Beautiful Horizons: Adventures in Wingnuttery

Historical Ignorance

What Greg Weeks said here. Every word, especially this portion:

The assumption that the United States can and should decide the fate of other countries is deeply ingrained in our collective psyches. It also has led to some of the most disastrous policy decisions of the last century.

Newt Gingrich claims to be an historian, but his comments show an appalling lack of basic historical facts, not the least of which is a portion of the agreement made by JFK to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis:

The US will make a statement in the framework of the Security Council in reference to Cuba as follows: it will declare that the United States of America will respect the inviolability of Cuban borders, its sovereignty, that it take the pledge not to interfere in internal affairs, not to intrude themselves and not to permit our territory to be used as a bridgehead for the invasion of Cuba, and will restrain those who would plan to carry an aggression against Cuba, either from US territory or from the territory of other countries neighboring to Cuba."

This is also not to mention such inconvenient facts in the past such as the Platt Amendment. One wonders if the letters PhD after Newt Gingrich's name stands for piled high and deep.

Jan 29, 2012 11:08:04 PM | Adventures in Wingnuttery, Cuban-US Relations, Republican Perfidy and Cowardice

A Lesson Still Unlearned

One of the inexplicable characteristics of the right these days is the fetishizing of CEO's, especially as potential political leaders. It's patently absurd: there is no system of checks and balances in the business world. CEO's need not depend on congress to implement policies. They do not have to forge consensus and compromise if they do not wish to do so; they need merely decree in most instances.

If that is not sufficient to convince anyone, I have two words for you: Silvio Berlusconi.

Oct 26, 2011 11:11:10 PM | Adventures in Wingnuttery, Intellectual Laziness, Italy, Republican Perfidy and Cowardice

What Matters

I'm not bothered by the fact that Mitt Romney used a gardening firm to cut his lawn that employed undocumented immigrants, nor should anyone be bothered by that.

What they should be bothered by is the fact that a family with five sons did not have one who would deign to cut grass. Is there any greater proof of Romney's elitism?

Oct 20, 2011 11:00:52 PM | Adventures in Wingnuttery

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Fidel Castro once said "All dissent is opposition; all opposition is counterrevolutionary."

Herman Cain believes that peaceful protestors are "Un-American."

They're two sides of the same coin.

Oct 17, 2011 11:41:15 PM | Adventures in Wingnuttery, Republican Perfidy and Cowardice

The Limits of Hyperbole

A note to Ann Coulter, Hank Williams, Jr.and anyone else who bandies about the term Nazi with alacrity: It is not those you insult by calling them "Nazi" who suffer the most grievous harm, but it is those who actually suffered under these fascists: the millions of Jews, French, Danes, Dutch, Poles, Norwegians, Italians, Czechs, Slovaks, Yugoslavians, Belgians, and British who suffered genocide, occupation, deprivations and countless humiliations during that era.

You trivialize their suffering by linking it to something that is not by even the stretching of hyperbole to its ad absurdum limits remotely similar. Shame on you.

Oct 6, 2011 12:20:48 PM | Adventures in Wingnuttery, Discourse

OMG

Rick Perry: he's like Bush without the brains.

Steven Taylor explains exactly why this is such a wretchedly bad idea.

Mimi Swartz has some background on some homegrown antipathy towards Perry.

Oct 2, 2011 12:35:39 PM | Adventures in Wingnuttery, Republican Perfidy and Cowardice

For Shame

Sep 18, 2011 9:10:27 PM | Adventures in Wingnuttery, Republican Perfidy and Cowardice

Raising the Retirement Age? I Don't Think So!

Apologies for the long absence; my life had been intruding.

I consider myself to be pretty fit for someone in his mid-fifties. I hit the gym at less five times a week, can climb a number of stairs without feeling winded and am in generally good health.

Yesterday, Mércia and I had to move our old sofabed out of our second floor apartment, wedge it into the elevator, and bring it out to the curb, all while wrapped in plastic. We then had to bring in our new sofabed.

I was completely exhausted for a couple of hours. So the next time some right-wing economist/politician/think-tank "expert" - who never has to lift anything heavier than a laptop or their own luggage on a regular basis - says that the retirement age should be raised to seventy to ease the social security "crisis", they should be forced to work as a stevedore, construction worker, gardener and/or furniture mover. They should be made to do so wearing impediments to give them the sensation that they are in their mid-sixties.

Then they should shut the hell up.

Sep 18, 2011 10:38:20 AM | Adventures in Wingnuttery, Labor, Republican Perfidy and Cowardice