December 2007 archive

How do you  go about choosing a candidate to support? Is it an entirely rational process? Do you decide what the most important issues are for you and then compare each candidate’s proposed policies on them point by point to make your selection? Or do you go by your “feel” for the integrity and character qualities of the individual candidates? When the candidates are in broad agreement on the major issues (such as ending the Iraq occupation, providing healthcare for all Americans, restoring constitutional limits on executive power, etc.) and they only differ in some specifics of how they would get to those goals, questions of character begin to take on more weight, even among those who are most wonkishly informed and passionate on the issues.

Political psychologist Aubrey Immelman, research director and founder of the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics at Saint John’s University and the College of Saint Benedict in Collegeville and St. Joseph, Minnesota, specializes in developing personality profiles of prominent political figures (as well as criminals – heh).

I just have to share this:

The 50 Most Loathsome People of 2007

Here’s a little sample:

10. Alberto Gonzales

Crimes: The most truckling, amoral flunky to ever serve as Attorney General. A jurisprudent organelle, he manifests no concept of the law independent of its expediency to the president. Would smilingly accuse himself of providing material support to al Qaeda at President Bush’s request, hurriedly plead guilty, sign his own death warrant and flip the switch himself. His testimony before congressional committees is to public service what cholera is to the small intestine. As first Hispanic Attorney General, Gonzo typifies the self-betrayal and ethical compromise necessary for minorities to become successful Republicans. Been felching sweet approval from Bush’s lily-white ass since Texas. A conscienceless, memo-drafting, loophole-crafting liar for hire, pushing for all the worst administration policies, including nixing habeas corpus, denying and then defending rendition, torture, political firings, and a ton of other evil stuff. He even visited a seriously ill and disoriented John Ashcroft at the hospital, attempting to coax him into reauthorizing a clearly illegal wiretapping program. The only Attorney General who ever could have made John Ashcroft a sympathetic character by contrast.

Exhibit A: “The fact that the Constitution — again, there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away.”

Sentence: Death by dull guillotine, head bent by Beckham.

Nobody gets off the hook here.  If you’re a Hillary Clinton supporter, you might want to skip this one:

WE’RE GOING TO HELL IN A HAND BASKET

Cross posted from SanchoPress

http://sanchopress.com/frontPa…

I remember my grandfather saying this. He meant our nation. I remember my mom saying this. She meant America.

It had already begun before my grandfather said it. It had gained momentum when my mom was saying it.

Now I say it. I say it meaning the United States. I also say it meaning the world. The momentum the hand basket had when my mom said it has turned into a flying hand basket. A jet propelled hand basket.    

The descent of the hand basket and all it contains, seems to be caught in a tsunami, a hurricane, an avalanche. At times it feels like there is no hope of stopping the hand basket from reaching it’s stated destination .

Yet, we must try. If we don’t, what do we tell our young children or our grandchildren? What do we say when they ask the inevitable questions?

What did you do to stop the hand basket so my generation wouldn’t be worse off than yours? How did you try to keep the path of the hand basket from making us the first group in America’s history worse off than those before them? Why did you let the hand basket move on and on and leave us on the brink of complete annihilation and destruction of our nation, our world, our planet?

Did you do your best to stop the hand basket cradling our country, our world and our planet? Did you at least try to slow the tide of the tsunami, the winds of the tornado or the avalanche of snow increasing the speed of the hand basket?

What things, people, circumstances, events, difficulties, problems and more are in the hand basket on its way to hell? We can’t even imagine all of what it contains, much less list them all. The hand basket contains all from the beginning of mankind and we’re letting it hurdle to hell at an unprecedented rate.  

To name just some of the recent things to be put in the hand basket from the United States, our actions, our lack of actions, our policies and practices would seem to fill the hand basket until it overflowed and the list would still not be complete.

Even the most recently added to the overflowing hand basket are so very sad, yet, the majority in the hand basket are good.

So, how is it possible that the hand basket is nearing it’s final stop so rapidly?

The bad, negative, evil and worse are the forces propelling the hand basket towards hell. They are only 10% of those in the hand basket. How could 10% possibly be moving the hand basket along at an ever increasing rate? Why would they be doing it? Why doesn’t matter. It may never be known. Maybe it is just that they are greedy, egomaniacs with a never ending lust.  

The rest of us just need to know they, the 10%, are steering the hand basket. They are not only steering the hand basket but they are making it move faster and faster each day.

The good who are the other 90% in the hand basket are desperately trying to put on the brakes, to stop the hand basket or to at least slow down what seems to be the inevitable fate of the hand basket.

Oh, the horrors in the hand basket. Oh, the terrible things in the hand basket just from The United States Of America. Just from the 10% of America’s leaders who are despicable and wretched.

In the hand basket is the war in Iraq. The devastation of a nation that America had no right or reason to invade. The horror of the death and destruction of a people, a nation, a society, a culture.

In the hand basket are the American troops and Iraqis who died. Innumerable others who suffered physical injuries.

Many more and their families who will live forever with the mental torture of TBI, PTSD, mental health issues, divorce, suicide, homelessness and more. All these with little or no help for their problems from the 10% who pushed so vehemently for them to perpetrate this trespass.

In the hand basket are forty seven million uninsured Americans with all the difficulties, heartache and misery this creates for them.

In the hand basket is now the body of Benazir Bhutto on top of Lincoln, Kennedy, Martin Luther, seven million Jews from the holocaust and so many many more bodies of those who died for reasons without just explanation.

In the hand basket are the hungry, the homeless, the forgotten. Many are from the wealthiest nation on earth. In the hand basket are the missing children, those forced into sexual slavery and child pornography. Many are from the richest nation in the world. They will never recover from their scars.

In the hand basket are the children who have been abused. Abused physically, mentally and emotionally. Those who will never be whole again without a great deal of help, if ever. Those who can not trust anyone. Those who feel that almost everyone is out to hurt them. Those that blame others for all their difficulties later in life. Those without the ability to listen to anyone’s direction. Those who spend their life fighting all authority and structure. Those that wallow in self pity. Who can blame them, they were damaged as children. Children are supposed to be our future. They are in the hand basket. Many are now adults and were once the children of our future and they are in the hand basket

This is an Open Thread: Come as you are As you were

Headlines For Monday December 31: Obama Tries New Tactics To Get Out Vote in Iowa: Iran’s inner and outer circles of influence and power: Scores dead in Kenya poll clashes: Moscow loses sweet slice of history

USA

After a Son’s Death, a Shared Mission in Politics

In an instant, a world in which everything seemed right suddenly seemed all wrong. John and Elizabeth Edwards’s 16-year-old son, Wade, their first-born, was dead, with nothing to blame but the gust of wind that had flipped his car off a wide-open road.

As the couple walked down the aisle of the church for his funeral, they braced each other, friends recalled, as if they could not stand alone.

In the bleak months that followed, the Edwardses looked for ways to keep Wade’s name alive, taking comfort even in seeing it printed on credit-card offers that arrived in the mail. Determined to honor their son publicly and fill their life with meaning, they created a learning center named after him. They chose to have more children. And they decided Mr. Edwards would enter politics, a path that took him first to the United States Senate and now to his second run for the presidency.