I'm 52 years old and, for 50 of those years, me and Frank have been watching liars - individuals, groups, and society at large - telling whoppers that, regularly, have to be dispelled:

"Being thinner doesn’t necessarily make you happier or healthier."

It'll take another 50 for that to take hold,...

 

Here's an idea going around, amongst my friends, anyway:

"No More Slave Movies; Show Us as Kings and Queens Too"

I agree with the "too". It's important, that Hollywood finally makes movies about black successes in history, but here's what I also see:

   

 When you have over 400 years of untold American stories - on the brutality (and length and breath) of slavery, slaves outwitting slavers (brilliantly) the effects of slavery today, then Reconstruction and it's lies and failures (also length and effects), followed by the Civil Rights Movement, etc. - not only is it a crime how few have been told, but it's harmful to society not to mine them so we can, all, be on the same page culturally. Blacks, whites, and everyone else, need to know these stories:

Like studying the noxious, and obviously taboo, topic of NewAge (to understand our current "spiritual but not religious" culture) our racial politics - especially when it comes to identifying bad actors - too often make little sense because, as I've said, they lack context. 

We simply have to look back - to know how we got here:

And why some still resist,...

 

Watching how the world warps and sags around him, Barack Obama's not coming off too badly as president now, in my CrackdeBlackstimation. But still - when it comes to presidential style - so far, I've preferred the "Earthy" guys. Give me your George Ws or Lyndon Johnsons:

“Is this the White House? Oh, sorry. The White House? Sorry. Bird! Come over here and get me the White House,..."

My reasoning? Simple - same as any white guy's:

It's easier to forgive someone I understand.

Speaking of things I understand, conservatives get how ObamaCare's playing, all wrong.

They live in a world of media hype.

Like every other "scandal" the Right has had on Obama lately (Benghazi?) it's a, manufactured, mountain out of a molehill.

They're talking about a website - an insurance website at that.

Isn't the point, as most see it, that a lot of people never even had insurance before?

Then doesn't it figure, in the real world - which is almost everywhere but in the media - nobody will really care about this topic until they themselves get hurt?

Here, further, let me play Karl Rove and explain the psychology of entitlements - especially, especially massive ones:

People will wait, to get the website right, as long as the Dems care (and/or appear to) for those who can't.

The other party - my party - that insists on looking and acting like it's filled with stupid white racists, who want women in the kitchen and everybody in church, has nothing to compete.

But Chris Christie.

Add Scott Walker to the ticket (if he realizes what a lack of charisma he has and takes the veep spot before, foolishly, deciding to challenge) and we're "in".

Otherwise, forgetaboutit.

I do like watching the Right, going nuts over nothing, though - they look great on TV.

But then, so do cheerleaders in an empty stadium,...

 

The Daily Show

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Really - based on what he thinks the job requirements are:

I'm over-qualified to replace this guy,...

 

But, to be honest, a low-cut top would have sold this argument,...

What else is TMR supposed to do with this?

"The single greatest task for conservatives is to fix their own leadership problems. In so doing they must avoid the single greatest mistake Obama has made, which is to rely on fantasy. The facts, however unpalatable. The truth, no matter how bitter.”

 So they're back to slapping themselves in the face - like it's instinct - admitting they can't stay rooted in reality.

"Fully considered, it becomes obvious that Rand’s views congeal into a fatally flawed philosophy. Even when stripped of its atheistic elements, Objectivism’s focus on radical individualism cuts it off from reality and causes it to wither under scrutiny. And as much as we might admire Rand’s deep-rooted hatred of collectivism, her philosophy is still just another utopian dream, a transvalued Marxism.

Ultimately, Rand’s egoism is irreconcilable with both Christianity and capitalism. In fact, since the system fails to have any true explanatory value, it’s difficult to find any reason to adopt Objectivism at all. Fortunately, we don’t have to buy into Rand’s philosophical errors in order to appreciate her fiction. We just have to keep in mind that instead of reading a 'novel of ideas', we are reading a work of fantasy."

 But they still can't admit they're doing it again. And this time, because they've lied to everybody - including themselves - so many times before.

"Rob Ford drug use leaves Conservatives uneasy, MP suggests

Immigration Minister Chris Alexander says federal Conservatives 'not fans' of hard drug users"

 Spoiler Alert: 

I think the betrayal of Benghazi line is done now.

"The French position on race is that you can come from anywhere and become French, as long as you speak French, adopt French customs, and act French.

That’s great, but they have a hard time with difference, people who maintain customs, dress, or religion that makes them appear different. And, in the case of black people, we are conspicuously different no matter how French we feel."

 "The facts, however unpalatable. The truth, no matter how bitter” is, conservatives have reduced the enterprise of governing to soap opera, displaying all the signs of bad actors (pun intended) who - like the French - are fun to watch, but still deserving of contempt and comeuppance.

  “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

 History shows the answers devised, for even the country's obvious flaws, were always long in coming, and most only after a long fight - why, that has to be so, is the question.

  “These Negroes, they’re getting uppity these days. That’s a problem for us, since they got something now they never had before. The political pull to back up their upityness. Now, we’ve got to do something about this. We’ve got to give them a little something. Just enough to quiet them down, but not enough to make a difference. If we don’t move at all, their allies will line up against us. And there’ll be no way to stop them. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.”

 I've always voted for nailing things down with facts.

  “I’m thinking about making a new cult for some extra cash on the side. What sort of preparations should I make?”

 That conservatives are back to adopting my position makes the question, of whether they are highly deliberative or of low I.Q., very real.

  "I love his premise that because Oprah is African American and successful, that means racism doesn’t exist.  If you want to talk about ignorance, that is absolute ignorance.  Seriously, racism doesn’t exist because there are successful African Americans?

During segregation there were successful African Americans.  Does that mean during segregation racism wasn’t an issue? This is the simple-minded ignorance that’s rampant throughout the entire Republican party.  It’s the kind of shallow talk that gets conservatives to stand and applaud because it sounds right—when in fact it doesn’t make any damn sense whatsoever."

I assumed they'd know how to pop a clutch, you know what I mean?

 

“Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.”

“What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

"Time for this feud to move back to the front burner."

"I am in trouble here. I am dying, I am dead.”

Yes, Richard Cohen, a journalist and columnist for nearly half a century, a college-educated, award-winning commentator, thought slavery was not such a bad thing until he saw a movie about it in 2013. Richard Cohen admits, in a major American newspaper, that until this month, he believed an archaic, widely discredited “Lost Cause” white supremacist myth. And in his nearly 70 years of literacy, he has not seen or heard or read anything to challenge that myth until he saw a Hollywood film on the subject. This is ignorance on a staggering scale. That paragraph should only preface a retirement announcement. “I am a deeply ignorant and cloistered old man,” should be the next sentence, “and no one should pay me for my views and opinions, because they are worthless.”

It takes some people a long time to grasp their surroundings, including those around them:

 I have,...become convinced that very few people in America really understand the basic principles of the insurance business. They do not understand the concept of risk. They believe the liberal propaganda that insurance companies are just plain mean to charge the sick more for health coverage, for example. They believe that insurance company profits are way out of line with other industries.

They believed Obamacare would stop all that and replace it with a “fairer” system. And they believed in unicorns.

I'm talking a very long time:

The crime is ever pretending it was otherwise,...

 

This is always the first - and the dumbest - question a NewAge apologist will ask, because it reveals the massive ignorance they have, surrounding what they think they're defending:

  "If we allow people to perform so-called “faith healings” without having to include a legal disclaimer, then why should someone have to include one for a tarot reading?"

Please, Somebody - Anybody - you want to be fair?

Bring back feeding Christians to the lions, and witch burnings, so we can all get a good night's sleep again,...