Granted that there are plenty of political groups trying to game the system – on both sides. The IRS shouldn’t be targeting one side or the other. And yes, they adjusted their flagging after it was initially caught, but that doesn’t make it a good practice by any means.

All that said, this was not something that somehow allowed President Obama to somehow alter the election outcome in Ohio, or anywhere else. The fact is that he was always ahead there by all measures other than pollers like Rasmussen, who was desperately trying to prop up the failing Romney campaign.

The right wing seems to want people to believe that these fringe tea party groups could have somehow mobilized a million voters in Ohio – except this forgets that there was already a deafening cacophony of political ads flooding Ohio for the whole year before the election. Ohio was one of the most heavily lobbied states in the country, if not THE most heavily lobbied one. Romney spent plenty of money there, as did many, many Tea Party groups and other conservative PACs. It made no difference. Obama had a better ground game there and in the end, that was what made the difference.

Notice that none of these people is bringing up the real reasons that several million hardcore GOP didn’t vote for Romney. Romney got the predictable votes of many GOP members who hated Obama on sight, and he got the predictable votes of moderate GOP members who didn’t swing all the way over to the hard right. But he never sold the serious right wingers. They never believed his statements of being a severe conservative and they couldn’t deal with his religion. Past that, Romney badly hurt himself by constantly swinging to the far right and thus alienating some of the moderates as well. And past even that, Romney never appealed to crossover Democrats in any significant manner. But the big wound for Romney was that so many of the “true believers” just wouldn’t vote for him. Which is why you heard all those cries that the GOP voters wanted a “real conservative” rather than Romney. Translation: Romney didn’t appeal to enough people to win – so he lost. End of election, and end of the political trajectory for Mitt Romney, a man who had been groomed since grade school to run for higher office. His epitaph will show that he rose as far as being a Governor, but that he abandoned his duties in search of an even better office he could never achieve.

It’s interesting that the right wing wants to play these items up as much as possible, when they were desperately tamping down much more serious material during the Bush Administration. Further, when people brought up the very real criminality of the George W. Bush presidency, Fox News was on the front lines calling those people treasonous and every other name in the book. Am I the only one who remembers the right wing wagging their fingers and saying “You must not criticize the President during a time of war!” or saying “You don’t support the troops if you criticize our policies!” or best yet, “Americans need to watch what they do, watch what they say!” Of course, now that we have a Democrat president, and one who is not someone these pundits like, all those rules suddenly don’t apply anymore. Now the President is fair game because the right wing “just has some questions”. Right, just a few leading questions that are clearly intended to continue a pattern of disruption, obstruction and harassment that’s been going on since Obama began his 2008 campaign.

Let’s look at these three “huge scandals” and see if there’s any “there there”, as Obama put it this week. There’s Benghazi, which is a situation where our consulate was attacked and where the right wing wants to try to blame Obama for it somehow. So they’re disputing the military assessments (which is a new wrinkle for the right wing – previously they’ve always hid behind the military officers) and they’ve decided on their own that somehow a military force could have magically appeared in this area of Libya at a moment when the entire region was engulfed by rioting over the “Innocence of Muslims” video. As a fallback for that, they want to carp about what “talking points” were given to Susan Rice before she discussed the matter on Sunday talk shows. Which assumes that the right wing wasn’t already disputing anything Rice or Obama said at the time. The “talking points” discussion is flat out ridiculous – if this was a huge cover-up, then why is it that everyone was able to discuss every aspect of the matter openly for the two months up to the election? The answer is that it’s a ruse. Romney and the GOP tried this tack last fall, and it resulted in two humiliating debate defeats for Romney. But for some reason, these guys want to pull the zombie back up off the mat, dust it off, and try it out again.

The IRS matter is one where local guys in Ohio clearly got irritated at the pile of “Tea Party” groups trying to game the system to cheer lead for Romney on the public dime. But the reality is that if they followed the law, those groups do have the right to do this. So the supervisor who caught their behavior made them change the guidelines to include other political groups. And that’s pretty much the story. The “Tea Party” wants to continue to cry foul over this, but there really isn’t any more to discuss. The notion that President Obama was discussing a Cincinnati IRS flagging guideline, much less orchestrating it, is laughable on its face. The fact is that some IRS guys acted inappropriately and were disciplined. And now the Acting Director has resigned as well, showing that there are consequences for this stuff. If that’s a scandal that’s going to bring down an Administration, I’d like to know where it is.

Finally, there’s the AP matter. In this case, you have a serious security leak regarding a terrorism investigation. And yes, it’s pretty scary to have the DOJ getting access to the home phone records of reporters involved in the story. I would absolutely agree that this is one of those things that should cross party lines in terms of people being concerned about it. BUT, and here’s the kicker, this was actually legal. Because the Patriot Act championed by the right wing specifically allows for this kind of surveillance. And the Patriot Act was opposed by the left specifically for things like that. The left said consistently that the Patriot Act was an overreach that could do terrible things to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and all through that time, Fox News shouted the left down and said this was necessary to protect the USA and “either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.” Had such a case come up during the George W. Bush Admin, you would have heard Fox News trumpeting that this was totally necessary and that the reporters shouldn’t be worried if they have nothing to hide. Since this is happening on Obama’s watch, Fox News wants to pretend that they’re now concerned about people’s free speech rights. Once again, is this a serious “scandal” that will bring down a presidency? No. It’s the DOJ conducting an investigation and ticking off a bunch of people, including reporters – but it’s legal conduct whether we like it or not until we do the right thing and repeal the Patriot Act. I would ask the pundits of Fox News if they are now prepared to support such a repeal, and if they have their apology ready for those of us on the left who have asked for this for over a decade. This doesn’t have to be a big deal for Fox News. Just a humble little one, like “We at Fox News are very, very sorry that we supported the Patriot Act. We were wrong to do so and we acknowledge our error. We at Fox News are very, very sorry that we doubted the integrity and good intentions of the people of the USA and we promise not to do it anymore.” Something tells me this apology may not be coming soon.

In the end, will any of these “huge scandals” resonate with history? Will anyone outside of Fox News pundits be bringing this up in a year? Even James Rosen at Fox doesn’t think so. The reality is that none of this will matter in 2016. Fox News will continue to wave Benghazi around for a while, until they find a new “smoking gun” in some other matter to point at. It’s funny that the Fox News pundits accuse the American people of being distracted by “shiny objects”. (And this was clearly another one of those notorious “daily memos”, since the meme was echoed all over the channel) The fact is that Fox News is dedicated to presenting “shiny objects” to its viewers every day – objects that always seem to play to their lowest instincts and their angriest prejudices.

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Hey Walking Dead writers: Next season do your fucking job and WRITE CONTENT for the fucking story. It like this season was made with 10 sticky notes and a 3rd grade storyboard. Come on you lazy fuckers. We get it, the show is so popular you could air 50 minutes of dead air and people would still tune in for the 10 minutes of story you tell. Try writing 60 minutes of story for EACH episode, not 7 minutes of good show per episode.

Hopefully Showtime or HBO will create new zombie series soon and show you A&E fucks what a zombie show should be.

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The thing is this is the norm for the GOP of the past few years, rounding up gays, outlawing abortion, forcing Christian dogma on everyone and then call it protecting freedoms and family.  They blatantly ignore separation of church and state, science, logic and reason and of course the main point of American Independence in the first place!  It is an absolute disgrace, as religion in general is a very personal thing that has no place in politics, which again is why we broke away from the British Monarchs to begin with.  Why must the GOP continue to force their personal perceived morality on us constituents?  They act like its impossible to lead without imposing the strict confines of their piety.  Perhaps Fox News should run a segment on existentialism so that these idiots can possibly think about different viewpoints that exist and not automatically decrying that theirs is the one and only true way to live and govern.

If these nut jobs want to have this crazy point of view, that’s fine.  It’s something they can do privately as people most should with their personal spirituality, but they don’t.  They use at every turn in affecting their political views, rather than leaving it at home and just basing political decisions on facts, science, reasonable logical decision making, and of course the interest of their constituents.

Oh well – Crazy sells!  However I still don’t see how anyone could proudly identify themselves as crazy, but whether or not they know it, anyone who proudly claims to be a Republican is doing just that.

PS – GOP Nut job Michelle Bachmann is in a tight race.  HERE  This proves that like half of the people in her voting area are placidly admitting that they are crazy idiots.  How did this country fall so far in this short amount of time?  :-(

I leave you with these words from a poster over on CNN.com:
“Bachmann is a great example of ignorance, and the Republican Party (including Romney and Ryan) has become a RightWing Extremist Radical party that celebrates IGNORANCE: Deny evolution, climate change, science, reject stem cell research, contraception, Akin’s legitimate rape comments, Murdock’s pregnancy rape comments, etc.: Akin and Broun on the Science Committee, Bachmann on the Intelligence committee, electing McDonald, Cantor, Palin, West, Fox, King, Brewer, Paul, Huckabee, Santorum, Tea Party, Birthers, etc. rejecting facts, and Romney and Ryan are in lockstep agreement and included with these dangerously uneducated people – they are like a disease crippling America. No wonder the U.S. is falling behind and moving towards the level of many 3rd world countries in education . . . . .The GOP is primarily about ‘Greed, Bigotry, and Ignorance’. They are for the top wealthy 1% to the DETRIMENT of the 99% of Americans, and the party is RAMPANT with Bigotry (Racism, Anti-Women, Anti-Gay, Anti-Students, Anti-Senior, etc.). The Republican Party is a haven for, and rampant with, Bigots (racists, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-senior, etc.), and they show this with their actions and policies. Many Republicans would foolishly vote against their own and their families interests, see the U.S. destroyed – cut off their arms, vote with the 1% wealthy who are pushing them from middle class to poor, etc. – as long as their vote and actions reflects that they are clinging to their ignorance, bigotry, and hate . . . . . their sick pathetic definition of being a Patriot and proud American . . . . I am a Christian, but these religious nuts (Bachmann, Romney, Ryan, etc) of ALL faiths (Mormon, Christian, Muslim, etc.) who does not respect religious freedom and Separation Of Church and State should NEVER be elected to public office.  Their policies are draconian, and dangerous, they are destroying America right before our very eyes, and the people who vote for these miscreants are to blame for allowing this to happen and voting against their own interests – Sad and Pathetic.”

Sad and Pathetic indeed my friend.

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This is a quote from CNN.com comment section by user Dragonfire77.  It is a simplification of my overall liberal ideology.  I am a man of science.  I love science, especially how constant it is.  You can use knowledge gained from past experiments regardless of the result to build a library of all scientific knowledge.  You can then pick any topic and run a particular experiment to illustrate the point of fact, and you can run it over a million times with the same result.  The opposite is true with politics and pretty much any discussion involving politics.  As an IT engineer I see science at work everyday, and as a long time employee of many large corporations, I have seen many systems implemented in many ways that effect the common user and as such, I have drawn parallels between the IT policies governing a corporation and the politics we face as a nation in ‘real life’.

The results are clear – ultimate freedom in an IT environment is a disaster.  Control mechanisms and policies must be put in place and enforced in order for the long term sustainability of the environment.  I feel the same is needed in real life politics for practical success.   This means it is imperative that the controls and policies put in place must be well thought out, but subject to change.  This is what my conservative friends don’t understand about my viewpoint.  They simply lump me in with other mainstream Democrat theologies as a socialist.  Someone who seems to run counter to just about every view point they care to analyse.  That could not be further from the truth.  I am not a Democrat, as I always have been unaffiliated (No Party Affiliation) since the day I registered to vote  roughly 18 years ago.  Over those 18 years, sometimes my point of view was aligned closer to the Republican stance and more often aligned with the Liberal stance of the Democrats.

With all that said I’m sure the few people that read this blog are asking “what the hell does this have to do with political ideology?”  My point is that these enormous accomplishments of science we read about could not have occurred if the programs were run like the GOP does things.  First, you need a clearly defined goal before beginning and for the benefit of the experiment you cannot stray from that goal.  Next you team a team of people to come up with the logistics of how to actualize the results needed in real life to meet the original goal.  Then you need meticulous planning and follow through from managers all the way down to the technician who tightens the screws on the experiment.  Now it took a lot of people working together to make the experiment happen and I am sure they don’t all share the same political/ideological view on things, but for the benefit of the project they tolerate the differences and work together to see the outcome.

That is what I feel the government should be like.  If all government activity was planned and carried out like the Mars Lander Project then our country would be much better off.  However the right wont budge on controls, as they feel that limits their freedom and politically would be an attack on their liberty.  I personally feel that is a hypocritical argument as they seem to fine with some controls, if we suggest changing anything, someone cries foul.  That inflexibility is the exact reason I dislike religion, as all dogma’s essentially ask you for faith that their doctrine is the correct one and one should not use true logic to try to decipher it.

Science does not have that inherent inflexibility as we can use the data gained even in past failures to attempt to achieve the highest chance of success.  I feel that the fragmented power entities that exists within our Democracy essentially prevent that high level percentage for success.   Those entities include  massive amount of agencies who all think they should have the power to mandate controls of the power.  This would include all the state governments and their agencies as well as competing federal agencies.  It also include entities that exert power either on the rule makers or the population, these would include organized religions, political lobbing groups, and action committee’s.

So what does this all mean?  Again it comes down to interpretation.  I interpret these collections of correlations between the IT and corporate worlds with the real life political one as instantly putting me as odds with most persons in both parties.  Doh!   I guess by definition I am an extremist, however I feel that my ‘normal’ would provide a higher functioning society with a much happier population.

Forget political parties, the time has come for us to use the power of the human mind to overcome silly limitations like religion, partisanship and that means we have to come to terms with the current world we live in, and use logic to progress society.  That will never happen, because people are to ingrained with limitations such as religous affiliation, political affiliation, racial affiliation, sexual affiliation, etc.

I wish we could hit a master reset switch and all start clean, neutral then use science and logic to formulate a new way of proper governing.  However since the world refuses to accept logic over religion and outdated political and governing theories, I must be satisfied with being on the left (I guess I am Liberal!) and bash the ridiculousness of religion.

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Your last two posts have made crystal clear the fact that you cannot be reasoned with.  Nearly all of you points can be easily ripped apart, but now I see it is a waste of my time.  For about a decade I have hoped to help you understand that Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, etc. has failed everywhere it has been tried, throughout human history.  Just look at many of our crumbling cities today, ruined by decades of Liberal control.  Also see California, the Soviet Union, Europe… the list goes on and on.

I have used logic and reason, which you have ignored.  It’s as if you completely ignore all of the evidence of what a disaster the Democrat party has become; instead latching on to the smallest, most trivial attacks against Republicans that are launched by Dems, and propelled through the major media.  I really believe you have a BLIND hatred of Repubs, due to an ingrained hatred of religion, which you have been brainwashed to associate with the GOP.  Sure there are a few zealots, but they have no power, and most of us don’t give a shit.  We just want you big government people to get the fuck out of our lives and our business.

Don’t bother to respond to me.  I am gone from this site.

Let me know if anything ever changes in your ideology.  If not, please don’t bring anything political up again.

We are still homeys.

There is always.

Dr. Gushy

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What a moron.  The Bane character was created in 1993 and both of the creators of the character (Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan) are hard core conservatives.

Here some of what Rush said: “The movie has been in the works for a long time, the release date’s been known, summer 2012 for a long time. Do you think that it is accidental, that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?”

The story: http://www.theindychannel.com/entertainment/31283935/detail.html

Here is the story where Dixon defends himself and explains: http://gawker.com/5927095/bane-creator-chuck-dixon-limbaughs-batman-conspiracy-theory-ridiculous–im-a-staunch-conservative?comment=51086827

So even though he is wrong, I assume he will never retract, apologize or otherwise even address the issue again other than to continue to fuel what is obviously a false fire.

So how is his false, incorrect but steady indoctrination of his mindless followers any better than his supposed original point?

Why does the right continue to press the nation into political strife by polarizing its citizens?  No matter the facts or the situation is, they always seem to push the notion that is it us against them, everybody pick a side and if your are not on the right side then you are an idiot.

There are no winners in this archaic two party system.  Why not work on election reform, and be able to present 3 or 4 truly independent  candidates and let the people judge the best without the back and forth and pandering of party affiliation?

Probably because they are too busy working on how to figure out how to prove Obama’s birth certificate is fake.

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“Recently, we learned two important things about Mitt Romney.
First, he would rather see the American economy fail than President Barack Obama win.
Second, the extent of his hypocrisy is amazing. While he laments the toll that outsourcing has taken on our workers and economy, he amassed a fortune by investing in companies that outsourced American jobs.”

The first few lines are eye grabbing, however it is even crazier when you analyze the points provided.

Romney’s amazing hypocrisy

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(See: http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/opinion/stepp-conservatives-contraception/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7   or  http://www.asanet.org/press/conservatives_trust_has_fallen.cfm)

The point that I am trying to make is that we should use factual knowledge and logical decision making in approaching each political issue.  Example: We know that drinking alcohol impairs our ability to perform basic physical and mental tasks, thus driving a vehicle or operating dangerous machinery while impaired should be avoided.  No one can dispute that fact, as basic biological science explains why this impairment occurs.

However when it comes to religion in general, all the earth is just making a best guess at the existence of God and all dogma’s that are associated  with them.  We don’t know for certain, that is true fact, much of anything other than some characters mentioned in historical religious texts actually did exist.  We don’t know which religion is the correct one if any at all.  So why are we basing our opinions on critical social issues on what we think a deity or their half human offspring might want us to do!

To think that just this month North Carolina voters went out in force and voted to add a ban of homosexual marriage to our states constitution even though it was already against the law, just boggles my mind.  When I asked a few of the people voting for the amendment, all the answers I got were like: because the bible says its wrong or God doesn’t condone it so it must be wrong and thus it needs to be double banned! Wow all this is just based on a guess that the bible is the true word of God.  Just a thought, what if it’s not?  I would imagine most folks who voted for it are nice people in general and capable of feeling remorse and the like.  So if they made the wrong guess, then all of them actively have taken freedom away from so many.  Do they feel bad?  Of course not because they KNOW what God wants!  Give me a break.  I do know they surely would be pissed off and feel scorned if the roles were reversed and heterosexual marriage was banned.

To add even more complexity to this issue, lets not forget that churches and the pastors and other staffers are paid from the donations of the congregation, and that the churches and all there money is tax exempt.  Well the founding fathers also put something else into our constitution, it is called separation of Church and State.  Since the two entities are supposed to be completely separate, the religious masses are not supposed to use their preaching from the pulpit to direct or influence voters.   However that is exactly what is going on today, so since these swindlers pastors and their churches are greatly effecting the very functioning of true democracy I say we should remove the tax exempt status from them all, we all know the economy could use the money!

It is due to this blind ignorance that bigotry is allowed to grow and flourish even within our youth which are general more intelligent that the previous generation.  I hate seeing stuff like this:

http://gawker.com/5912100/north-carolina-pastor-offers-final-solution-to-homosexual-problem-electrified-concentration-camps

In summary religion and homosexuality have something in common, they both are fine as long as you keep it to yourself.  What you do at home sexually or what you believe in religiously, no matter how crazy it may seem to some, should have NO place in politics.

I know there is no chance NC will be a Blue State again this election year, but I hope that we can eventually remove this non-empirical approach to formulating opinions on social issues and in turn you would think it would improve the divide that currently exists in the county due to religious and political parity.

Tolerance and Peace are the tenants to be teaching to our youth, not religious fighting and political strife. Everyone on this earth has the right to equality.  We are all equal, regardless of our beliefs, preferences, wealth, etc.

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