via Red Flag News

What's up fellow commie Marxists? It's time for another trip down Wingerblogosphere™ lane where the truly lame pathetic memes of the day reside. Today it's: "Obamacare Medical Codes Confirm: Execution by Beheading To Be Implemented in America"

Wow! This is some pretty heavy-duty scary stuff complete with a photograph of a masked executioner swinging a curved sword downward, just inches from the neck of the condemned.

What's going on here?

Naw mang, nothing is going on as usual. The idea appears to trace back to a November 18, 2013, post by Lorri Anderson on the blog Freedom Outpost. Anderson’s piece was later reposted, excerpted or promoted uncritically on a range of other blogs. (It also received a thorough takedown by blogger David W. Thornton of the Atlanta Conservative Examiner.)

So, let's recap:

Why Obamacare isn’t implementing beheading

1. A doctor can’t bill an insurer for a beheading
2. There is no legal beheading in the United States today, and the president couldn’t change that even if he wanted to.

You. Are. Welcome!

Anyone know how I can contact a death panel I have some people I would like to suggest they consider. Beheading is optional.

Democrats recaptured the House?

Rick
I think you are overlooking a key point in all if this--- what IF it were true?

Naw mang, I already showed you!

1. A doctor can’t bill an insurer for a beheading
2. There is no legal beheading in the United States today, and the president couldn’t change that even if he wanted to.

Issy, why do you hate the FREEDOM of elections?

(Oh no I di 'nt! I plead spending too much time @Gretas! Sorry Issy! )

If you mean gretaswire, I just stuck a toe in the water under the Iraq news item to see if it is as open as you think, rick. How about that. The second time I have posted in a forum other than this one in quite a few years -- all at your instigation!! :-)

...and as I recall, I instigated to you that other one long ago too.

Greta's is a hoot. It's the wild, wild west there. Come packin' and loaded for bear - they eat innocents for breakfast.

They seem to be pussy cats so far. :-)

Here, kitty, kitty, kitty...

Great post. The Wingers™ have taken to re-write history again (surprise!) and the current situation in Fallujah is because of that Marxist Kenyan.

It were a post on the gretawire by one of our fellow travelers... how do you say meow in Greek - miou?

Ahhh...great mind that one.

It seems the author is confused about some of the history

The ideologues of the bush adm were as opposed to nation building as he appears to be. They initially scuttled state dept plans along that line. And instead operated on the conservative principle of emergent order. The idea was that once the bonds of statist oppression were removed, a natural democratic order would emerge.

If is a very similar idea to that proposed by the tea party and proponents of Austrian economics. The guiding hand of free men and free markets blossom forth If you just eliminate most structures of statism

It was only after this approach failed that nation building was attempted

It is amazing to me the level of insanity prevalent on the internet.

i suspect this is a well used response and therefore suggest you attach the numberal 1 to it and call it response #1 ... in the future you will save some time and simply respond

#1

Hey! I would never have known about said alleged beheadings if the Wingnuts™ had not made such a big issue of it this past Friday. They were quite worked-up over it - all frothy and foamy spittin' mad.

...but the fact remains, this is the reality of politics in 2014.

I suspect that the insanity preceded the internet. The internet does effectively spead the insaniy, but it also makes a matter of public record.

Casual attention to detail can oft lead one astray, Ardy. Note that I wrote:
"The current situation in Iraq is the direct result of George Bush, his administration, the neo-conservative propaganda machine devoted to carrying out a Wilsonian policy of making "the world safe for democracy" using the blood of American GIs and the wealth of an indentured citizenry conned into allowing them to attack, occupy, and engage in nation-building in an Iraq that was no threat to America."

Note to whom Wilsonian policy was attached to and note who it was that I wrote had been conned into allowing "nation-building" -- hint, the American citizenry.

Now, if you wish to deny that we began engaging in attempted "nation-building" in Iraq, go ahead. Nothing I could say would change the mind of anyone thinking we did not.

The discussion seems a bit off topic, but then there was not much to the topic to begin with

That said, the so called "neo-conservative propaganda machine" did not sell the invasion of Iraq as an exercise in nation building, nor as a means to make the world safe for democracy. The war was clearly promoted on exactly the grounds that you deny-- that Iraq presented a threat to our nation because of WMD and the regime's supposed involvement involvement with terrorism.

You may feel that the above presentation by the Bush administration was a conscious lie so that they could pursue their "Wilsonian Policy." However that is nothing other than your speculation.

link counterpunch

I question many decisions of the Bush administration, but have never read anything that come close to confirming that Bush decided to invade Iraq to make the world safe for democracy. And, in fact, the ideas that he presented in his campaign were quite the opposite of this view.

wiki link

Further confusing this assertion is the fact that Wilson was a master elocutionist, who used the quoted phrase to spur the nation to declare war as a result of German attacks and their attempt to bring Mexico into conflict with the U.S. (and perhaps in response to other stimuli). Wilson's first term was notable for himself keeping the country out of the global conflict, so Wilsonian "policy" is itself contradictory. "Protecting democracy" is a euphemism for "we need to declare war", for whatever set of actual reasons.

Bush's actual reasons for invading Iraq I believe were very thin, and certainly delusional, and have very little consonance with the WWI backstory. Ardy's characterization of Bush's mentations as being "git Saddam and democracy will fill the void" rings solid to me. The debacle following that was an excellent example of trying to justify sunk costs (a nod to the ever present spectre of Capitalism )

At the risk of returning to the topic, do you think it is a mental defect that allows uncritical thinking, or is it a conditioned response?

IMO quite a lot of fuzzy thinking is tied to confirmatory bias. Virtually anything can be taken as credible in support of a strongly held attitude.... especially if that attitude has to do with feelings of revulsion, contempt, or one's perceived enemies.

With respect to the folks who brought this to my attention, I would say that it's both.

Good point. You see what you want to see.

FIrst, Ardy, this is not my thread. Second, I did not inject this topic into this thread. Third, I never denied that the Iraq invasion was promoted based on the claim that Saddam had WMD or the claim that they were a threat to us. Fourth, in politics, it is not unusual for what is used to "promote" an action to not necessarily be the underlying reason for wanting to implement the action. Fifth, because Democrats like to convince themselves that they are smart and Republicans are stupid, Dems tend to fall into the trap of believing that members of the Bush administration and other cheerleaders of the invasion were stupid enough to actually believe their own promotional activities. But, then, perhaps you are simply expressing what your beliefs were at the time of the lead-up to the invasion. Did you really buy into the promotion, Ardy, or did you recognize it for the BS that it was? Just mildly curious.

no i did not buy into the promotion
otoh i do think the bush admin mostly invaded iraq for the reasons they said

I didn't buy it, either. The clincher for me came when they started saying that the invasion had to happen by the end of March (if memory serves) because in another month it would be too hot there for the soldiers, even though the imminent threat (that mushroom cloud) was proclaimed to be at least a year away.

I thot to meself, "Well, why not wait until after summer then, and more intel might show things to be different in the bargain?" Then's when it hit me that they thought they'd lose ground on the public opinion front, probably because their made up reasons for the necessity of invasion might evaporate, and they had already decided to invade.

So, I didn't buy the sales pitch, nor do I think that the invasion was based on what they were selling, at least not in whole.

The invasion of Iraq always had a 1997 road map. It's signatories: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Rice, Libby among others.

It's no coincidence that this road map was followed to a "t" complete with a "Pearl Harbor event" , which the road map called for to kick-start the journey.

Rick
Thx for the posting
Interesting to go back and consider these issues with some time and distance
Perhaps the basis for a new thread. Though there are so many interlocked issues I am not sure what subject.

A few comments
I do not see the pnac as being at all "wilsonian"

IMO bush was surrounded by pnac advisors. And as such that certainly contributed a predispositing thought bias. And that in turn would have shaped the confirmatory bias in viewing events like 9-11

That said, IMO the evidence is that prior to 9-11. Bush was inclined to believe what he said he believed. Which was that the us should be a strong country but should be more narrowly self interested and should avoid direct involvement in international problems to the extent possible. IMO there is no evidence of anything else before 9-11

Following on that line
I think 9-11 was seen as a stunning threat to us security
And the response was developed in the context of trying to pre empt future potential threats. And IMO saddam was seen as an uncontrollable wild card who likely did have WMD and might well transfer those to terrorists at some future point

And so IMO bush saw the invasion of Iraq as a necessary measure to protect the us from what could have been an enormous threat to the homeland and to the stability of our strategic allies including Israel and the gulf states.

Having reached that conclusion the promotion of the invasion was begun and executed in an expedient manner

History shows that people make poor decisions. They rationalize, they deceive themselves and they lie to others. But in their own minds those decisions seem appropriate and necessary.

Which brings us back to:
You might say that PNAC developed a "road map" based on mentally defective thinking, even though it appears to have been "critical" thinking in it's own context. In turn, the PNACkers conditioned GW Bush, who seemed to have not been a part of the decades of defective critical thinking (perhaps not being a habitual critical thinker in any case), but was easily conditioned into decidering poorly.

After making a few broad circles around the concept, "They rationalize, they deceive themselves and they lie to others. But in their own minds those decisions seem appropriate and necessary", there seems to be no base to land upon except that humans live in varying degrees of fantasy. Does living in a deep fantasy excuse anyone from being responsible? Or is the attempt to hold folks responsible a futile engagement of an alternate fantasy?

To this (and to pretend to tie back to the topic) I say, "Off with their heads!!"

Well trained individuals, in almost any endeavor, practice until they do not have to think about their reaction, but use "muscle memory" to respond. In this instance, I think there was a conditioned response by Bush administration members to any threat. They had thought for so long that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and how they could respond, that they could not accept any other outcome. It is unfortunate that hundreds of thousands of others had to pay for that reaction, but that is the way of the world. More unfortunate is that the instigators of that travesty have never had to face consequences for their actions, much like those that created the crash (oh wait, many were the same people!).

There I is, I believe, a concerted effort by those with nefarious intent to condition the electorate to believe all kinds of nonsense in order to achieve their goals. There are dozens of "think tanks", PACs, and even less savory organizations with no other purpose. This approach has gone mainstream with both political parties, and, indeed, as far as I can tell, is the ONLY purpose of the GOP. It may be too late to wake up the electorate at any rate. They are now conditioned to respond and it takes much more effort to "unlearn" bad habits, especially bad thinking habits.

No, I do not think anything I have written is to excuse anyone.


OTOH, it does seem to me that there is no benefit from promoting irrelevant connections.

Here, let me invent an absurd connection. Bush invaded Iraq because he ia a racist. I simply say that what ever else may be true, there is no evidence that bush invaded Iraq because he waS a racist. Denying that connection does not excuse Bush, it is simply an argument against inventing hallucinatory connections.

I propose that the poster who mentioned Wilsonian policies had not much idea of what were Wilsonian policies, or the context of those policies, and that I have seen no evidence that George Bush started out with a Wilsonian perspective on foreign policy which led him to invade Iraq.

IMO it is counter productive to say "x" happened because of "y" if the two things are unrelated. And if people generally accept that "x" happened because of "y", then they stop looking for why "x" actually happened.

IMO it is beyond dispute that the invasion of Iraq was poorly planned and executed. The invasion was "sold" to the american public though propaganda, spin, misrepresented facts, etc.

What remains in dispute is what was the underlying motivation for that invasion. IMO it is worth being clear about that in order for our nation to avoid similar misadventures in the future,

This all become relevant to our current situation because we have to decide what if anything we should do about radical islamist groups around the world.

Clearly the "invade Iraq" approach has been shown to be disastrous. OTOH the pre 9-11 approach of letting AQ fester in Afghanistan has large downsides as well.

I do not think we can ever make the world "safe for democracy."
OTOH the world contains real and disturbing threats that do not become inconsequential by following a policy of ignoring those threats.

Well, I take it all back. Apparently there was a mass beheading in my neighborhood. My neighbor got out his lawn mower, and took the heads off thousands of dandelions.

Indeed. Examples include Fox News and conservative talk radio which is increasing its market dominance. These outlets push partial/incomplete/inaccurate information which then become memes for the low-information bloggers who then spread said memes further and farther afield in the sole effort to make non-conservatives look bad. This behavior is very much relished and appreciated in the Wingersphere™.

And IMO, the first among those goals is to achieve and maintain power.

Take the issues of religion, guns, abortion and gay rights. Each of those are hot button issues that are rolled out on a regular basis. My conjecture is that these are m often just expedient issues to get the public excited. These issues can be used to achieve political power, which can then be used to serve a multitude of interests which constitute the big payoff for the power structures.

Headline, Townhall: "Dan DeLion first of thousands beheded[sic] under Obama scheme to kill conservatives."

Dandelion? Townhall? Not The Onion or Daily Current?

Oh, is there a difference?

Supposedly.

Several threads have kind of blurred in my mind today so correct me if I am misunderstanding you Rick. Obama added a beheading medical code so the Supreme Court could overrule a stay of execution by some federal judge in Utah so some CIA thug named Ratso Rizzo can go ahead with plans to behead Sarah Palin and have her taxidermed body mounted on a pedastal with a perpetual fountain spraying her patriotic white t-shirt in the Oklahoma Capitol?

You got the gist how things are going here at Reader Rant at the moment. Just one quibble: That perpetual fountain - it's the fountain of youth. You be'cha.

Ahhh, so happy to see that you referenced the Want Ad for a terrorist attack.

I would love to try writing it as a Craigslist ad for grins.

This choice isn't even close: Selma Hayek or John Maynard Keynes? Are you seriously comparing the two!!??!!