As IF Times

link Pelosi: Dems have ‘very good chance’ of retaking House – On Politics: Covering the US Congress, Governors, and the 2010 Election – USATODAY.com.

It seems there is an endless supply of Kool Aid.  The best way to characterize Ms. Pelosi is that she is the alter ego of Harold Camping, he of course from the ‘end of the world’ campaign.  While Camping  exhorts people to repent and be saved when the end finally comes, Ms. Pelosi essentially exhorts people to just carry on being idiots and then their gang will regain the House. 

Undeterred by the havoc that her reign in office caused to the American people, she blithely insists that the tidal wave of economic and social destruction swamping the nation is actually clearing the decks for a resumption of her party to a majority in government.  Ms. Pelosi seems to think that people will buy into the economic theory embraced by the liberal Democrats that if you spend enough money, all the bills will be paid off.  She shares the same delusional view as an eighty year old stripper about her job prospects.  Sure there’s optimism, but there’s also an annoying  thing called reality.   As stated before many times here, anyone is free to say what they want in a free society.  What is puzzling is the audience that these crazies capture.  It’s Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football played out in real life.  It dawns on me that a very large segment of society will  keep lunging for the football knowing full well they’re going to miss.   How is this any different from Harold Camping’s followers who, in the absence of any kind of evidence, buy into his version of reality?

Aha, so that’s the secret.  Tap into your particular constituency and market it in a big way.  No matter how far from the earth’s orbit your ideas may be, there will always be an audience that will embrace you as an omniscient savant.   If not for the fact that the kind of demagoguery that Pelosi practices is dangerous, it would be extremely farcical.  There’s great irony in a party which preaches togetherness and kumbaya, but then identifies and categorizes groups in society that are ‘more equal’ than others.  Theirs is the world of have versus have not, race versus race and us versus them.   As a pundit on a talk show recently commented, Pelosi and her ilk are fostering a society where “earning money doesn’t entitle you to it, but wanting it does”. Combine this with a media that is unable to determine where the line separating right from wrong or what constitutes truth versus lies and you have as a result, the cultural zeitgeist that we are in today. 

That Pelosi can still be considered a legitimate spokesman for the incumbents despite the calamitous last 3 years is truly a credit to her…I guess.  It’s as if she was shopping for wallpaper after the house has burned down.  But we should note that Harold Camping still has an audience too.

link Its not the end of the world when doomsday prophets get it wrong | World news | The Guardian.

There was no point in putting in the effort to comment about this until the fateful moment had passed.  So whew, here we are. Preacher Harold Camping was wrong.  Again. Good news for us.  Bad news for those who stopped bathing, brushing their teeth and who recently took out big loans.   It’s easy to dismiss this recent call for the apocalypse as just another quack job by some fringe nuts.  Until you read about how much money had been spent spreading the fear and the amount of people involved in the doomsday publicity.  From some accounts, over a hundred million dollars was spent to publicize the end of the world, not to mention the untold numbers of followers, new and old.

To most rational people, the level of interest in the campaign must have been a mystery.  Really?  One person was endowed  with the ability to foresee the future, or at least the end of the present?  As preposterous as this seems, how is it any different than any other religion?  Notwithstanding Stephen Hawking’s ruminations, whether  there’s a heaven or a hell may be up for debate, but it may be prudent to hedge your bets.  In the case of some faiths which promise a fixed number of virgins upon death, that claim may be iffier.  Certainly it would be discouraging for the women of that faith.

Still, even more preposterous is the idea that killing certain groups of people in real life will ingratiate you to the supreme poo bah in the next.  But in matters of faith, it’s hard to belittle anything that may give people structure and comfort.  Faith happens to be one of the good traits of human nature.

On the other hand, it’s hard to explain willful stupidity.  In matters of faith, proof is elusive.  In matters of ideology, the evidence is easier to discern.  At the moment, the ideological battle going on for the hearts and minds of the  U.S. voter being waged in the media  has never been more laughable.  Infinitely more stupid than the Rapture claims are the utterances from some media personalities who mysteriously still have jobs.  One of the more recent doozies is from Bill Maher, whose tenuous grip on sanity is slim indeed.  According to Maher, the GOP want a “misogynist, racist and homophobic presidential candidate”.   Hmm.  According to Democratic ads in support of the despised Obamacare program, Republicans want to dump grandma off her wheelchair over a cliff.  And how can we forget the articulate Alan Grayson who stated that the Republican solution to the health crisis is for people to die.  MSNBC talking head Dylan Ratigan says that Republican rhetoric is “based on abandonment of arithmetic and fact”.   According to an AFL-CIO union stooge named Damon Silvers, “republicans literally deny clothing to foster kids to give rich people tax cuts”.  We’re on watch now to see which GOP candidate will be accused of eating babies and small dogs. These are only some of the well known  loons that cater to the contingent of idiots who believe their pearls of wisdom…despite all evidence to the contrary.

Like the Rapture preacher, people are free to say whatever they want in a free society.  And like the Rapture congregation, people can believe what or whom they like when it comes to the media.  However, the sheer scale of naivete at best or stupidity at worst is frightening.  Even more frightening, they all get to vote.  Oy.