comparison: lashing out, threatening, using inflammatory rhetoric, amassing weapon, and not being in touch with reality. Nor do they know where the line is. At what point must they must stop the insanity before they get themselves killed?

It’s not that the government will kill them: it’s getting themselves killed. It’s the same as suicide by cop. It’s their own fear, their own uncontrollable anger that corners them and leaves (they believe) no option other than a fight to the death. Democrats will destroy America? No. Ultra-republicans who believe democrats will destroy America will end up destroying themselves.

That’s what happens when people isolate themselves in fear and anger and extreme ideology – at places like Waco, TX. That’s what happens when large groups create their own demons and believe their own conspiracy theories. That’s what happens if people don’t start demanding that organizations like the NRA be put out of business.

…and after day after day…. Wayne LaPierre spends every waking moment encouraging that sort of self-destruction. Indeed, whether he knows it or not, he might very well be the “gun religion” analog of David Koresh.

Far-Right, Gun Crazed Won’t Start A Revolution: They’ll Start Another Waco. appeared first on BlareShare.

In what Senator McConnell is calling  ”a Nixonian” event, Mother Jones has released some recordings of the campaign office of Senator McConnell’s staff discussing less than honorable approaches to attack then potential candidate Ashley Judd.

Important fact: the senator has no proof of any buggin. He just threw it out in a repeated talking point because he knew it would make the news.

When asked three or four times if he thought using an opponent’s mental health history is “fair game” in political campaigns, all McConnell did was repeat himself… every time… about being attacked and bugged by left wing politics… even though he and his campaign have no proof whatsoever who recorded the meetings…. yet in the mud as usual, McConnell blames a liberal organization of bugging his campaign office. Without talking points, Mitch McConnell has no voice. Without dirt and lies, he has no point.

Did Senator McConnell bug his own office as a political ploy?

“Caught on Tape!” seems to be something Mother Jones and David Corn are specializing in lately. This time, it’s McConnell’s staff at the senator’s campaign headquarters who are heard discussing Ashley Judd’s mental health in the past and, of course, how that might used in a  campaign against her if she had decided to run against McConnell for his seat in the Senate.

We all know politics is ugly, but it does bring a new twinge when we hear such things actually discussed around a meeting table in a campaign office.

Since Senator McConnell is trying desperately to win over the extreme right-wing in his state (who basically hate the government, and all things liberal before they even take their first breath in the morning) he is demanding an investigation by the FBI and using words like “Nixonian tactics” by the “liberal” Mother Jones outfit. I’m sure the more extreme parts of his base are cheering away. The thing most media outlets seem to forget: the far right LIKE this crap. The tape will get more support fromt the wacky right, not less.

Insofar as who bugged McConnell’s office: sorry, senator McConnell, you claim it’s a progressive entity and some conspiracy theory (we know how republicans love conspiracies), but it’s most likely a pesky intern who snuck in a recording device.Not everything is a conspiracy. Mother Jones got their hands on the thing, which is exactly how a young intern would think. After what happened to Mitt Romney, “David Corn, that guy who released the Romney 47% tape” is the first person to whom they’d turn.

But it’s OK, we understand that you (our friend Mitch) are worried about losing your job by being primaried from the right, so you have to blame some larger liberal organization. In truth this sort of thing is what you want, and what you need, to prove to Kentuckians that you’re as far right as they come.

The people who will run against Mitch McConnell in a primary are also prone to being very, very paranoid and believe whole-heartedly in conspiracy theories.  Who’s to say that they won’t start claiming the senator had his staff record it and leak the tape yourself? That gets the story out, and gives him deniability at the same time….

Makes sense, really: the senator stages the meeting, records it, then leaks the tape to a liberal media online magazine that’s already well-known for such things. Then what happens? All the voters and media outlets jump on it so now the world is reminded that Ashley Judd had some mental health struggles in the 90′s, AND the McConnel campaign gets to say that they would never, NEVER, use such information in a campaign…. hence looking clean and honorable. Sure, you talked about it at a meeting, but you wouldn’t use it… all you have to do is leak it, then shout “NIXONIAN TACTICS!” in front of every microphone… kill two birds with one recording.

Senator McConnell… did you bug your own campaign office? Two points for creativity if you did. The odd part is given the far right’s love for conspiracies… I have no idea if such a scenario would help or harm the Senator.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Senator Mitch McConnell’s Campaign Office Bugged? appeared first on BlareShare.

Interesting reality of the republican lifestyle, isn’t it?

Selective memory normally has something more to due with a teenager forgetting that he was asked by his parents to take out the garbage. But in the world of republicans being controlled by the gun lobby, it means wearing flag pins and sporting banners that proclaim “We will never forget” and a silhouette of the twin towers, while just 4 months after Newtown, CT saying they’ll filibuster any and all gun safety bills that are brought to the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Ah, republican senators, what proud men and women you are… (clear throat). In this day and age, I think the best we can hope for from republicans is that they support the Sandyhook is a hoax conspiracy theories in private… at least that way I’ll only feel sick to my stomach, but not actually lose my lunch when thinking about republicans in the senate.

There’s not much more to say, honestly. What should we as a country think about a Republican Party who after over a decade still exploits the tragedy of 9/11 as much as they can to get increased military funding and warrantless everything, yet after only four months behave as if the tragedy at Sandy Hook (let alone the 3300 other people who have died since Sandy Hook by gun violence) simply never happened.

Selective memory to national tragedies only when it fits the ultra-conservative agenda… yup… I feel sick.

Even though there is a massive majority of U.S. citizens who think at least background checks should be the law of this country… republicans refuse to do it because of the NRA.

Senators refuse to even vote because they know they will not survived an election with a no vote on their record in most U.S. states… you can’t gerrymander a senate seat like you can in the house. The house republicans are happy to vote and prove their NRA loyalties… because many of their seats are safe due to the gerrymandering after the last census. To think that we have elected officials who actually boast about being pro anti-terrorism internationally, yet support domestic terrorists getting every weapon they can get their hands on. How does one resolve that in a way that allows them to sleep at night?

Right.. I forgot… they all have full, government paid health coverage so probably have large doses of Ambien.

We all should be remembering what it is that Mitch McConnell and the House republican Tea Party crazies choose to remember and exploit for political purposes. They only remember the tragedies that get them more money. Sure, the democrats are not much better when it comes to their own special interests… but at least the don’t make me search for a Tums whenever I think about them. Sadly, that’s the criteria we have these days: which part gives you the least amount of acid reflux.

Republicans Have Forgotten Sandy Hook… But They Still Remember 9/11 appeared first on BlareShare.

Don’t get me wrong, I dig democrats, and I’m much more of a democrat than I am a republican… but the Democratic Party makes me just as angry and crazy as republicans. Too often they seem poised to actually do something, then they pull a Harry Reid (folding, withering, caving, etc.) and back away from achievement like it’s they’re crossing a rope bridge wired with explosives by Arnold Schwarzenegger who is hiding just off camera covered in mud. (or is that NRA Wayne LaPierre in the swamp and face paint hiding in the bushes? The guns they both use and the fear of invisible monsters are about the same… hard to tell which is which)

Why are democrats so weak?

If you believe in science, you can assign some blame on the manner in which a democrat’s brain works. Democrats tend to be motivated more by gut feeling and intuition – the problem with that is that tends to make people wishy-washy…. Yup… that sounds about right. Republicans love to make fun of democrats for such reasons, that democrats are too touchy-feely, and “care” too much about people (yeah, I know “caring” can really get in the way of good policy sometimes).

Usually when I meet a good democrat I want to say, “Awwwwee, how cute” and then slap them up side the head asking them to grow a pair.

Die hard republicans may be crazy as a result of wallowing in too much paranoia being injected into their veins from their media outlets, but die hard democrats are also paranoid: they can’t stand offending anybody… and so when we need a democrat to grow a spine and fight for what’s right, then tend to seek too much compromise. They want to be popular. They want to be liked. One thing I have to give to republicans is that they know governing doesn’t always mean doing popular things… now if we can just stop them from thinking the end of the world is just around the corner, and extreme republicans from assuming violence is the only end-all answer to fight against things they don’t like… then we might be able to accomplish something.

I know this post is about democrats being weak, but while we’re on that topic: extreme republicans… it would be a really nice thing for this country if you stopped using violence and intimidation as a means to get your way… there are many other ways to be strong. The strongest people in society don’t need weapons and they don’t need to threaten. Their intelligence and commitment overcome violence and threats. The extreme right wing is dangerously close to becoming a violent gang.

Back to the spineless democrats. The real problem is that the type of personality and mode of thinking that tends to make a person a democrat is the exact thing that makes them prone to pull Harry Reids. What they are is the root cause of my problem with them. As such, there’s likely no way to solve it without unless some sort of coalition is created between democrats and moderate republicans. The democrats have the numbers to guide policy, and their moderate republican partners have the spine to push them through (sans violence and intimidation).

Nancy Pelosi is fairly tough, though. If she gets back the Speakership in 2014, there’s a fair chance that with her leadership that democrats can push through some bills… but Harry Reid…

“My Friend” Harry Reid… I understand that the Senate is a gentleman’s game and there’s a tradition of being white gentlemen (basically doing nothing, then going to the steam room, eat well, then go home to the wife)… but maybe it’s time to break with tradition and grow a pair.

Why Are Democrats So Weak in the Knees? appeared first on BlareShare.

OK, so maybe not a cassette tape player in a recording studio, but give me a 2-inch over the best Pro Tools rig any day when it comes to recording a full sound.

Yes… I’m going there: the never-ending analog vs. digital debate. Even after all these years, and all the improvements to digital audio processing, I remain a staunch advocate of having lots of analog gear (particularly tape and tubes) in a recording studio… because it sounds better… and it always will.

By now, anyone interested in recording their own music, setting up a home studio, etc. has a basic knowledge of how digital audio works, but a brief recap never hurts and helps make my point why analog sounds better than digital.

Most people describe how digital recording works by imagining a digital recording like a staircase: discrete heights (each stair being a specific voltage level). The higher your sample rate, the more “narrow” these steps become, so that if you have a sample rate that’s very, very high, the steps become so narrow that when put together it “basically” is a smooth line.

The width of this staircase is only one part of the digital audio wave, though. You also need to take the height into account: that’s where bit depth comes into play. The reason 8 bit audio sounds so “crunchy” is because with a low number of bits, there’s only so many pre-determined “heights” between zero and maximum that 8 bits can create… for the same of argument, let’s keep it really simple and pretend 8 bit audio only has 8 possible step heights, like a ladder. If you have to climb 16 feet into the air, that means the distance between each step has to be 2 feet… that’s hard. If, however, you have a ladder that has, 192 steps, then there is very little distance “between” each step on the ladder, you can place your foot exactly where you need it to be so you’re climb is smooth, not crunchy. The lower the number of bits, the fewer possible steps on that ladder. The A/D converter basically measures the analog signal coming into it (from a microphone, console channel output, whatever) and the assigns a step on the ladder: the one that is as close as possible to what the voltage “in the real world” actually is. If you don’t have a lot of steps like with an 8-bit ladder, then what’s sampled won’t be very close to the actual voltage, which creates all kinds of distortion.

But why does analog sound better than digital (and therefore why should you always have analog gear in your studio)? Take that basic ladder and step width idea and keep shrinking each down, smaller and smaller. Imagine a sine wave. No matter how small you get, it will never be “real” which is a perfectly smooth curve. No matter how many possible voltage levels you can get in a computer: they’re still discrete levels that, like stairs on a staircase, get put end to end. From a distance they sound and look smooth, but it’s just like a digital image with its pixels: as you zoom in you see each individual value. Digital MUST have discrete values, whereas in the real world we can always cut a value in half to get a smaller one.

Of course, the advances with floating point and DSD audio have vastly improved how digital audio sounds, but it will never be as good at re-creating sound as analog gear.

Furthermore, when we’re dealing with analog gear like tubes and tape (I don’t really care about solid state), then the way that those mediums distort also creates all sorts of good things (to our ears, anyway).  Side effects of overloaded analog gear like tape compression, high-end saturation, and even-order harmonic distortion create the famous “analog warmth” that so many people talk about and want to have in their recordings. (No, a plug-in doesn’t do that, those just use math to shape the sound with harmonics and EQs, it’s still discrete values and not real nature.)

When new recording engineers start out they always end up searching “how to get a warm sound.” You can get a good frequency balance with digital, but it will always be your analog gear that will sweeten your sound, smooth it out, and give it the warmth you seek.

So what does this mean when setting up your studio? Basically, make sure you have more money than you think you want to spend. Tube audio gear isn’t cheap, and finding (let alone maintaining) a 2-inch tape machine in this century is a both a pain and very costly. But they are expensive for a reason: because they sound better. So long as you can grab yourself a couple tube pre-amps, EQs and a compressor / limiter or two, you’ll be in very good shape to be happier about the sound of your recordings.

Keep in mind: you don’t necessarily need a lot of gear – you just need some really good gear. Unless you’re recording a full band, you don’t need a ton of mics and two dozen mic-pres. Spend high and not often. Most audio engineers live lives of overdubs now, anyway, so approach buying gear for your studio more like you have a lot of money to spend on furniture for a very small apartment: buy quality not quantity. I’d much rather have a couple amazing sounding mic-pres and compressors than two racks full of thin and brittle ones.

Now to the sad part: no one but you and your production buddies will likely notice the increased sound quality. 99% of the people buying music are buying digital and have been raised with MP3s. Even when listened to digitally, if you have very good, analog warmth, source material it will still sound better: people will feel the vocals are a bit more full, they’ll feel better about how the compression sounds, etc… but I doubt anyone who is actually buying your music will care. They just want to sing along, bob their heads, or hit the dance floor. Only the geeks among use seem to care about really good sound anymore. So it’s sort of up to the audio engineers out there; those who love high quality sound to keep the torch lit. Good luck.

Set Up A Recording Studio: Why Analog Sounds Better Than Digital appeared first on BlareShare.

So the anointed supreme leader of North Korea has authorized nuclear attacks against the United States… all normal when you live inside a bubble. North Korea… Republicanland… it’s basically the same: The longer you spend inside a bubble, the more you turn into a yapping toy poodle. But we do hope this kid isn’t as crazy as his rhetoric makes him sound.

Yes, putting Kim Jong Un in a Dark Helmet Spaceballs uniform is down right disrespectful… but sometimes I can’t help myself… I play with photoshop, he plays with tanks and missiles. All’s fair in war… the weapons are just a bit different.

So… Kim Jung Un… why don’t you calm down a wee bit, eh? We all go through puberty, and getting a new job, and then having to adapt to life in a new marriage (I can imagine that sharing a bathroom is very, very difficult for you… the lid goes “down” not up, and yes, it DOES take that long to get ready for a night out in Pyongyang).  All of those life changes are hard. I get that. They can cause a lot of stress… but you really don’t want to vent that stress by stomping on the ground, pounding your chest and shouting “War, War War!” in a giant room with a giant map on the wall surrounded by old guys in funny hats. Chill out, man! Go have a good time with your wife. Make a baby not a war.

Does Kim Jong Un want to start a war? Chances are no… he’s just acting like a young man without a father. As some have said, “he’s not suicidal.” Nevertheless, Kim Jong Un is teething right now. He’s trying to figure out just how far he can push the line of dictator-insanity…. you’re very, very close to crossing it, Kim. I know you want the world to see you as a big strong man, get out of the shadow of your father (chuckle) but all this “pissing your territory” might get your own country destroyed… what would your father think? What would your grandfather think?

Kim, you don’t want your brain to be in your feet, and you really don’t want to get your Schwartz all twisted – if you don’t stop soon, there’s an increasing chance something akin to Schwartz twisting is going to happen. In case you haven’t noticed, the rest of the world isn’t very happy with how your family has isolated your country. Your bubble (while sometimes a model for the republican information bubble) ought not be burst by F-22s and stealth bombers. If you want to keep your people locked inside the dome that is North Korea… if would be wise to back off the whole “war” thing.

Young people are prone to do stupid things, and we all hope you’re smarter than that. If you really want to prove yourself as a strong leader: get out of your helmet and allow your country to join the rest of the world.

Threats By North Korea. Kim Jong Un: Classic Spaceballs appeared first on BlareShare.

Convinced the U.S. government is out to get them, the extreme right-wing culture in America has more in common with the average North Korean than they do the average American. They share the same sense of self-glory intertwined with imminent doom – but in Republicanland America – life is thickly coated in a Norman Rockwell glorification of the past… with a lot more guns and ammo.

Norman Rockwell, meet Republicanland: Mandatory gun ownership in small town America.

When people think of small American towns, many still have images of Norman Rockwell paintings: tree-lined streets, neighbors on the porch waving hello; not a single grumpy old man yelling “GET OFF MY LAWN!”

Certainly not an image of grandma packing heat.

Nelson, Georgia, however, has a different view of what an All American town should be: a “prepared” community, armed to the teeth in which every citizen must own a gun and ammunition. Indeed, the city council of Nelson, GA has passed a gun law that requires more guns and ammo not less… mandatory guns in every household… that changes the Norman Rockwell vision of American life, doesn’t it? Republicans and guns… can’t get any wackier when learning about pure American culture.

To justify the law, the Nelson, GA City Council requires every household to own a gun and ammunition in order to, ”…provide for the emergency management of the city…”

Guns to stop a tornado? Guns to prevent floods? Guns to help fight against heat stroke? Why not get a little more explicit and detail exactly what these people are scared of?

What’s interesting is that the members of the city council have apparently forgotten that there hasn’t been any violent crime in Nelson, GA for the last 10 years. None. One wonders what emergency management these people foresee in their nightmares. It’s as if the entire town, all 1324 people, have become über-preppers and are turning their very streets into well-fortified bunkers. Over and over again the extreme right-wing manages to create fear where it doesn’t exist, and pass laws that have no other purpose than to reinforce those fears.

There’s also the typical republican litmus test symbolism inside the “everyone in this town must own a gun law”. It centers around the traditional republican paranoia that the government (if not the UN… or scientists… or college professors… or women with a mind to control their own reproduction) … sorry… in the minds of the far right, the US government will literally walk into your home and take away your guns, take your rights, and probably your children, too. No matter how many times facts show that “the government taking away your guns” is blatantly incorrect, it’s wrong, and it will never happen – the NRA has embedded this narrative into the republican DNA. We’ll never get rid of it. Extreme conservatives have a DNA marker that convinces them the government will become a dictatorship (especially if it happens to be a black president). The United States might age out of it in another 3 or 4 generations, but that pocket of American culture will likely always exist. It’s an old ghost story told around campfires in the deep woods of Republicanland.

With that in mind, it’s important that we look at North Korea (stick with me for a second). Americans easily call them “crazy” for teaching their children from a very early age that all Americans want to kill them. Most Americans think North Koreans are wacko for the level of hatred they carry against American imperialism…. so what’s the difference between what North Korea teaches their children, and what the far right conservative teaches theirs?

Both groups claim the American government will take over. Both teach children to stockpile weapons, harbor hate, and motivate by fear because the American government is just outside the door. Convinced the U.S. government is out to get them, the extreme right-wing culture in America has more in common with the average North Korean than they do the average American. They share the same sense of self-glory and the same sense of imminent doom – but in Republicanland America – life is thickly coated with a Norman Rockwell glorification of the past… with a lot more guns and ammo.

So blind to the truth of being manipulated by fear that the “must own a gun” ordinance of small-town USA Nelson, GA passed on a 5 to 0 vote.

One resident who spoke out against the ordinance told the NBC affiliate in Atlanta, “People who want a gun, they already have one probably. There’s been no violent crime in Nelson in the past 10 years. So how are you going to improve on no violent crime?”

One sane man out of 1324 people in this new, extreme conservatism vision of a Norman Rockwell town in Georgia… at least it’s a start. Where there’s one, we can find hope that others might follow.

Nelson, GA and its must own a gun law, while not the first such law ever created by republican-lead bodies, earns a nod as this weeks reflection of why extremism – on any side of the political isle – is a sad and dangerous thing. The only thing extremism creates is more extremism.

Is there an exception to the law? Yes. Any resident of this quaint goblins-under-the-bed town can request to be except from being forced by the town to own a gun and ammunition. More paperwork to get the government out of our lives… again, I highly doubt that these particular 5 city council members see the irony in that.

At the end of the day, like a similar law that’s already on the books also in a small town in Georgia and South Dakota (as far as today’s brief research revealed, there’s probably more in similar small pockets of Republican Rockwell America) this law will likely never be enforced.

What are the police going to do, go door to door and demand to be shown the gun of the household? Isn’t that basically like being forced to register one’s gun… which is something the far right gun lovers are vehemently against?

Again… doubt these people see the irony. Such is the price of admission to Republicanland.

This Week In Republicanland: New Law, Must Own Gun In Georgia Town appeared first on BlareShare.

“Some families pass on the tradition of treasure hunting. Some families pass down idealistic libertarianism. Found at the end of the path, though, they both stand – looking down – at a dead end where X marks the spot of their wasted effort.”

Can Rand Paul save the republican voter from the menacing republican establishment sheriff and his border patrol posse!?! Who will she choose?!? Will freedom prevail!?! Why does his horse talk?!? (Cue upright piano music)

When a slogan sounds like a pre-school nursery rhyme, one knows it’s going to be difficult to earn broad-based credibility on the national stage. Such is the life of the freshman senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul. (… and yes, being from Kentucky makes it hard to win on the national stage as well).

As BlareShare likes to call him: “The Senator from the Great State of His Father’s Shadow”, Rand Paul, like Marco Rubio, is getting his name thrown around in the political media arena as a possible presidential contender in 2016.

Magazines, websites, radio hosts, newspapers, and cable news ask daily, “Who will lead the Republican Party?“ In response to the questions, Senator Paul has been testing the waters while speaking at all of the obligatory venues, he’s been experimenting with non-committal policy positions to see how far he can expand a voter base, and lord knows he’ll inherit his father’s campaign infrastructure… he’s trying to show the media that he’s a presidential contender.

But the real question is: does Rand Paul have a chance in 2016? If he can’t win a few primaries in 2016 (clear, vote-based wins; not delegate infiltration-style like daddy does), then running, or even the occasional well-covered filibuster don’t matter. Does Rand Paul really have a chance to win in 2016?

Uh… no… Hell, no.

The Republican Primary Process is a Melodrama

We will never forget the republican primary marathon (or Roman gladiator extravaganza) of the 2011 / 2012 presidential election.  The republican debates were the best thing on TV! We witnessed how the Republican Party – due in part to its fractured state between Small Government, Big Religion, Big Gun, and any number of other pockets within Republicanland – loves to create a sideshow when it comes to how they pick their nominee. Iowa takes place in tents at a fair with fried food and petting zoos… it literally is a sideshow.

Moreover, the republican base is base in that it cannot get enough political bashing on its hot dog. It’s like NASCAR, really. As such, that’s what presidential primaries are: bashing and crashing into other side. It makes the republican base feel good. It makes them cheer and sneer. Some even leer and jeer (and deer steer for the hills when they see all the gun racks… and beer.)

It’s a melodrama.

The political primaries for the Republican Party are more like a melodrama than an election process. Rand Paul has to make it through that melodrama plot line without being washed away by the rain… but the guy with a rhyme never gets the girl. “Stand with Rand” is the ranting character who introduces a subplot, then disappears into the backdrop, or at best becomes the plucky sidekick who has a slight stutter. Rand Paul will have a role to play in the 2016 election, but like his father, he will not win the nomination, nor will the republican establishment take him seriously. They will try to mitigate and eliminate whatever delegates he wins just like they did for his dad in 2012.

Rand Paul is a thorn born from the same Bush as Father Ron. Senator Paul is a messenger – a courier – whose message sounds good to college students and republicans who fancy themselves small government lovers, but that’s all. Rand Paul is no leader, and he cannot win for two reasons: his message it too small for a national tour, and he will never survive the scrutiny involved in national elections.

Rand… once again in the footsteps of his father… will shout his message for as long as he can, but he treats politics as his soapbox, not as a method of governing. Senator Paul doesn’t engage politics because he wants to be a Senator or a President; he “does” politics because the political stage is the most appropriate one for him to deliver his libertarian, melodramatic message. Some families pass on the tradition of treasure hunting. Some families pass down idealistic libertarianism. Found at the end of the path, though, they both stand – looking down – at a dead end where X marks the spot of their wasted effort.

It’s important to note that we do not think Rand Paul is crazy (unlike many extreme right wing republicans with whom he’s forced to align due to the nasty problem of having a two-party system funded by billions of dollars of outside campaign spending). Rand Paul is an run of the mill idealist with a big budget.  Idealists, however, are made for things like protesting, writing songs, and writing books. Maybe start a charity or two. Idealists don’t win the republican nomination for president in 2016.

Idealists are not born to lead inside an established political system. They can help foster change from the outside by rallying the masses, but they are incapable of gaining any real power from inside the cogs of the machine. To acquire power on the inside, one has to compromise their ideals. In truth, we hope that Rand Paul never does that. While we rarely agree with how the Paul Family interprets implementing libertarianism, we do like that their DNA is a constant thorn in the side of the establishment – a thorn that helps us keep the two dominate parties a bit more on their toes along the path.

And for that, Senator Paul from the great state of his father’s shadow, we salute you… but we ain’t gonna vote for you.

Rand Paul 2016: Stand With Rand. Save The Republican Party. appeared first on BlareShare.

The Republican Party has a tendency to throw its heroes under the bus (often without realizing it). It’s like the satirical tribe in a far off land who always throws its gods into the raging volcano. Theirs is the bus of lost hope. A volcano of  dreamed goals motivated by their own paranoid nightmares. When you’re stuck on an island – far, far away from the rest of civilization – you tend to lose a lot of political heroes to the volcano. Par for the course.

No one denies (Rush Limbaugh included) that the GOP is a total mess and in political disarray, but they continue the distinct managerial problem of throwing all the ideological eggs (unfertilized, of course) into the proverbial political basket. The basket this gestational cycle: Senator Marco Rubio.

Marco Rubio has a lot of issues. He is an issue. Issue politicians rarely last long.

I’m certain he’s an OK guy, but as is the truth with most people who go into the business of acquiring more power… the man seeks too much power too quickly, and doesn’t spend much time thinking about a smart and responsible to maintain it. Rubio is a politician born and managed entirely of and by opportunity. Marco Rubio is not the savior of the Republican Party. Marco Rubio will not find the golden goose that will suddenly make minorities in this country forget about the decades of racist policies enacted by the GOP. Senator Rubio is a face who, just as Karl and the Koch brothers seek, will sign anything that the leaders of the party put on his desk. He seeks power via the notoriety of being a Latino republican. He was carried into office by the Tea Party wave, and the wave of hope from a lost GOP will wash him out from whence he came.

Don’t get me wrong, Rubio won’t necessarily disappear next election cycle, but he will never be presidential material, and clearly isn’t the savior of the GOP as so many magazines have cover-storied him. Too many blind missteps, too many open questions, too many interviews in which he sounds good, but 10 minutes later we  realize the man didn’t say a damn thing! (It’s a nice talent, but not one that can make it on a national stage.)

Climb and climb and climb as he might, Marco Rubio is destined to be a party player, not a party leader. He’s not brave enough to chop down the beanstalk. All he’s programmed to do is climb to retrieve the prize… then bring it back down again to his metaphorical mother. Similar to Paul Ryan, really, who is a political party player more than an actual leader – but poor Congressman Ryan doesn’t even know it! Just as Paul Ryan repeats the talking points and puts them in every policy document he can find to prove his ultra-conservative stature, so too does Senator Rubio.

For the duration of his career.

Just look at his eyes. That’s the same look a young boy who has a boyhood crush on his third grade teacher gives her when she stands by his desk (arms folded, smells faintly of oranges), points to a problem, and tells him he got the answer wrong; then points to the correct answer with a comforting and encouraging look. Ultimately, the kid writes in the answer he’s told because he’s seeking approval from the teacher more so than from a desire to know the answer. Marco Rubio wants to please the teacher. He’ll always have that slight, puppy-dog-need-to-please-the-teacher look in the back of his eyes. Eyes like that are not the eyes of the savior of the Republican Party. (Nor are Rand Paul’s, by the way… but that requires a level of psychology that is currently well beyond my interpretive means.)

Senator from the great state of (what-the-hell-is-wrong-with) Florida… you’re a good man. You’re a good husband and father, and probably not bad to hang out with at a BBQ on a sunny day, but…

… and then you say, but what?…. But you’re not a national leader…. Sorry kid… you got some of the gift… but you ain’t Neo. The republicans had you programmed long before you even had a chance to become anything more than what they want you to be. When you won your seat in the Senate, you were already being carried half-way up the volcano. It’s not your fault… it’s just the republican way on that isolated island.

Can Marco Rubio Save the GOP? Rescuing the Republican Party. appeared first on BlareShare.

Here we go again…

To my esteemed political colleague somewhere in Georgia who took the time to sit and search on Google, “Democrats will ruin America” I highly recommend that you stop listening exclusively to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. This is important: right-wing media hosts aways shout THAT democrats will “destroy America,” but they never say HOW such a doomsday scenario will happen. On the rare occasion they do say how it will happen, their reasoning is so far away from reality it might as well be a SciFi show. Merely saying democrats will ruin America on radio, TV (or a blog post) doesn’t make it true – especially when it’s coming from someone who is being paid to maintain a large audience by keeping them angry at a common enemy.

Here’s a rule to survive American politics without going crazy from all the hypocrisy and hate mongering: if what’s being said is in any way part of some sort of conspiracy theory, don’t believe it.

99% of conspiracies are made-up paranoid ruses – they’re not true (both democrats and republicans). Believe only facts: charts, graphs, consensus data (not singular rouge scientists), numbers, and history. Believe facts. Don’t believe “apparent connections” they love so much that have no proof. If the person yelling that the world will end because of democrats is paid to be on a cable news channel: don’t believe what they say. Assume they are shaping, and even making up whatever “data” they’re spewing. Then you do the research on your own… a lot of research… to find the truth. That INCLUDES reading and learning from people with whom you disagree… they might be correct on some issues. That’s the only way to stay sane when thinking about politics.

It’s time to live in the world of facts… for all political parties. To the extreme right-wing in particular: it’s time to get out of the republican bubble. There is a big, bright, not-so-scary world out here and you are welcome to join the rest of us in it. This whole “doomsday” world and “all democrats” are evil isn’t real.

[ ... Side note: we had yet another example of this last week while president Obama was in Israel. While the major news networks were covering a ceremony in which the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, was presenting Obama with the Medal of Distinction (the highest honor a civilian can get from the Israeli government)... while that was happening... in the real world... Fox News was NOT covering it at all. Instead Fox was promoting a "special" show hosted by the famously intellectually challenged Sean Hannity... about how Obama will destroy Israel... and destroy America along with it, of course... and probably the moon while he's at it. Fox News runs commercials about Obama destroying Israel at the very moment Israel is presenting him with the Medal of Distinction. When you live in a bubble you eventually suffocate, and that's what's happening to the extreme right who believe that "democrats will destroy America." They believe that because they refuse to inform themselves otherwise; they would rather live outside of facts, rant that Obama will ruin the country, and be terrified change...]

Once again we’re stuck in Republicanland when it comes to a Favorite on BlareShare…. but it is a gift that just keeps on givin’

People who waste their time searching on the Internet for reasons why “democrats will ruin America” are not seeking unbiased, factually-based articles on the subject – they’re looking only for political rants that support their own biases: the republican bubble. They need to feel reassured; be told they are correct in their political hatred, and that it’s OK to hate and resist social change. These “end of America as we know it” searches tend happen because their political and social information bubbles have started to become thin, worn down… reality is starting to leak into their world… so they seek out the political opinions of the far right to reinforce the crazy, soapy, purification ooze that keeps their bubble in one piece.

Writing in response to people like that is an exercise in futility – but such is what BlareShare is about most days: preaching to the deaf and blind.

To the terrified masses in the republican bubble: No, democrats will not destroy America.

I know that for some twisted reason it makes you feel better about yourself to believe it, but it’s simply not true. If you do the research – real research – democrats are actually quite good for this country (rich and poor alike). In recent history whenever there’s a democrat in the White House the US deficit has gone DOWN, not up… it goes up when there is a Republican in the White House (look it up, it’s true). We had a budget surplus under President Clinton, and last time I checked he’s a fine democrat who most definitely didn’t ruin America. And yes, we still have a massive deficit now (thanks to all the wars and massive tax cuts), but it as gone down under Obama, not up.

You can chose to hate policies you do not understand. That’s your right. You can believe Michele Bachmann that Obamacare will kill women… heck, you can even be a down-right racist if you want too, because lord knows it IS a free country (no matter how much you want to invade women’s privacy and civil rights)… but if you keep adopting the demons of the far right radio and media outlets who exist for the sole purpose of selling products… you’re just making your life more difficult. People who actually believe democrats will ruin America, or Obama will bring the planet of the apes… you do not live in the same world as the rest of us. Yours is not not a better world, nor is it a righteous world… it’s a scared, spiteful, and petty world. It’s your choice, though. You can stay locked inside, or you can escape the paranoia… but if you want out, it all starts by accepting that change is the way of the universe. You cannot stop it.

Will democrats destroy America? The only way anything like that can happen will be because people like you end up taking action against the ghosts you’ve made democrats out to be. Political conflict doesn’t tend to happen because of actual people, it happens because of what others believe about those people, regardless of truth.

No… the apocalyptic America you feel is just around the corner will not be because of democrats… it will be because of what you believe about democrats. The information you’ve been fed and what you chose to eat; cooked up by Glenn Beck, Fox and Friends, and prepper bunker nightmares from uncomfortable cots and too much protein.

Democrats won’t kill America… people who love to hate democrats will kill America. Once again: you’re creating the monsters in your mind, and then fighting them with all you might… but you’re only fighting yourself –  nightmares and boogeymen under your bed created by your own imagination.

Favorite Search: Democrats Will Ruin America appeared first on BlareShare.

… believe it or not, that’s what we’re talking about when it comes to personhood laws like North Dakota and a smattering of other republican lead states: an embryo has the same human rights as a human being. Extreme republicans in North Dakota want to put a full stop on abortion, but they’re trying to do it in a way that opens a door to absurdities yet unseen. If you want to end abortion, fine, but do it in a way that doesn’t destroy other rights and kill personal liberty in this country.

The far right loves to talk about NOT having more laws because of the possibility of a snowball of bad implications – “it’s a slippery slope!” they shout about every bill that comes from the left side of the isle. But when it comes to abortion, they seem totally blind to the snowball, slippery slope consequences of what personhood laws – “life beings at conception” – would actually mean. You can’t just pass the law and deal with what the law actually means later on. Shoot first and aim later? (Staying true to Dick Cheney, I guess.)

As one Republican state legislator in North Dakota told the Huffington Post, North Dakota hasn’t even passed a primary seatbelt law, but we have the most invasive attack on womens health anywhere…” Bottom line: if you believe in freedom and liberty, you can’t support these kinds of personhood bills.

What does it mean for an embryo to have human rights? If the Tea Party flank balk and say, “Well, we didn’t mean embryos should have ALL human rights…” then where do we draw the line? Do we start saying some humans have fewer rights than others… because clearly that’s what they would be saying. Didn’t the United States go through “some humans have more rights than others” already? How is one person’s personal liberties more important than another’s? It’s not. That’s why personhood bills is the WRONG way to go about trying to stop abortion.

Those who shout the loudest about “Freedom” and “Liberty!” day in and day out… you really, really need to stop restricting the freedoms of those around you. The rest of us are getting tired of you forcing your twisted view of liberty onto the rest of us. If you truly believe in individual freedom, if you truly believe in personal liberties and unobtrusive government: then you’re pro choice on the abortion issue. Being pro choice is the freedom position and the small government position.

The truth is, these far right whack jobs have have no idea about the legal implications nor the hyper-hypocritical reality of the North Dakota personhood bill. They don’t care. These laws aren’t about practicality; they’re about proving one’s status as an ultra-conservative, and doing everything the can to keep America looking and acting like it did in the 1950s. They are terrified of change, and terrified of strong, independent women who might dare to do something that shows they have control over their own lives.

Human Rights of the Embryo Under Republican Extremism

I would like to know how we grant property rights to embryos. Do we have to run a credit check on them? Can they drink? If a mother miscarries, is that murder? How about this: if the pregnancy will end up killing the mother what in the world happens then? Abort and then mom goes to jail. Don’t abort and the mom dies, but then we have to charge the baby with murder because it, being fully recognized as a human with human rights as granted by society, also has obligations to society – like don’t kill people.

What happens when the mother crosses state lines? Does that mean that the embryo needs a visa to travel overseas? Does their citizenship occur at conception or birth? What if mom and dad got it on in Mexico and conceived little Billy in Mazatlan… does that mean by coming back into the United States they’re harboring an illegal immigrant?

We already know that personhood laws would make many forms of the pill (contraception) illegal. Beyond that, it would make many forms of the pill a deadly weapon. Take the pill in North Dakota and get life in prison. (But no worries, with all their oil money they can afford to build more prisons.)

Will there have to be some form of extradition? If the mother robs a bank, is the embryo an accomplice to the crime? What if the judge decides they should serve their prison sentence for said bank robbery in different prisons?

How about this human right, Republicans: Privacy. Get off my damn lawn. You aren’t welcome in my hoo haa.

Personally, I think it’s an excuse for North Dakota preppers and the far right extremist in the Republican Party to buy more guns. “Hey, what can I do?”, so says the happy new mother, “My embryo wants guns, too, and it has a right to bear arms just like I do.” Does that qualify as a straw purchase?

Thankfully, the measure in North Dakota has to be approved by voters. Even Mississippi voters shot down a personhood bill, so that gives hope that reason will prevail in North Dakota as well. Someone in this country has to have some common sense, and clearly it’s not our elected officials, so we can at least hope the real citizens might.

Drilled down, this is just another example of the Republican Party using politics to make statements, not govern. They want to make a point, not actually do anything. To the far right, anti-choice politicians: stop wasting our time. Go buy a bunker somewhere, hide yourself away, write a manifesto,  and let the rest of the country move forward onto better things.

North Dakota Personhood Bill: Babies Have the Right to Keep and Bear Arms appeared first on BlareShare.

Zombies do like their brains. So, too, will the political scientists and strategists of the next generation of national campaigns (because let’s face it, zombies are expensive and not many local campaigns can afford to hire them – the dental coverage alone is cost prohibitive).

Maybe zombies and political operatives have something in common…

The story about the difference between the brains of Democrats and Republicans surfaced a little while ago, but it remains a fascinating tool to help us understand why political fights and policies end they way that they do in Washington.

Darren Schreiber of the University of Exeter claims to be able to identify hints of difference in how the brain reacts based on one’s values among groups of people.

And of course, it all started with a game of poker (or at least some form of gambling that would place those studied into risk-taking situations so that the researchers could track how peoples’ brains reacted differently).

At its core, both republicans and democrats take risks, but it’s the manner in which we judge and gauge those risks (or, rather, with which parts of the brain), that appears to create the distinct divide between the brains of republicans and democrats.

Republicans tend to use the parts of their brains that are linked to reward, fear, and risky decisions.

Democrats, on the other hand, tend to use parts of their brains that are linked to emotion and body language.

It all makes sense, doesn’t it? Particularly on one matter that is well known in US politics: democrats empathize in their policymaking, while republicans strategize for more power.

Everywhere you look: cutting funding for programs, creation of new programs, which political lobby a politician protects, gerrymandering congressional districts, re-allocating how electoral votes are delegated in a presidential election…. democrats empathize and republicans strategize.

Moreover, it seems that republicans “are more squeamish” and liberals pay less attention to negative stimuli than republicans do (well… Harry Reid might not… that man seems whipped lately). That would explain why the gun lobby has so much power over the Republican Party, when over 90% of US citizens want universal background checks, and yet republicans refuse to vote for it. Democrats just look sad, say they care, then pull a Harry Reid.

From the Huffington Post article on the Brains of Republicans vs. Democrats:

“Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.

“insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with “theory of mind,” or the ability to understand what others might be thinking.”

It’s not necessarily about what our decisions actually are, it’s about how we make decisions. Do we process decisions in areas of our brain that focus on fear, anger, and risk management, or do we do it in a way that uses emotion, empathy and intuition?

Once we come to grips with how we make decisions, then we can better predict how best to manipulate the questions we ask to get the answers we want. Welcome to the new world of political messaging. Messages shaped specifically to exploit how we make decisions, not just what we may or may not believe. Tricky stuff.

… But now I have to figure out how this means the zombification of political strategy. Truth be known, I just saw brains and thought zombies would make for an interesting image, but now I’m stuck having to tie it in somehow…

While zombies like to consume brains (they have the same “bliss point” that snack food does, apparently), they also don’t operate with one when it comes to making decisions (if they even make decisions – admittedly I’m not a student of zombie culture so I’m flying blind here). The decision to groan, dribble down one’s chin, and stutter-step walk in any direction has nothing to do with a decision made by a zombie… it’s just what is. It’s what they do. It’s how zombies work. Sort of like the political brain. Once political scientists whittle this one down, the final decision of the voter might not even matter anymore. The catalyst for the decision to vote (in whatever form the politicos make it) is pre-determined by the manner in which the brain functions. How it decides, not what it wants to decide. Voters won’t vote one way or another because they decided to, they’ll vote because it’s simple like a zombie: it’s just how they work. Messy, gruesome, and singular.

Republican vs Democrat Brain: The Zombifaction of Political Strategy. appeared first on BlareShare.