“Mugsy’s Rap Sheet”

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I‘m going to share a little secret with you, and I promise you will NEVER look at a Republican again without thinking about it:

ALL REPUBLICANS ARE DRAMA-QUEENS!

Big honking, melodramatic Chicken Little drama queens. Every thing’s a National Emergency/Tragedy. There are no _SMALL problems when it comes to todays’ GOP (unless it is a real problem like Global Warming). Every triviality is a tragedy on an epic scale.

Some background: I live in Texas, so I am required by law to have at least two Conservative friends (I have three). One believes WMD’s were found in Iraq and Saddam may have been involved with 9/11, one still thinks Democrats want to give all his money away to illegal immigrants and drug users on welfare, while another is preparing to move to New Zealand the moment George Bush takes military action against Iran sometime in the very near future. My father is a dyed-in-the-wool Ditto-head Fox Newz watching Conservative, and I was raised believing “Democrat” was a dirty word. I myself was raised Republican and supported Republican candidates.

Then I turned 12.

Ronald Reagan nearly spent the country into bankruptcy to save us from the very nuclear annihilation he came dangerously close to triggering. He helped arm, fund and train Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, only to have Saddam use those arms and training against our “friends”, the Kuwati’s just two short years after his departure. And suddenly, we had to go into Kuwait to stop the “tyrant” and “brutal dictator” that we called “friend” for nearly a decade.

When Gov. George W. Bush ran for President of the United States in 2000, he told conventioneers that our military was stretched so thin that “two entire divisions would have to report ‘Not read for duty!’.” Gas prices at $1.50 a gallon were becoming a hardship for American families. “Social Security” was on the verge of “collapse” and the continuing decline of “morality” in our nation was threatening our children’s future. In Bush World, the United States was at deaths door following the Presidency of Bill Clinton. Then George Bush was appointed President and the country’s most pressing issue became “2001: Summer of the Shark Attack” while he cleared brush on his horse-free “ranch” in Crawford, Texas.

Then came 9/11.

Caught totally unprepared like Dan Quayle in a National Spelling Bee, George Bush has spent his presidency trying to make up for his failure to prevent the murder of 3,000 American citizens a mere eight months into his first term. (This is what we call “locking the barn after the horse got out”.) He didn’t see the catastrophe coming that some had warned him of, and since then makes up for it by quashing over-hyped “made up” threats in order to create the appearance of “protector of America”… the job he failed at so miserably on the morning of 9/11.

Because of this, the “threat” Saddam Hussein posed to the United States was ratcheted up to “end-of-life-as-we-know-it” proportions. Talk of “mushroom clouds” and “unmanned aerial vehicles spraying nerve gas” over every major city in the country became a constant theme in just about every speech members of the Bush Administration gave in the months between 9/11/2001 and March 2003. A color-coded “Terror Alert” was created to tweak the nation’s anxiety whenever they needed a compliant Congress to pass another piece of “right-infringing” legislation because they found working “within the rules” was too restrictive. Getting the job done is so much quicker and easier when you don’t have to worry about whether or not you’re violating someone’s Constitutional Rights.

So we invaded Iraq. And a month later, even with troops still fighting on the ground in Iraq, Saddam nowhere to be found, and no functioning government in Iraq to take its place, President Bush dresses up like a fighter jock and has himself flown out to a returning aircraft carrier to declare VICTORY before hundreds of adoring soldiers and fawning reporters like he had just defeated Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo single-handedly in a bare-knuckle grudge match on pay-per-view.

Just think of any issue that has riled up the Republican Party. Anything. As mentioned above, “Social Security” is on Death’s Door if we don’t enact DRASTIC reforms today… despite the fact that Social Security is probably solvent till the middle of this century. Meanwhile, MediCare… which arguably truly IS in crisis… is never mentioned. “Gay Marriage” is not just something they disapprove of, we actually need “a Constitutional Amendment” banning it before it destroys America. Ditto for “Flag Burning”… an offense of which there was a whopping THREE incidents of in 2005. More recently, MoveOn’s “Patraeus/Betray Us” newspaper ad drew the wrath of the Republican Party. One need only search YouTube for all the videos condemning MoveOn for daring to suggest that many Americans feared being “betrayed” by Bush’s Commander in Iraq. The nerve!

Dan Rather was back in the news recently for filing a $70 Million dollar lawsuit against his former employer, CBS News, over their treatment of both him and his story of a young George W. Bush receiving “preferential treatment” when assigned to the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam. Does anyone deny this basic fact as untrue? The story was verified by witnesses, but the documents used in the allegation were not, setting off a firestorm to discredit Rather prior to the 2004 election. You’d think Rather performed the ritual sacrifice of a bag of kittens on live TV the way the GOP squealed over the “treasonous” 60 Minutes-II story. But when the Bush Campaign dug up “the Swiftboat Vets” from Richard Nixon’s old closet of dirty tricks, that was just “politics”.

Iran… and specifically its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… is the latest “Boogie Man” the Bush White House is over-hyping as a threat worthy of starting a THIRD war in the Middle East before the first two are finished. Unfortunately for them, we’ve heard it all before and this time, no one’s buying… no one that doesn’t have an (R) after their name at least. You’d think Columbia University invited Adolph Hitler himself to speak when they invited the Iranian President for a very public Q&A with students last week. Republican Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter (R-CA) threatened to pull Columbia’s federal funding if they followed through with the invitation. The State legislature of New York likewise threatened to withhold public funds from Columbia if they allowed him to speak. Ahmadinejad was allowed to speak at Columbia, but not before first being lectured to about his country’s belligerence towards Israel, violations of human rights and denial of equality for women.

When a 2006 movie with cute cuddly cartoon penguins (“Happy Feet”) dare suggest “global warming” as a threat to their existence, out came the outraged GOP global warming deniers accusing Disney of sneaking “environmentalist propaganda” into a children’s film… a move worthy of Joseph Goebbels himself. But a REAL emergency like Global Warming “still needs more study”.

And I think that if you look, you’ll find this is typically (always?) the case: tiny things are hyped to “catastrophic proportions”… Saddam, Social Security, MoveOn’s “Betray Us” ad, and now Iran… whereas genuine problems: al Qaeda, MediCare solvency, Global Warming, etc… continue unabated; greater threats today than they were when they took office.

I’m certain I’m leaving plenty of great examples out, but I think the point has been made. And the next time you hear Republicans in an uproar over something, I guarantee it’ll be over an issue that isn’t worthy of all the hype the media gives it. You’ll think the world is coming to an end the way they’ll rant & rave over something a Democrat said about someone or something, or whether or not a report in that days news exposing another Republican pervert/crime/scandal is true, followed by weeks of “damage control” denouncing the messenger.

I GUARANTEE you, the next time you hear Bill O’Reilly bemoaning the “War on Christmas”, Ann Coulter accusing “Liberals” of “Treason”, or any Republican feigning “outrage” over some non-issue like it could lead to the end of the United States as we know it, just remember two little words:

Drama Queen.

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What, on God’s green Earth, happened to the planets’ collective IQ these past few years? Why does my brain suddenly feel like it needs a shower every time I turn on the TV or read some ignorant comment online?

It bears noting, the (s)election of a PROUD neophyte like George W. Bush for President wasn’t the beginning, merely its most notorious manifestation of stupidity’s new found cache. I remember stupid people doing stupid things when I was a kid, but never do I remember a world so barking mad as the one we live in now. And most of it can be chalked up to “willful ignorance”.

A wonderful example of “Is our children learning?” sped across the Internets at the speed of stupid two weeks ago when a helpless Miss Teen South Carolina desperately tried to bluff her way through a question:

But not to be overlooked is the statistic noted in the very question she could not answer: the fact that fully ONE-FIFTH of American teenagers can’t find the U.S. on a map! Good grief! Haven’t these kids ever watched a weather report on TV with that big honking map of the U.S. appearing on screen 11 times a day? What are we teaching our kids in school when they don’t even recognize the country they live in on a map?

A great example of what’s gnawing at me popped up on YouTube the other day:

Guest host Sherri Shepherd on ABC’s “The View” isn’t all that sure about evolution, and (I suppose) it should come as no surprise that she wasn’t 100% convinced the world is round either. Barbara Walters correctly pointed out that four of the Republican candidates for President likewise admitted that they did not believe in evolution. The late great comedian Bill Hicks had a great routine regarding evangelical evolution deniers as part of his 1993 stand up routine (warning, explicit language):

(Click to play - 5megs, 5:44)

The Ancient Mayans, whose every moment on Earth was dictated by the stars in the heavens, made a rather remarkable observation more than 5,000 years ago:

They noticed that during a Lunar Eclipse… when the Earth passed between the Sun and the moon… the shadow of the Earth on the moon was curved, thus PROVING that the Earth was ROUND. Think about that. 4,500 years before Columbus ever set sail in 1492 rejecting warnings that he’d “sail off the edge of the Earth”, or Magellan sailing around the world in 1519 to prove the world was indeed round, before Galileo was imprisoned by the Inquisition for suggesting the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way around, the Mayans had already proved THOUSANDS OF YEARS EARLIER by simple observation that the world was round. Evidence of their understanding of the Earth and its movement through the heavens is evident in the design of their pyramids:

Mayan pyramid with 91 steps on each side plus one on top (91*4+1 = 365)

Every day, when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky (iirc) the temples’ shadow falls on a different step, thus marking the days of the year. Every time the shadow fell on a different side of the pyramid, they knew the seasons had changed. Pretty ingenious for a civilization that existed three to seven thousand years before Galileo built the first telescope.

Saturday morning’s modern-day Dr. Wizard… “Bill Nye: The Science Guy”… infuriated a group of Evangelicals when he noted the fact that the moon “merely reflects the light of the Sun, it does not give off any light of its own.” But according to the Book of Genesis “The Sun is our light for the day, and the Moon is our light for the night.” According to one online account, several people in the audience were “visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence.” A few walked out, and one woman yelled, “We believe in God!” Apparently, these walking testaments to “willful ignorance” have never seen a lunar eclipse either. Granted, they don’t happen every day, but is it that difficult to figure out that if the moon emitted its own light, there would be no such thing as an “eclipse” of ANY kind… lunar OR solar? When the Earths’ shadow crossed the moon, it would still be a bright light in the night sky if it gave off its own light. It doesn’t. Once again, this isn’t rocket science folks. All you gotta do is look up. Is that too much to ask?

I wish I could say it was just us “dumb Americans under Bush” that seem to be de-evolving into drooling imbeciles, and that once he was out of office, America’s love affair with stupidity would melt away… but I can’t. Apparently, our new found stupidity as a species isn’t restricted to just the United States:

From the French version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

The question: “What object orbits the Earth? a) The Moon, b) The Sun, c) Mars, d) Venus”.

Bad: Poor befuddled Frenchman doesn’t know the Moon, not the Sun, revolves around the Earth. Worse: 58% of the studio audience doesn’t know either.

5,000 years after the Mayans, a significant portion of people… arguably a MAJORITY even… still don’t know that the Earth revolves around the Sun? Are you kidding me?

The fact some people still don’t believe in evolution amazes me, but it’s not difficult to understand when you hear how unquestioning and gullible Creationists are. A favorite example I like to cite is that of famed creationist Ray Comfort, and what he believes is unshakable evidence of Creationism in the banana. He talks about how the simple banana “fits perfectly in your hand”, has “a non-slip surface for easy gripping”, and a “pull tab” mechanism for easy opening… all evidence of “intelligent design”. Excuse me Mr. Comfort, but don’t MONKEY’S eat bananas? Did God design the banana to fit perfectly in a monkey’s hand? (of course, wild undomesticated bananas bear little resemblance to the long skinny yellow seedless fruit we’re familiar with.)

Are we really becoming THIS stupid?

Flash forward to today. Being “dumb” is respectable, even praiseworthy, whereas intelligent people are “elitist intellectual snobs” that take pleasure in making others look dumb. But just HOW could anyone suddenly not be sure whether or not the world is round or where the U.S. is located on a map?

It is this same “willful ignorance” that allows Global Warming deniers to function. I’ve mentioned before here in “Mugsy’s Rap Sheet” about a scene in the documentary, “Jesus Camp” where a mother that is home schooling her children ridicules the concept of Global Warming to her young son. Any religious basis for her denial of the problem is never given in the film (one can only presume it is because the Republican Party opposes Global Warming, and most Evangelicals identify themselves as Republican.) They ridicule the science with absolutely no religious basis for doing so. But the Republican Party has a very NON-religious reason to deny Global Warming… big business opposes it. Evangelicals… who by their very nature don’t ask questions… are the unwitting tools of Big Business.

BTW, FWIW, IMHO, yes. OTOH, AFAIK, maybe not.

If you understand the above line, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with “texting”… sending text messages over your cell phone. Due to the cumbersome means of input on cell phones (and being charged per letter), an abbreviated “shortcut” language has become a common and acceptable form of writing for tens of thousands of young people… young people that are quickly losing the ability to write and speak properly. And as George Orwell pointed out in his famous novel “1984“, he who controls language controls thought. Limiting a person’s vocabulary limits a person’s ability to express themselves. It’s frightening to think of all those kids out there whose sole experience with writing is an alphabet soup of nonsensical abbreviations. But IDK, my BFF thinks everyone should MYOB.

As I’ve noted before, I maintain a collection of political videos on YouTube which frequently draw the ire of young Republican kids ranging from their late teens to late twenties. The only President of their adult lives has been George Bush. He is their lone role-model for how a U.S. President should act, and what level of respect one should have for “other people”, “opposing positions”, and just the Constitution in general. The lack of writing skills among these kids is as uniformly atrocious as they are vicious. It’s a bit worrisome to think an entire generation of Brownshirts may infect our politics for decades to come thanks to one despicable Administration.

Some examples of some of the comments I have received:

“Bush has put a nues on everyones ass.”

“God bless you, President Bush. Because of you my family and I have internet access and we can sleep at night, without having to post a sentry. Ignore these detractors for they know not what they do.” (age 42)

“if i wanted to see such a bunch crap id eat at kfc for a week.”

“…our troops and sailors are there in the middle east now kicking some towel head ass.”

“Why” are people suddenly increasingly stupid, and what… if anything… can be done about it? My theory is that most industrialized nations have found it to their benefit to dumb-down society. Uninformed people are more reactionary. Those who think less, question less. The Government does all that it can to keep its citizens terrified, then they tell them, “If you just give me this power” or “if you just give up this one right”, I’ll keep you safe from those nasty, nasty terrorists I just finished using to scare you. If you pause to think about it and don’t give them what they want, “you’re unpatriotic” and “helping the terrorists”.

And what works so successfully in one country is copied in others. People stop questioning. They ignore facts, distrust the evidence of their own eyes; everything they’ve ever been taught is suddenly suspect and not to be trusted, and blind fear creates a generation of kids growing up angry, confused, uninformed and unwilling to ask questions for fear of appearing “weak” or becoming an “elitist”.

Our next President needs to be someone that makes learning “cool” again and makes “asking questions” a sign of strength not weakness.

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If you missed it, the 59th Annual Emmy Awards were broadcast last night on Fox. James Spader (video), who won Best Actor in a Drama put it best when he asked, “I don’t know who votes. I don’t even know where you get a ballot.” Good question James, because… politically speaking… last night’s show was all over the place.

Sally Field, who won Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series got political at the end of her acceptance speech, distressed over the war. The final sentence of her speech had to be censored when she used “the GD word”:

The censored comment:

“If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn’t be any god-damned wars in the first place.”

Was Fox censoring her political speech, or her language? Considering they didn’t bleep out her comments up until that point, it’s not unreasonable to believe she was cut-off just for use of the word. But, if you watch the video, the “you’re taking too long” music starts to play her offstage SEVEN SECONDS after she says the word “war”, a mere ONE MINUTE AND 37 SECONDS INTO HER ACCEPTANCE SPEECH. This was one of the last awards of the night, and typically, the winners of the more prestigious awards are allowed to speak longer than the guy that wins for “best costume”. So was Sally being hurried off stage even before her censored use of the GD word? I leave that up to you.

First an Oscar, and now an Emmy: Former Vice President Al Gore won a special Emmy for “Creative Achievement in Interactive Television” for his “Current TV” cable network. The standing ovation Gore received probably wasn’t for his involvement in a cable network. The audience was obviously expressing their support for the former “Next President of the United States”.

Al’s speech was totally devoid of any political content (and longer than Sally Field’s by about 30 seconds, if you can draw anything from that):

On the flip-side, when Emmy voters were given a chance to express their own political voice, they punked out. In the race for “Best writing of a Variety, Music or Comedy Program”, four of the five shows were well known for their strong anti-Bush political sentiments: “The Colbert Report”, “The Daily Show”, “The Late Show with David Letterman”, “Real Time with Bill Maher”, and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien”… whom I’m not sure has ever done a political joke on his show.

Each show was allowed to make a video announcing the names of the writers in their own unique way. Too funny:

And the winner is? Why, the LEAST controversial one, of course!

So between censored comments, odd results, and obvious audience support for a particular political view, did the Fox Network pull any strings last night, influencing votes and/or hurrying any winners off-stage that might make a political comment? You tell me.

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In his testimony before Congress Tuesday, General David Patraeus reported exactly as expected, telling Congress that “the Surge is working“. Well, since the point of “the Surge” was to give the Iraqi government breathing room to make the critical political compromises needed to take control of their own security, and since that is not happening, exactly how does one conclude that “the Surge” is working?

We KNEW that this justification for “the Surge” was bogus when the vote before the August recess to bring the troops home was defeated, despite the fact that we knew the Iraqi government would be taking the month of August off as well, ensuring that NO political progress would be made before General Patraeus was to deliver his heralded “report” in September. If the point of “the Surge” was to allow for “political progress” in Iraq, then our troops were in Iraq spinning their wheels for a full month, fighting and dying for no reason other than to wait until everyone got off vacation and went back to work.

By “working”, Gen. Patraeus and the Republicans are looking at only one tiny factor in the consequences of putting more soldiers on the ground in Iraq: increased security (a debatable statistic at best). If security is improving at all, it is because our soldiers are acting as the temporary Iraqi Police Force, patrolling the streets and dissuading violence. Tell me, what are our troops doing now in Iraq that couldn’t/shouldn’t be done by Iraqi police?

We could stay in Iraq for another 227 years and turn it into a second “United States” in the heart of the Middle East, but that’s not our job. Yet, the Republicans would have us do just that. Every time they claim, “We can’t leave now, just look at the progress we’re making!”, that is EXACTLY what they are doing. Every inch of progress gives them justification for staying longer and doing more.

And is so often the case, every setback is ALSO a reason to stay: “We can’t leave the country in this condition! The consequences would be catastrophic!”

We’ve seen this for years: “Increased fighting” translates to the “last throes” of a desperate insurgency on the brink of collapse, while decreased violence is likewise a sign that “victory is soon at hand”.

It’s time to leave Iraq. The conditions on the ground in Iraq will never be “perfect” for us to leave. Whether we leave now of 10 years from now, the effect of our withdrawal will be the same: more violence. And preventing that is not our job! That’s the job of uniformed Iraqi police.

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An overseas BI30 viewer posted a comment on one of my YouTube videos that kept nagging at me as deserving a good answer. Here is that question:

“There was a time when we cheered your Presidents and waved American flags whenever they came to visit overseas. There was a time when we admired America for your freedom and shook your hand in Friendship. What happened?”

The short answer is of course, “George Bush”, but that doesn’t explain how someone like him could even BECOME President in the first place or why we would allow him to do all the damage he has done.

The second short answer is “9/11″, a singular event that frighted a naive and sheltered populace to the point they were willing to accept just about anything in exchange for the promise of keeping them safe. Add to that an Administration that played “the fear card” like a violin, keeping the populace in fear, claiming they were the only ones that could protect them so long as you keep them in power.

But that response is likewise inadequate because it doesn’t explain “how” they were able to turn reality on its’ ear to where only THEY could keep us “safe” despite a string of failures, lack of progress, and all the evidence to the contrary.

I thought about his question for a long while and I’ll admit that the answer eludes me a bit. If I had to point to any one thing, it is the astounding success of a 30 year campaign by the Republican Party to turn words like “Liberal” and “Democrat” into pejoratives, that Democrats are “wimps” and Liberals “want to give all your money away to lazy people living on welfare.” And in an age where the political memory of most of the population is shorter than the lifespan of a gnat, people forget that every major war we’ve ever won was won by a Democrat and lost by a Republican. They don’t realize that 70% of our 231 years of National Debt was racked up by just the last three Republican Presidents (Reagan, Bush-1 and Junior).

I receive email chain letters from Republican friends all the time. They like to complain about “non-existent problems” served with snappy simple answers that would fit in a fortune cookie. Or they like to spread fictitious “feel-good” flag-waving patriotic stories that allows them feel good about themselves for supporting the very people that created these disasters in the first place.

I’ve responded to these emails, corrected and debunked them till I’m blue in the face, and still they keep coming, lessons unlearned, because as long as someone tells them what they want to hear, they’ll keep listening. This is the success of Fox “News”. They don’t dig too deep into stories because they may just find out they’re wrong. So they concoct phony problems, prattle off an absurdly simple quicky answer, and the Conservative gets their fix of “feel good” propaganda.

It’s VERY intoxicating and difficult to sell “truth” to someone that prefers to live in denial.

I know it’s not what you want to hear and hopefully this helps at least partly answer your question. I’m afraid a more in-depth answer would fill a book. I ask others to provide added insight in the comments. - Mugsy.

UPDATE: Think Progress has a very good example of people believing what they want to hear despite facts and evidence to the contrary:

“Petraeus Falsely Claims That Six Months Ago, ‘No One Would Have Forecast’ Anbar’s Success”

Despite this, you will still hear the media repeating Petraeus’ false claim that Bush’s “surge” is responsible for the progress in Anbar.

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Wednesday night on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, former Tennessee Senator; turned actor, turned Senator, turned actor again, Fred Thompson finally made official his candidacy for President of the United States. The announcement was met with the requisite wild applause.

A Q&A session with Leno ensued on the dual subject of Iraq and Iran. Thompson proceeded to deliver oft repeated Republican talking points defending the decision to go into Iraq (you know, rationalizations that, by themselves, the American people NEVER would of agreed was justification enough to invade a country that was no threat to us… but Hell, now that we already have, any “victory”… no matter how small… that allows these people to sleep at night is worth repeating early and often!)

He spoke about all the “United Nations resolutions Saddam ignored”… you know… resolutions that ordered him to destroy all the weapons he didn’t have? And his manipulation of the “Oil for Food” program that WE concocted and he found a way to circumvent? And of course, Saddam’s sons, Uday and Cusay, that “terrorized the Iraqi people”… unlike the daily car and market bombings, and the five years without electricity and clean water they endure today?

You know, little things like that. Yea, America!

And then there’s that rattlesnake in the chicken coop: Iran. They’re arming the “terrorists”, developing nukes, and have a crazy man “that’s not put together right upstairs” running their country. You know… THOSE guys.

But what REALLY struck me was the FIVE MINUTES OF DEAFENING SILENCE that greeted Fred as he delivered his uninspired laundry list, so much so that I had to put it in a video:

If this is the best the GOP has to offer, the Democrats will be in great shape come the ‘08 election.