Looking for Mr. Far Right

It seems that Rick Perry supposed walk to the GOP nomination isn't a done thing after all. Many Tea Partiers have gotten the impression that he doesn't hate illegal aliens with as much passion as they do. Establishment Repubs on the other hand, are more put off by Perry's cluelessness on foreign policy. Is Mitt Romney still in the game? Romney could win but he's neither a Reagan or a Bush; he doesn't generate much in the way of enthusiasm or offer anything new in terms of ideas.

Realms of Nonsense Absolute

The recent flap over Michele Bachmann's claim that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation shows the mendacity of Bachmann and much of the GOP as well. Bachmann first made the claim then she backed off of it, saying she wasn't "attesting" to it's being true or not. Now we have to believe that someone who has gone through law school and gotten a degree can't be stupid. So then that means that Bachmann doesn't care about the truth about a statement, she'll just throw something out there to make it appear that she has won the argument. That can only be a case of wilfull deceptiveness.

It's not simply Bachmann. Notice Rick Perry saying that he doesn't "believe" in evolution or global warming. Does Rick Perry believe in Gravity? Does he believe the Earth is flat?

Here is the problem. This country's economic survival is dependent upon science and technology. But how can we have scientific and technological development with leadership that is not only ignorant of but hostile to science?

Army of Psychopaths

More horrors from the latest GOP candidate debate, this one sponsored by the so-called Tea Party. Wolf Blitzer, the moderator, asked Ron Paul to clarify his position that the government has no responsibility toward people without health insurance. When Blitzer asked Paul if people without insurance should be allowed to die, some members of the audience apparently cheered at the statement.

It's clear by now that most Tea Partiers hate everybody but to cheer somebody else's death rises to what might be called depraved indifference. I'm reminded of the clinical definition of a psychopath: lack of empathy, shallow emotions, poor behavior control, remorselessness, and grandiosity. These qualities seem to be common amongst many Tea Partiers as well. Remeber the line from the Pogo comic strip, "The Enemy is Us?" I hate to think that the enemy is us, but many of our neighbors maybe be psychopaths, since psychos have the ability to pass themselves off as "normal" people. Until they pick up a gun and go on a shooting spree at a school or a shopping mall.

The Buzzards Are Circling

Very late in the game the President is unveiling a new job creation plan which will supposedly combine tax cuts with new spending. Whether it gets through the Repub controlled House is anybody's guess. The President's big mistake was focusing on High Tech and "Green" jobs, which did not provide the broad based stimulus the economy needed. In politics, being right in principle isn't always enough. With unemployment at 9% the President's prospects are growing dim. Polls show he would lose to Romney, and possibly to Bachmann or Perry.

The problem goes deeper than Barack Obama himself. Much of the problem goes to what happened to the Democrats and the Liberals after the 1980's (keeping in mind that Democrat and Liberal are no longer synonymous.) Liberalism has lost any ideological or policy coherence has become nothing more than set of "benevolent" attitudes: liberals see the good in everyone, liberals want to please everyone, and liberals always prefer compromise over confrontation. Democrats, especially those in D.C. have no goal other than to "keep the ball rolling" and represent nothing more than compromise for the sake of compromise. That's why they lose even when they should win, and even when they do win, they don't make anything with it.