The funny thing is people think there's something ironic. As OA said there's trouble in progressiveland if people don't rally behind whoever is supposedly the progressive leader, regardless of the facts. There's trouble in conservative land in the 90s if consevatives don't want to cut Medicare to save it, expand in the 00s, and then protest president Obama cutting it in the 10s. The issues, the theory goes, don't really matter. There are two teams who pick a leader, and then we just mindlessly follow even if it's inconsistent with past positions. We should be out in the streets protesting President Bush's expanded powers in the name of fighting extremism and then finding some tortured logic to support President Obama doing the same thing.

All of this is convenient if you're running for office and facing the realities of winning elections in the real world where people have other things to pay attention to in life and don't focus as much as they do. It's not a conspiracy. It's just a line of nonsense that happens to work. When someone just focuses on facts it seems ironic. There is supposed to be a menu of ideas and you must pick one package or the other, no a la carte. The items on the menu change, but you keep ordering from the same package regardless of what items find their way there. This narrative works for running for office, but intelligent people should see right through it.

He's finally getting afraid of the snowball he helped to push downhill. Too bad that he couldn't see one of the effects of his thinking until it started to gnaw away at everybody's freedom including his. What he didn't see was the result of what he preached until he perceived it was actually going to affect him.

President Obama's approval ratings did not fall because conservatives lost hope. He has alienated the left wing of his party, the true progressives, leaving him the centerist power structure. Noam Chomsky is not our favorite person, but in the context of his place in progressive thought and action in our time, he has been a senior theoretician. His essay on "manufactured consent" remains an important warning.

I agree with him that even George Orwell couldn’t predicted the totalitarian future that lies ahead.
On a side note: I have been thinking a lot lately about the polio vaccine mission (scam) this administration used to obtain DNA in Afghanistan in it’s hunt for Bin Laden. While it’s the sort of creative espionage that would have impressed the likes of Gen. Donovan, I have to wonder whether the idea originated for that purpose or if it stopped there? Remember the first thing that Kathy Sibelius tried to do when she was first appointed as Health and Human Service Secretary: she tried to garner support for an unpopular idea of a nationwide mandatory flu shot program. Remember? I remember thinking at the time she was being rather forceful about it--almost as if it was a WH priority. Something to think about.

Hello Ob1,
One issue where most agree. The primary exceptions being the big government types, owing their existence and dependent upon said behemoth. You know there is trouble in progressiveland when you lose Chomsky. If only the issue was as funny as the Monty Python skit you linked to...
Respectfully,
O.A.

Hi, thanks to all for the interesting commentaries. Time constraints due to work, will have to forgo more in depth replies. Not that current events are ' funny,' they aren't. However I find it helpful to laugh at the constant absurdities in order to keep perspective and dissolve the illusion they are wrapped in- that which presents as "news" of any given cycle- in general it all begins to seem like some over the top satire from thepeoplescube, except that it's what is happening- whether the Bergdahl 5 debacle, the VA debacle, border dumping, Federal vs Arizona, Federal land grabs, the SSRI inhibitor pharmie( unreported aspect) unhinged shooting of the week, Benghazi, Fast and Furious arms scandal etc etc, or most any pronouncement from the likes of 0HillPelosiReidKerry et al. As usual, somehow in Groupthink whatever it is, will eventually be ascribed to ' Booshfault" in 5, 4, 3....

A few quotes to consider-

“The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.” -H.L. Mencken

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. "— Winston Churchill

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. — C.S. Lewis

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, 1798

‘Determined To Demolish The Foundations Of Our Civil Liberties’

Ya think?

Noam Chomsky proves that a broken clock tells the correct time exactly twice every twenty-four hours. That shows the broken clock is consistent.