Cry Havoc, And Let Slip The Dogs Of War

Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1601

The battle cry is laid, and I intend to slay this paper-dragon of bipartisanship and Americanism returning to these lands.

The declaration of war against progressive liberalism has changed this from a country of individuals that disagree to a battlefield of blood that none shall escape unscathed.

To deny this, is to perish.

For they will not halt their spears and draw back their arrows simply for those who heard not the war drums and ignored the pronouncement of their guilt upon the mount. They will run down all of us like wheat before the scythe unless we gather out strength and fight back.

The enemy is conservatism, the worst that America has to offer the world.

The enemy seeks to alter the history of our times, to escape all consequence for that which they have wrought and lay waste to the lands with fear, poverty and misinformation.

They would replace science with rhetoric, replace reason with bigotry, replace love with vengeance, replace wisdom with pride.

The Commander told us, "I am not an ideologue."

Well I am, sir.

Not an intractable ideologue, I'll hear out the terms of the parley of the enemy forces gathered against us.

The Commander Obama will not lead us in this field, he refuses to lead the liberal movement.

So I say it is time for the Captains to start giving out some orders.

I have but one order to the Liberal Blogger Squadron that remains true to the cause:

CRY HAVOC, AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR!

That which is us, remains under seige.

Lose not faith in to the Commander and those we sent to the wreckage of Bush-Cheney, but we shall rise in this moment not dither and fade.

We have been declared the enemies of America, and I believe it time to illustrate some proven facts we all hold within ourselves for fear of the ripples they might make.

Conservatism is all too together friendly to racism.

Conservatism is all too together friendly to bigotry.

Conservatism is all too together friendly to domestic terrorism.

Conservatism is all too together friendly to all violence.

Conservatism is all too together friendly to lying to get ahead.

Conservatism is all too together friendly to tyranny.

A Leggy Sara Palin Newsweek Cover

Politically-speaking I could not disagree with Sara Palin any more.

However, I would like to say that this woman has taken an amazing amount of hard-blows from the left. It would be more impressive in her own personal character if she refused to play the victim over the matter, but there is no doubt these things occur.

I am for focusing on the facts, as I see them at this time.

The fact is it makes no sense what Sara Palin said to Oprah about her reasons for leaving the governor’s office in Alaska.

This notion that her political advocacy would be hampered by resigning from office due to fact that ethical violations would have been filed is absurd.

The only logical conclusion that can be drawn from her statement is that her political advocacy would promoting something widely recognized as unethical due to fact that if your cause is just and more motives only non-violent advocacy of ideals you have nothing to fear in defending your case should you be called to question for your actions.

The Governor of Alaska has many, many times the ability to effect social change and promote political advocacy of a private citizen relying on namesake leftover from the 2008 Campaign.

The facts of the matter are that the former-Governor of Alaska still refuses to give a cogent or logical reply to a simple question.

Sara Palin also retains that the simple question, “What do you read?” is somehow an insult on her.

This was a great opportunity for Sara Palin to promote her local newspaper and other press outlets that may go under-looked. She instead continues to only be vague about rather simple questions.

Now putting all that aside, I don’t think that taking an image from Runner’s World on the cover of Newsweek was a very wise move.

This just feeds into the false notion that Sara Palin doesn’t get a “fair shake” in the “liberal media.”

If anything the “liberal media,” which is a misnomer, doesn’t get enough objective critics who focus on facts where many are clear to raise.
In a previous post I said that people should pick up a copy of that Newsweek with the Anna Quindlen and disgraced Governor Mark Sanford to read, so you could get a grip on what the heck is going on right not in politics.

As for this issue of Newsweek, I suggest instead buying a National Inquirer instead.

MediaMatters.org has covered this issue quite well:

Making matters worse is the equally offensive headline Newsweek editors chose to run alongside the photo -- "How Do You Solve a Problem like Sarah?" -- presumably a reference to the Sound of Music song, "Maria," in which nuns fret about "how" to "solve a problem like Maria," a "girl" who "climbs trees" and whose "dress has a tear."

Now, this photograph may have been completely appropriate for the cover of the magazine for which the picture was apparently intended, Runners World. But Newsweek is supposed to be a serious newsmagazine, and the magazine is certainly not reporting on Palin's exercise habits.

I don’t believe Sara Palin is a viable candidate for any major political office.

Her disinterest in facts and honesty being the reason for this.

Call me strange, but I don’t think Sara Palin’s legs are “news worthy.”

I’m just saying that things like this Newsweek cover are fodder for all these false-news hounds out there painting on their wild canvas.

A Liberal’s Survival Guide

I recommend picking up a copy of Newsweek for yourself. The cover story for the issue of the week of November 2nd 2009 is an excellent piece on President Barack Obama. Anna Quindlen has put to words what I felt to be true since early in the 2008 Presidential Campaign:

Barack Obama campaigned as a populist firebrand but governs like a cerebral consensus builder. The Founding Fathers wouldn’t have it any other way.

…

Campaigns are bad crucibles in which to forge the future. They speak to great aspirations; government amounts to the dripping of water on stone.

…

The president is a person of nuance. But on both ends of the political number line, nuance is seen as wishy-washy. There’s no nuance in partisan attacks, soundbites, slogans, which is why Barack Obama didn’t run with the lines “Some change you might like if you’re willing to settle for” or “Yes, we can, but it will take awhile.”

…

If the American people want the president to be more like the Barack Obama they elected, perhaps they should start acting more like the voters who elected him.

In my personal estimation the liberal-left mainstream view of Barack Obama was overly optimistic as to his clearly stated positions. This situation has altered since the campaign but still seems to maintain elements of previous misconceptions.

This president is entirely unique.

I was adamant about this in the first few months of The Obama Presidency when the media-punditry were attempting to compare Obama to another American President of the recent past. The only comparisons to draw are poor ones.

Many attempt to call The Obama Presidency a “centrist” presidency. I believe this is only in part true and better descriptions would be “staunchly bipartisan” or “consensus builder” as to what we see of The White House of 2009.

Ultimately, I myself am far too left-wing to support every Obama Policy. I am certainly left-wing enough to vote for him, but in the instance of national health care reform I would seek to isolate the insurance giants in the face of the bipartisan concept of bringing them to the table.

I would seek to remind readers that The Founders had many ideological differences between them and while they surely would approve of the goal of consensus building, I believe some would argue that party loyalty or campaign kick-backs mean nothing in the face of protecting the general welfare of the people of The United States.

Allow me to put forth my view on The Founding Fathers as it applies to the proposed health care reform in the U.S.:

A single-payer bill, like H.R. 676, might be scientifically approved but does not incorporate the spirit of incrementalism that is key to sound reform. If one was to augment the “single-payer” model of this bill into a national health care insurance option for citizens ages zero to sixty-five, included the Dennis Kucinich Amendment in which states can opt-in to a single-payer system, and included the Harry Reid Proposal in which the states can opt-out of the national option within a single piece of legislation; this unwritten bill would be within the true desires of the framers of The U.S. Constitution.

--

I can only see two clear flaws in Barack Obama as president, thus far.

Handing health care to the Congress was a bad move.

Isolating the giant of media-misinformation when there are other offenders within the spheres of foe-news.

Both of these are purely strategic flaws and amount to simple criticism and nothing more on my behalf.

On the matter of his appointments I believe what I was speaking on before comes around once again. It’s not a fair assessment to call it a “liberal” cabinet but rather a “bipartisan” cabinet, or “centrist” if you must.

We didn’t elect the liberal-firebrand that came to destroy the GOP and tear down the corporate empire.

We elected Barack Obama.

Bipartisan Blogging Dies at Birth

When I first set forth to imprint myself upon the wildly evolving beast of the blogosphere I held with me a tenuous goal: to create a fully bipartisan blog.

A place that would be both policy and ideology neutral, yet dealt in real news topics.

While the value of this concept in itself still appears quite sound in my mind, I discovered through personal experience that throwing that concept away was the best thing I ever did for my blog as a rank amateur in the mix. (Still working on that.)


Blogger tis I:

My posting entitled “Ann Coulter Still Sucks” was one of first impressions unto this wild animal of internet-posting that I can claim to my credit. Every word of that is partisanship, I am completely unashamed.

My posting entitled “The Libra-Scorpio Cusp” is enjoyed by many. I point out an internet inconsistency between websites and briefly address my feelings on Astrology.

Recently I was honored to have received an Editor’s Pick on Open Salon for what accounts to the end result of these bipartisan efforts of mine.

I thank the Editors of Open Salon for the honor in being selected.

In course of presenting the issue of Jimmy Carter’s words concerning race in America, I unconsciously fell into my routine of trying to revive the lost art of bipartisanship.

I presented the words of Alan Wilson rebuking the words of Carter directly as to any racial motives in his father Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst.

I withheld the words of what I view as righteous indignation and retained myself to news-commentary.

However, my truly Bipartisan Blogging is dead. I fully intend to address every issue that I view as significant regardless of the possible offense drawn from that perspective.

Once you mix an opinion with a platform, you get punditry. Once the opinion is interjected into the Left versus Right Debate, it is already too late.

What remains within me though are the principals of striving toward fair play and equal consideration of alternative perspectives, and still with my own case intact. The value of this bipartisanship effort is lost, but the spirit remains intact. The reason being for this loss, in my view, has to do this the source from which it comes.

Despite all reports to the contrary, I am not a big deal.

The person to revive journalistic standards in the United States, is not I.

I instead must cry out into the wilderness to capture this beast, while those within the press need only touch a laptop. So is the way of things. But while ‘truth’ can be subjective, the facts are not.

--

“You can have your own opinion, but you don’t get to chose your own facts.”

--

I make a great many declarative statements in the course of blogging, formed primarily from simple political and media analysis, which accounts to online punditry.

But I believe strongly in full disclosure of the fact that I am a liberal and freely admit it may alter my world view in some cases.

But the facts don’t lie, and I believe in the growing majority of cases the facts are on my side.


Pointing Fingers:

It could be said that I am extremely critical of the right wing in US Politics.

If one were to ever take the time to read backwards into my blog it can be found that I have tried to draw a line between "Thinking Conservatives" and "Limited Conservatives".

Other times I have directly defended the specific quotes of both Carrie Prejean and Rick Warren.

Treading this line in not some political game on my part, but rather my honest opinion on those matters.

I believe that is what we have escaped from in the madness of mass computing and super-fast news-cycles. Partisanship sells books as much as it moves blog-hits, so perhaps some of these political shock jocks like Ann Coulter would rather be reasonable in her arguments, but it simply doesn’t pay the bills.

The truth being what is lost in this exchange, and I think that sort of thing is a shame.

I would much rather have a discussion in disagreement than just label others as “tools”, “fascists”, “un-American”, or “racists”.

But that creation of mine that might cross party lines, and maybe bring sanity to the mix to see what happens will have to wait for a another day. The raw truth of opinion should not replace factual evidence. Such is the road to tyranny.

So I have taken another road. I drew a line in the sand that allows me to say what I will of Republicans, or Democrats.

For instance, the Republican Party is currently self-destructing and the Democratic Party has dropped the ball on health care reform.

Such statements embody my current stage in blogging evolution.


Finale:

The spirit of political bipartisanship and the need for balance remains within me, but the middle ground is now mainly unattainable without the acceptance of false claims and baseless assertions. Any critical review of facts debunks most conservative mantras.

There is much to be said for ideological differences enhancing a debate but when the debate is centered around misrepresentations and sweeping accusations of assumed wrong-doing there simply to no room in which to move in.

I will most likely continue to be mistaken for a conservative by both machines that dictate ad banners and internet users alike, but this just a by-product of my attempt to split everything down the middle.

To me, most these differences are best settled in the voting booth at election time.

But if the accuracy of the information we receive is suspect and unverifiable then we have a responsibility as citizens to recognize this fact.

This tense political and social division has forever been an element of American Life, but I believe that the situation is amplified by media-giants who profit from the repetition of partisan smears of any person or group.

I can only pray for a day of more a more honest and non-biased form of journalism catching the eye of the American public, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.




Eric Lightborn

http://ericlightborn.blogspot.com

http://twitter.com/EricLightborn

September 29th 2009

Alan Colmes -- Talk Radio

Frank Luntz is a Word-Weasel

Rightwing pollster Frank Luntz is out promoting his new book: “What Americans Really Want, Really” and getting his definitions completely wrong in regards to Political Science, which I seriously doubt is an amateurish mistake.

On Alan Colmes Radio, Luntz continued the conservative rhetoric that United States of America is a “center-right country” and his words in explanation of this were very revealing as to his own personal bias against getting the definitions right, even when those words might not serve your own political ends.

“This is a center-right country but the definition of ‘Center-Right‘ has changed. ‘Center-Right’ doesn‘t mean keeping government out of our lives anymore, .. now it means fighting corruption.”

This is the Word-Weasel at work.

Fighting corruption in both government and private sectors has always been the ideals of The Progressive Reformist Movement since it's inception and these ideals have remained as a fact of American Life since then. To attach his own ideological group to these values is outright inaccurate.

Frank Luntz is very good at catering messages that appeal to conservatives and work well for The Republican Party but I find the notion that he is not affected by political bias in most of his statements completely absurd.

Center-Right has, and always will, mean exactly what Luntz claimed on the air that it does not mean.

It is clear to me that he feels free to change the definitions of words as he sees fit in order to further his own personal political agenda. If he cannot admit that the nation obviously shifted to Center-Left with the election of a Democratic President, and the ambitions of sixty House seats being attained by The Democratic Party then I am left to question the very conclusions of his work.

No doubt he has attained a great deal of significant data in his 6,000+ focus groups he used to compile his recent book, but if the standards of recognizing professional bias and personal bias are ignored then the conclusions of the body of work become suspect.

This is a Radio-interview Review, not a Book Review, so that body of work is not my focus and I invite anyone interested to avail themselves of this literature.

My only point is that if Frank Luntz is going to change the definitions of sound science to fit his image on a radio show, it begs to question other matters of credibility as well.

In his credit, I don’t believe he ever joined in the hateful mantra of “socialist” aimed at liberals, Democrats and mainly Obama.

On the list of all the partisans out there, Luntz is a minor offender.

But I still find it the worst of offenses to change the words to fit your needs, and considering they call him ‘The Words That Work Guy’; I think maybe it should be elongated to ‘The Words That Work No Matter What Guy’.

Frank Luntz is a smart cookie. But I’d personally almost compared him to Karl Rove, myself. Dancing around the truth has never been part of The Scientific Approach.

--

What Americans really want, really, is for pollsters to stop telling them what they think when it’s really just what the pollster thinks about what you think.

Jimmy Carter and The Race Card

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter told NBC News. "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shares the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans."

"That racism inclination still exists, and I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people -- not just in the South but around the country -- that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply," Carter said.

--

The oldest son of U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, Alan Wilson, has come to his father's defense in regards to a racial motivation to the uncouth interruption of President Obama during an address to a Joint-Session of Congress.

"There is not a racist bone in my dad's body," said Alan Wilson, an Iraq veteran who is running for state attorney general in South Carolina. "He doesn't even laugh at distasteful jokes. I won't comment on former President Carter, because I don't know President Carter. But I know my dad, and it's just not in him."

"It's unfortunate people make that jump. People can disagree — and appropriately disagree — on issues of substance, but when they make the jump to race it's absolutely ludicrous. My brothers and I were raised by our parents to respect everyone regardless of background or race."

--

I personally believe that former President Carter's words were the absolute truth. I doubt that Rep. Wilson was motivated by a direct, personal hatred for Barack Obama based on his skin color but rather that he chose to be so disrespectful and chose to insult the nation in the way he did because of the exact principals that Carter touched on in the above quote.


The notion that Obama is not qualified to state facts as a President addressing the Congress and that one must not even hear out his entire address before rebuking him, is so outrageous and unheard of up until this point, that few other explanations remain. Joe Wilson continues to defend his un-American slander and claim that he was truthful in his statements when in fact he was, and is, completely misguided.


The notion that all strong resistance to Obama coming from the middle and the right is pure racism is also inaccurate, in my view.


However, the people who constantly use the argument that not everyone opposed to Obama is a racist are very often the same people who fail to point out the racists on the right and fail to be honest about the reasons for their outrage. Or they fail to give any rational explanation that makes any kind of sense for their intense fear and willingness to believe wild claims about Barack Obama.

People Who Voted McCain Hate Obama, Big Surprise

I follow politics on both sides of the coin.

In my view the turning point for the McCain Campaign was the selection of Sara Palin.
The Thinking Conservatives removed their support in droves while the Limited Conservatives found a new poster-child for Partisan Logic.

Aside from the racism allowed to crop up in the Republican Campaign and the market crash under a Republican President, the Conservative Americans who actually think about their positions for longer than the span of a thirty second sound byte could not accept the ‘Say it so, Joe’ Logic and the overall presentation of John McCain’s pick for VP.

Many asked themselves and openly begged the question:

“If John McCain made this bad a decision for Vice President, then how can we trust him to make the right decisions on the war on terror.”

I am trying to draw a connection between the Obama-Hate Committee found on right wing radio and FOX Broadcasting with the vague demagogue figure of religious and moral authority found in the Governor of Alaska and her bid for the vice-presidency in 2008.

I think this group is just loud, and well-funded. Most, if not all, popularity of extremist presidential bashing from the Media Republicans comes from people who want theocracy and the destruction of American Liberty in the name of unfounded ideologies.

There are of course exceptions and a rare pack of conservatives can formulate a fair review of the Obama Presidency thus far, but they increasingly move into the minority as Media Hacks and Partisan Pundits rule the conservative-media.

Rush Limbaugh is Dr. Evil

The Radio Comedian Rush Limbaugh is best understood as a real-life version of the character Dr. Evil from Austin Powers.

Plotting and scheming in some ceramic bunker with his inner-circle of minions, his many Snurgly clones of course, gathered round to hear his daily machinations delivered via flashy jumpsuit!

In The Comedian’s case the issue is just to constantly stay in the news and stay relevant to someone, somewhere.

A lot of people seem to think we need an Anti-Limbaugh, or an Austin Powers, to appear and vanquish this foe. I think that Dr. Evil’s Empire falls apart when people start catching on to his game.

It’s all a house of cards of his own making. His own minions would throw him away if he ever had a level-headed view of anything to do with President Obama. The jackals would consume their master in a heartbeat if he stepped off his ‘ordained’ path even in the slightest.

So Dr. Evil plays his game and works his magic but when people can see the same of tired bag of tricks again and again, they tend to catch on.

“Pet my Snurgly! Pet him!”