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The Insane Rationalizations, Bigotry And Hypocrisy Of The Right


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I think that the worst thing a conservative can do is to not practice what he (or she) preaches. That goes for politicians, clergy etc. It hurts everybody so bad when it is discovered and paints even those that had nothing to do with it with the same broad-brush stroke of hypocrisy.

 

I could mention some names, if I had to sit here and try and list them all, it would take a week or so. Of the hypocritical clergy it’s Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and people of that ilk. Then there are those politicians that paint themselves up to be role models while cheating on their income taxes or cheating on their spouses.

 

If you set yourself up to be a spokesperson for all that is right, good etc., then you had better be that way all of the time – because people will eventually find out your other side that makes a mockery of you, all you have done and everything associated with you forever.

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Well, there's this;

 

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/07/28/yes-the-rnc-really-did-support-federal-oversight-of-state-elections/

 

Difficult to explain to a furriner, hard enough to explain to an American, but the selective oversight of state and local election organizations by the federal gov't originates from racial issues way back when. As seems to be typical for the feds, they insist on continuing rather domineering behavior, even though the world and the affected locales have changed dramatically. Think of it as being similar to the FAA maintaining a large and overly powerful zeppelin regulating agency.

 

And keep in mind that the affected locales are generally not areas where there has been persistent election fraud or vote tampering (of which the Federal Election Commission has proven to be blind, when the perpetrators are of the Democratic ilk).

 

Understandably, those locales affected would like to get the federal boot off their necks, and are suing to do so.

 

For what I assume is simply short-term political gain*, the RNC has been supporting the federal case to maintain the neck-boot, the fact of which the RNC chair claimed to be ignorant. So it appears that the RNC is calling off its dogs, rather late in the game. As you can imagine, this is another example of the RNC throwing party ethics out the window in hopes of gaining or retaining a few House seats.

 

* AIUI, the perceived gain is that pro-R gerrymandered districts are being protected from revision by the feds. As we've seen over the last 20 years, gerrymandering is a fleetingly temporary solution to a persistent problem.

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One thing that always peeves me a little is referring to an otherwise military/law enforcement AR15 as a "Modern Sporting Rifle" as if that is entirely benign compared to an evil "assault" rifle. In most situations, you would probably kill more people with the rifle set to semi even if it was selective fire. I feel trying to paint semiauto military rifles as benign actually undermines the 2nd Amendment argument underwhich selective-fire rifles are actually more relevant than semis.

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I found this recent interview on Fox News pretty striking...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt1cOnNrY5s

That's pretty typical for American journalism, especially so on TV. Most authors complain that the interviewer hasn't read the book, and a lot of times they haven't even had an intern read the book, just the reviews.

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One thing that always peeves me a little is referring to an otherwise military/law enforcement AR15 as a "Modern Sporting Rifle" as if that is entirely benign compared to an evil "assault" rifle. In most situations, you would probably kill more people with the rifle set to semi even if it was selective fire. I feel trying to paint semiauto military rifles as benign actually undermines the 2nd Amendment argument underwhich selective-fire rifles are actually more relevant than semis.

The simple fact is that the populace has, for the last 90 years, been mis-educated about the 2nd amendment. Somehow the underlying foundation of it has been watered down to it being about the need to hunt four legged game when nothing could be further from the truth. So, if the Left wants to ignore the real reason for the 2nd amendment and chooses to accept a false premise, why should the Right attempt to disabuse the Left of its position when all that will do is undermine what it considers the constitutionally protected position? Use subterfuge to protect liberty, use subterfuge to deny liberty. Decisions decisions.

Edited by DKTanker
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One thing that always peeves me a little is referring to an otherwise military/law enforcement AR15 as a "Modern Sporting Rifle" as if that is entirely benign compared to an evil "assault" rifle. In most situations, you would probably kill more people with the rifle set to semi even if it was selective fire. I feel trying to paint semiauto military rifles as benign actually undermines the 2nd Amendment argument underwhich selective-fire rifles are actually more relevant than semis.

 

Maybe it's a matter of perspective, but I tend to find the opposite. There's such a negative connotation for "assault rifle" (or "assault weapon") that redefining the term as applicable only to selective-fire weapons draws a nice contrast AND helps point out that for many "assault rifles" there are similar (if not more powerful/deadly) equivalents that look less threatening/more tolerable from an aesthetic perspective.

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For me, at least (I'd describe myself as a middle of the road guy politically who thinks that both parties as a whole are evil, but don't mind certain candidates) it's about Republicans abandoning small-c-conservative beliefs. Subsidies are evil unless they involve farmers (who aren't John Mellencamp types, they're giant conglomerates), government spending is evil unless it involves military spending (which is so horrifying inefficient it would put Detroits government to shame, but it's for the troops!) etc.

 

That and the total failure to recognize that most twenty-something's have no problem at all with gay dudes or immigrants is gonna doom the republicans. Which is a shame, because there's a lot of republican virtues I really like - small government, doubt about social engineering, etc.

 

The other problem that I have about Republicans is Iraq. Yeah, Saddam was a horrible person. No, he didn't pose any threat to us.

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For me, at least (I'd describe myself as a middle of the road guy politically who thinks that both parties as a whole are evil, but don't mind certain candidates) it's about Republicans abandoning small-c-conservative beliefs. Subsidies are evil unless they involve farmers (who aren't John Mellencamp types, they're giant conglomerates), government spending is evil unless it involves military spending (which is so horrifying inefficient it would put Detroits government to shame, but it's for the troops!) etc.

 

 

The GOP does not subscribe to small c-conservatism. There are those of the GOP that do, but the party does not.

 

That 20 something males now look at pssy as being equally vaginal or anal, female or male, shouts volumes about the emasculation of our society. It wasn't me personally, but I'm not proud that my generation, and the one that proceeded it, decided that the male half of the species is inferior and should be derided as such.

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The GOP does not subscribe to small c-conservatism. There are those of the GOP that do, but the party does not.

That is the problem in a nutshell. The RP has two cores, the voter core and the party core, and the Venn diagram shows just a sliver of overlap.

 

The party core is all about winning elections and power brokerage, to hell with principles and responsibility. The voter core still clings bitterly to archaic concepts like personal responsibility, limited government, rule of law, etc. The recent vote on the Amash amendment, and the internal party discipline apparently exercised by senior Rs in the House, demonstrates once again that when push comes to shove, the RNC machine's central belief is that being D-Lite is the path to success.

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I'm wondering about the definition of "modern" conservativism though; most of what's listed there was introduced in Germany by Bismarck, and the only way to call him a "modern" conservative would be to contrast him with Richelieu ... but then his conservatism was contemporary with classical liberalism.

 

Would also define "limited healthcare" as a basic safety net for everybody, with extras paid individually or by private insurance.

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I put Emergency Services together where it says "Fire Protection": e.g. Fire/EMS/ER, but that really is a modern invetion (last 50 years or so it has become widespread and a mandatory civic service).

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Except we have plenty of emergency/fire services agencies that are largely volunteer and those work just fine in the lower population areas where people are generally more capable of fending for themselves.

Banshee, be careful comparing US vs European Conservatives/Liberals. They don't necessarily map. A US Classical liberal is Thomas Jefferson.

The other thing that map doesn't really properly explain is Federal vs State roles in the same items. This is where most Modern Conservatives fail, utterly.

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Except we have plenty of emergency/fire services agencies that are largely volunteer and those work just fine in the lower population areas where people are generally more capable of fending for themselves.

 

Banshee, be careful comparing US vs European Conservatives/Liberals. They don't necessarily map. A US Classical liberal is Thomas Jefferson.

 

The other thing that map doesn't really properly explain is Federal vs State roles in the same items. This is where most Modern Conservatives fail, utterly.

 

I know of NO Fire/Rescue agency that is 100% volunteer funded. They ALL draw substantial funding from local/state gov't. The membership (payroll equiv.) may be volunteer, and they do indeed get donated funds, but they ALL draw *something* from the gov't. (have you ever looked at the cost of an equipped Fire Truck or Ambulance?)

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Except we have plenty of emergency/fire services agencies that are largely volunteer and those work just fine in the lower population areas where people are generally more capable of fending for themselves.

 

Banshee, be careful comparing US vs European Conservatives/Liberals. They don't necessarily map. A US Classical liberal is Thomas Jefferson.

 

The other thing that map doesn't really properly explain is Federal vs State roles in the same items. This is where most Modern Conservatives fail, utterly.

 

I know of NO Fire/Rescue agency that is 100% volunteer funded. They ALL draw substantial funding from local/state gov't. The membership (payroll equiv.) may be volunteer, and they do indeed get donated funds, but they ALL draw *something* from the gov't. (have you ever looked at the cost of an equipped Fire Truck or Ambulance?)

 

True, but it's not a full time agency and it's far more like a component of Militia service with pooling of local resources than a big government operation. Admittedly that is a matter of degrees. What's the difference between a bunch of guys who buy their own arms and stand to defend the locality, pooling resource to form an artillery company to go march to war for the country or pooling resources locally to build a covered bridge or pay for a bell for the town church?

 

Couple of my Friends from Dragon Con who work the EMS side of things have their own Suburban that's kitted out for EMS work. They're Chief and Assistant Chief of the Oconee County SC Volunteer FD. I suspect their 'burban is almost entirely paid for themselves and they show up to Dragon Con with a lot of their own gear to help con goers who have too much party or folks who get hurt.

 

Ultimately it's a matter of degrees between complete volunteer and everything handled by the Feds.

 

The real problem is when the view creeps in that it can ONLY be handled by the Feds and that it's their job and only their job. The same can be said for state roles too. This is used as a bludgeon to say that we MUST have all powerful government (and associated tax cost and spending waste) to have these things at all.

 

Legally speaking it's very easy to argue that MOST of those safety net issues need to be handled at the state and local level AND have no business being touched by the Federal Government.

Edited by rmgill
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1. Ann Coulter. I can not, for the life of me, figure out her appeal.

2. Michael Savage. Batshit insane.

3. Todd Akin. See #2.

4. Joe Barton. BP Apology was so bad even fellow GOPers had to tell him to STFU.

 

- John

Edited by Kensuke
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  • 4 weeks later...

Those G-D Republicans, just who do they think they are? Helping poor folks, the very idea.....

 

Doctor Rand: Senator Paul performs pro bono eye surgery.
National Review ^ | 08/26/2013 | Katrina Trinko

Posted on Monday, August 26, 2013 08:04:05 by SeekAndFind

‘Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Those are Cynthia Burke’s first words after Senator Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist, completes her eye surgery, removing the cataract in her right eye. Lying down in the operation room, Burke, a 55-year-old woman from the Ozarks town of Fredericktown, Mo., looks up. Standing above her are Paul and another ophthalmologist, Barbara Bowers, both dressed in blue scrubs.

Because of her cataracts, Burke hadn’t been able to perceive much color, and couldn’t see at all in her right eye when there wasn’t natural light. But now, with the surgery just completed, Burke’s sight is already hugely improved. “You have on blue clothes,” Burke marvels.

 

Paul, who just moments ago was bent over Burke, looking through a microscope at her eye as he methodically and precisely moved needles and tools to remove the cataract, laughs happily. “You’re seeing colors again,” he warmly observes.

“Now you’ll recognize him on TV,” Bowers jokes to Burke about Paul.

“Oh my God,” Burke repeats. “It’s awesome. Oh my goodness.”

 

Burke is one of four patients that Paul performs pro bono eye surgery on today. In recent years, Paul has done between 10 and 15 eye surgeries a year for free. “I’ve always done some since I’ve been in practice,” he recounts. In 1995, Paul founded the Southern Kentucky Lions Eye Clinic, which provided free eye care for low-income people, “because I wanted to be able to give back to the community.” He did free operations for locals and also for children who had come all the way from Guatemala.

 

Paul estimates he has done over a hundred pro bono surgeries over the years. In the health-care debate, he remarks, it was overlooked how many doctors already perform free surgeries for those in need. Performing surgery pro bono, Paul insists, “is not unusual for physicians.”

Burke, a health-care worker who helps elderly men and women with home care, says she heard about the pro bono cataract surgeries from a friend. For about five years, she had suffered from cataracts. “Here’s the thing: When the sun goes down, or if the sun’s not up yet, this girl can’t drive. I have no vision at all in my right eye,” Burke told me before the surgery. She was tired of all the limitations the cataracts imposed on her: “I’m only 55 years old, come on, it’s not time to give up on this life.”

 

Today, she is all smiles. “I’ve been so excited I can’t hardly wait,” says Burke, who has a blonde-brown bob hairstyle and wears a plaid shirt. She jokes that she should ask Paul to inscribe a small tattoo under her eyelid that shows he did her surgery so people will know she’s telling the truth. “Nobody else will ever believe that Rand Paul, the senator of Kentucky, did my cataract surgery,” Burke predicts. “The girls at work are going to say ‘No, no, no,’ and I’m going to say ‘Oh, yes.’”

 

In a nearby room at Bowers’s clinic waits Judy Prince, who will also be having cataract-removal surgery today. “I’m totally blind in my left eye,” says Prince, a 61-year-old woman with short, gray hair and a calm demeanor. Prince, who lives in Bardwell, Ky., and who voted for Paul in 2010, notes that her vision regularly makes her feel disoriented: “I feel like I’m walking sideways,” she remarks.

Five weeks ago, Prince had broken her arm because of a sight-related accident. “I was outside and a car came around the corner, and the light shone in my right eye, and so that made me totally blind,” Prince recalls.

“I fell and I dislocated my elbow and I broke my arm because I thought I was going to reach out — I knew I was going to fall,” she explains, “and I thought I was close enough to our truck, I was going reach out — [but] I wasn’t anywhere near close to our truck. So I fell right on my arm, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t get up.”

 

A few months prior, Prince had stopped driving, concerned about the safety risk of relying solely on one eye. Told by her optometrist she needed to see an ophthalmologist to take care of her cataracts, Prince opted to consult Bowers, who was also her mother’s ophthalmologist. Prince planned to ask about a monthly payment plan to finance the surgery.

“I would have to pay for it out of my pocket, because I don’t have any health insurance,” Prince explains. Her husband, who is nine years older, is on Medicare, but Prince is too young to qualify and can’t afford the $690 a month she says health insurance would cost her. She was thrilled when Bowers told her that she and Paul did pro bono surgeries. “Finding out that he would do it for nothing is like he just gave me $2,800,” Prince says.

Paul doesn’t mention Prince by name the next day when he gives a speech and does a Q&A with medical students at the University of Louisville. But she might well have been on his mind when he was asked whether health care is a commodity or not.

 

 

“There’s a philosophic debate which often gets me in trouble, you know, on whether health care’s a right or not,” Paul, in a red tie, white button-down shirt, and khakis, tells the students from the stage. “I think we as physicians have an obligation. As Christians, we have an obligation. . . . I really believe that, and it’s a deep-held belief,” he says of helping others.

“But I don’t think you have a right to my labor,” he continues. “You don’t have a right to anyone else’s labor. Food’s pretty important, do you have a right to the labor of the farmer?”

Paul then asks, rhetorically, if students have a right to food and water. “As humans, yeah, we do have an obligation to give people water, to give people food, to give people health care,” Paul muses. “But it’s not a right because once you conscript people and say, ‘Oh, it’s a right,’ then really you’re in charge, it’s servitude, you’re in charge of me and I’m supposed to do whatever you tell me to do. . . . It really shouldn’t be seen that way.”

On the day he does the surgeries, Paul also goes to the Paducah Rotary Club to deliver a speech. On the ride over in a tan Prius, which belongs to one of Paul’s staffers (“We’re just trying to save the planet,” Paul says wryly, and then talks about the jobs created by Toyota’s Kentucky plant), Paul says his only eye problem is that he needs reading glasses — a common condition for someone his age.

 

Paul first became interested in ophthalmology as a child. His grandmother on his mother’s side, Carol Wells, had significant eye problems: Over the years, she suffered from cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration, and even had a corneal transplant. “As a kid growing up, I went to the doctor with her several times,” Paul remembers. She remains in his thoughts: In his foyer now hangs a 1930s photograph of Wells participating in the rifle team at Ohio University.

Paul’s mother, Carol Wells Paul, had cataracts at 48. “She had trouble seeing, telling the difference” between colors, Paul recalls. “My little sister used to ride around with her, saying, ‘Mom, it’s green, it’s red’” when they came to traffic lights.

At medical school, Paul became involved in research related to corneal transplants, and he decided to pursue ophthalmology. (His father, former congressman and ob-gyn Ron Paul, observed that his son had picked a medical field more conducive to getting sleep.) Paul kept his ophthalmology practice active until he became a senator, right on through the heated primary and general-election Senate campaigns in 2010.

He didn’t care what his patients’ politics were, but as Paul became a statewide figure during the campaigns, patients started bringing it up. “As I was running for office, I got slower and slower seeing patients because everybody wanted to talk about politics,” he recalls wryly. “I don’t bring it up typically. . . . It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re Republican or Democrat or whether you agree with me or not” when you’re one of his patients.

And while politics didn’t influence his work as a doctor, his experience in health care has affected how he views health-care policy. “Having been a physician, I see people from all walks of life and I see how it works and how it doesn’t work,” he remarks. In particular, his experience has made him an advocate of increasing price competition in health care.

 

“Insurance doesn’t cover Lasik surgery, the surgery to get rid of glasses,” Paul remarks. “So it started at about $2,000 an eye, maybe even $2,500 an eye, and it’s down in some communities to under $500 an eye because competition works and people call on average four doctors to get the price and see how much it’s going to cost.”

Paul also cites the cost of contact lenses, which don’t tend to be covered by insurance either. “When I sold them,” he recounts, “I was within pennies of Walmart, because you gotta compete.”

After his election, Paul received unpleasant news: Senators aren’t allowed to hold second jobs except, in some cases, teaching. Since his father had been able to continue practicing as an ob-gyn while in the House, Paul had assumed he could do the same. But Senate and House rules are different, and the Senate Ethics Committee denied Paul’s request to continue his work without receiving a salary (he wanted to continue charging enough to pay his staff and keep up his malpractice insurance).

Paul misses practicing medicine. “This is a good day for me,” he says. “This is exciting for me to come back and do it.” He also misses the technical aspects of the work. Describing a new laser machine, Paul explains how it helps with certain cataract surgeries: “It makes the opening for you and then it partially dissolves the lens,” instead of requiring the doctor to make the cut directly. When he gets a chance to use the new equipment later that afternoon, Paul is clearly wowed. “That is so cool,” he comments. “That is wild.”

After the speech, Paul heads to the clinic where he’ll do the operations. He changes from brown embroidered cowboy boots and a suit to blue scrubs, and chats with Bowers as the two of them thoroughly wash their arms and hands in a huge sink. Cynthia Burke, resting on a stretcher, is wheeled into one of the large operating rooms, and Paul, Bowers, three reporters, and several assistants file in. The green-painted room is packed with medical equipment, and overhead, disconcertingly, top-40 music is playing: During the operation, it includes songs with lyrics such as “We just wanna make the world dance / Forget about the price tag” and “But you’re an animal, baby, it’s in your nature / Just let me liberate you.”

 

Paul pulls on big yellow rubber gloves and holds out his arms as a blue smock is put over his scrubs. He sits down on a chair right behind Burke’s head and positions a large microscope over her eyes. “Hold really still,” Paul tells Burke as he begins. “You’re doing great.”

During the operation, he deftly inserts needles and other tools into her eye, watching his work through the microscope. Overhead, a large TV monitor allows everyone else in the room to see in excruciatingly vivid detail exactly what Paul is doing: The monitor shows Burke’s eyeball, forcibly held open with clamps, pulsing and oozing and sliding as Paul punctures and scrapes and removes the cataract. “We’re making really good progress,” Paul assures Burke. “Not too much longer to go.” Later, Burke says all she felt during the procedure was a sensation akin to water entering her eye.

Earlier, Paul had shrugged off the squeamishness factor of operating directly on the eye. “It’s a little bit like giving a public speech,” he says. “The first time you do it, you’re a bit nervous and you’re concerned about doing it and it becomes easier. I’ve probably done 10,000 now, so I’m fairly accustomed to doing it.”

After the surgery, Burke is dazed — and elated at her new ability to perceive color. “You got on a blue hat,” she tells me, referring to the scrubs I had to wear to enter the operating room. Before, Burke says, “it was like a lot of the colors were either black or white, not much in between.

 

Later that afternoon, Paul removes Judy Prince’s cataract. Like Burke, Prince is ecstatic, albeit in her own calm, no-nonsense style, when she looks around immediately after the surgery. “I can see Dr. Bowers over there,” she says, still lying on the stretcher in the operating room. “I can see.”

“God,” Prince then declares, “has given sight to the blind.” Her newfound range of sight amazes her: “I haven’t been able to look to that side and see anybody in forever,” she tells me.

Before the surgery, Prince had observed, “If he gets to be president, you know, I can say the president gave me back my sight.” But her thoughts quickly shifted past 2016. “I just think it’s a wonderful thing he’s doing,” she said of Paul. “He’s doing this strictly because he loves people, I guess. He cares about people.”

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1. Ann Coulter. I can not, for the life of me, figure out her appeal.

2. Michael Savage. Batshit insane.

3. Todd Akin. See #2.

4. Joe Barton. BP Apology was so bad even fellow GOPers had to tell him to STFU.

 

- John

 

I never heard of 3 & 4; Coulter is an "entertainer"-her shtick is strictly a comic routine couched in politics. Savage-aka Mike Weiner-is not crazy but he is too strident (especially on his 'one note issues' like illegals ) & negative for my taste but entertaining when he goes on his "Teddy" tangents or talks about cooking, healthy eating, nutrition or his growing up in the Bronx.

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"The homosexual community has put these draconian laws on the books that prohibit people from discussing this particular affliction. You can tell somebody you had a heart attack, you can tell them they've got high blood pressure, but you can't tell anybody you've got AIDS."



Pat Robertson


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