Dissolve into Evergreens
This blog used to be about politics. Not so much anymore as I have worked through my fascination with that subject. It now seems appropriate that with a new president and the end of the Bush nightmare that I move on to new subjects that are more in line with my current interests. I may still occasionally express an opinion about political matters but for the most part I will be commenting on music, photography and personal observations. Thank you for reading.


Current Playlist

Top 100 in iTunes

juscuz's Last.fm Overall Artists 

Chart




Atom Site Feed

B4 d- t k s u- f i- o x-- e- l- c+

Blogarama


< ? Colorado Blogs # >

« - ? Blog Oklahoma * # + »
This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?
9.10.2005
Faulty Thinking and Lack of Perspective
 
Glenn Beck -- major league prick:
"Yesterday, when I saw the ATM cards being handed out, the $2,000 ATM cards, and they were being handed out at the Astrodome. And they actually had to close the Astrodome and seal it off for a while because there was a near-riot trying to get to these ATM cards. My first thought was, it's not like they're going to run out of the $2,000 ATM cards."


umm... or maybe these people understood how things work in the government, getting screwed over at the drop of a hat?

Today.

The federal government’s relief agency said Friday it will discontinue its program to distribute $2,000 debit cards to hurricane victims and use bank deposits instead, two days after hastily announcing the novel plan to provide quick relief.


If you, like normal people, have a functioning sense of perspective you might realize why it would be a whole lot better to have an ATM card than trying to get a direct deposit.

The "scumbags" (Glen's word, not mine) rushing to get those ATM cards don't seem so stupid now do they?

But if being right was Glen's job he'd not be on the air long. He's there, sad to say, to fuel a certain sense of self-righteousness and to deliver a political point of view.

But shit, how do your explain the sheer levels of self-delusion that inflict some people?

Witness Bill Whittle:

Well, here’s the news flash: Nagin isn’t incompetent because he’s black. He’s incompetent because he’s incompetent. Condoleeza Rice is black. Colin Powell is black. Ted Kennedy, a man well-acquainted with rising water crises is as white as they come. Kennedy is incompetent; Rice and Powell are two of the most competent people on the planet.


Rice was National Security Advisor leading up to 9-11, didn't think that the threat of a terrorist attack on American soil was worthy of attention: The memo of August 6, 2001.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.


I understand human failings, but I would hardly confer the title of "competant" to someone that, when forewarned of a threat with fairly specific information responds to criticism with:

To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Chairman, this kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us.


Or would I refer to someone as "competant" who took disputed evidence of an Iraqi WMD program to the United Nations to present them as known facts.

back to Whittle's widdle world:

On the subject of disasters man-made and natural, one more thing from INSIDE 9/11 rings a powerful bell with me. At the very end, as Osama makes his way out of Afghanistan and into hiding, he tells an Al Jazeera reporter his motivations for the 9/11 attack. In his own words, to the friendly folks back home, he explains that his goal was to hurt America so badly that we would have no choice but to go after him and start the world-wide jihad that would result in him becoming the new Caliph, ruling from his recently completed palace outside Kandahar. He had seen much of the Pink tribe in his formative years, seen weakness and retreat in places like Somalia. He thought he had our number but he made the mistake of having perhaps the least Pink individual in modern history in the White House. He made a worse mistake in flying his murdering deathbots into a town that looked Pink, that was painted Pink from head to toe, but whose foundation was rock-solid granite Grey.


quickie translation: grey people are people who strut and talk tough and pink people are all those people that Whittle personally finds distasteful.

I suppose that if I were to see the world with the help of the Super Secret Decoder Ring and thought that there was a real connection between strutting like a peacock and being a competant person I might agree with his assessment.

But I've worked in the real world for far too long to confuse the two. Whittle, convinced of his own manly alpha-tribe (did I mention I'm a pilot yet?) status goes on to construct a convoluted logic as to why doing exactly what Osama Bin Laden wanted was the right decision even though it has led to no appreciable benefits for the United States.

But I do know, that there, in his own words, the wolf said why he did what he did: he wanted to provoke War with the US, and would do whatever was necessary to accomplish it. And if we had not given him this war, he would have kept striking until he got what he was looking for. Nothing about US foreign policy, no word about injustice for the Palestinians or Evil Corporations or any of that. No, he said he wanted to start a war with the US. And so he has it. And he would have done whatever he had to do to get it.


huh?

Don't think about it too hard, because, had we not "started a war" Whittle would be explaining how rewarding the terrorists by giving them what they wanted was the wrong decision and would have led to more terrorism.

Do I even need to mention that President Concrete Grey has been a failure at nearly everything he has ever been involved in, failing upwards in a system of affirmitive action for the rich and the useful? I hope not.

But that's all irrelavant when you've constructed a useful fantasy to justify your own exceptionalism and to condemn those that you look down upon.

I've never been much of a joiner and I have little use for tribes. Eventually you end up having to defend faulty groupthink with silly analogies involving wolves, sheep and the colors pink and grey.

Let me tell you how I would have done it...

|
Comments: Post a Comment

About Me

bruce
35 yr old
Married
Okie
Highlands Ranch
Denver
Colorado
Student
Recording Engineer
Gemini
Arrogant
Voted for Kerry
Voted for Obama
Scumbag
Narrow-minded
Liberal
Uncle
Smug
Hypocrite
Philosophical Type
Taken
Omicron Male
Feminist Friendly
22.3% Less Smart
Whacko
Rabbit



Any Box

email

Barack Obama Logo
Get Firefox!




Dissolve into Evergreens