Last night a liberal friend of mine (yes, l have liberal friends) posted a link to an entry on a web forum, which my friend lauded as a "a voice in the wilderness against demagogues." The entry (as has been the custom of the left over the last week) attempts to lay the blame for the Tucson massacre – and specifically the death of a nine-year old girl – at the feet of Sarah Palin. In the subsequent discussion thread below my friend’s post, my friend went on to state his concern over the lack of civility in our nation’s political conversation. With all due respect to my friend, the screed he referenced was a prime example of the kind of overemotional, unreasoning twaddle that the left side of our body politic has spewed forth since the shootings.

As Michelle Malkin points out in her column on TownhaIl.com today, in every case of an act of violence in this country over at least the last year liberal members of the media have attempted to immediately and without any factual basis whatsoever lay the blame upon conservatives, the Tea Party, talk-radio, FOX News commentators and, of course, upon the much-reviled Sarah Palin.

Why does the left persist in failed attempt after failed attempt to use this ploy to criminalize their conservative opposition? I think Michael Medved put it best in his radio show on Wednesday: a genuine (if misguided) belief in the evil of conservatives, coupled with liberals’ political self-interest. A comment by Paul Krugman in his recent New York Times Op-Ed holds the key, I think. Mr. Krugman asks:

"When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?"

I think many liberals fully expect there to be violence done by conservatives. After all, it’s what anyone who believes their opposition to be evil would expect. (And hey, it’s what the left itself does in almost every other country when they don’t get their way – see London and Greece recently. Psychological projection anyone?) However, I would also argue that there is certain segment of the liberal community here in the USA that not only believes in the evil of conservatives and expects this behavior, but who are actually counting on it – ghoulishly wishing, hoping and waiting with barely constrained eagerness for it, so they can with some nominal legitimacy paint their entire opposition as a clear and present danger to society and thereby have a pretext for criminalizing and prohibiting all with which they disagree. (Ignoring, of course, their own argument against stereotyping protected classes based on the actions of some members of said class.) Hence, every time there is an incident, they leap to their forgone conclusion. 

Take a moment and contrast the liberal response to all of the various incidents of violence listed in Malkin’s article (cited above) against the liberal response to the Fort Hood shooting. After that massacre, progressives cried for restraint, for not jumping to conclusions and actively sought to downplay the significance of Major Hassan’s clear Islamic connections and motivations. Was this because Hassan was part of one of the left’s politically "protected" classes? But that’s another post...

Back to the specifics of the post I mentioned at the opening of this writing. The aim of the article was to vent some steam and blame Sarah Palin for the deaths in Arizona, specifically assigning to Palin guilt for the death of Christina Greene, the nine-year old girl whom Loughner murdered. However, since it is glaringly obvious that neither Palin herself, nor any of her associates nor any of the people on the right being blamed actually pulled the trigger or hired Loughner to do it, a progressive propagandist cannot reasonably assign direct culpability to them.

That being the case, the next best thing would be to assign guilt by association. Unfortunately, as was revealed yesterday in an interview on Good Morning America (discussed here), one of Loughner’s former high school friends, Zach Osler, stated quite plainly that

"He (Loughner) did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right."

Kinda kills the whole "he was inspired by talk radio and FOX news" angle, huh? No association means no guilt by association. Sorry.

The only remaining strategy is to attempt to assign guilt by implication. However, even this strategy is poorly handled and the most the post in question and the rest of the leftist propagandists can do is to create a juxtaposition of specious allegations of hate-filled exhortations to violence on the part of rightwing pundits (with no unequivocal  examples) with an emotive description of the victims’ suffering, tied together in a single article with the ignominious glory and trappings of a fatuous non-sequitur.

At best the charges of the left regarding the right’s violent or hateful rhetoric rely on weak or inane examples (the "crosshairs" map, for example, which was used both by Palin in 2010 and the Democratic Leadership Council in 2004. At worst they are profoundly hypocritical (see Malkin’s article "The Progressive ‘Climate of Hate:’ An illustrated Primer, 2000-2010").

Given the poor response of the American people (a recent CBS News poll shows that 57% of Americans do not believe the liberal charges) progressives would be better served by adopting a measured, reason-and-facts-based approach. Whipping up dangerous agitprop about how the other side is engaging in dangerous agitprop is clearly not a winning formula. Moreover, it seems to be having the effect (ironically) of increasing violent hate speech. However, I fear it is likely beyond the capacity of many on the left to engage in reasoned debate, because of their tendency to emote, rather than to reason.

A favorite quote that comes to mind is "Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."   [erroneously attributed to Winston Churchill, this phrase actually originated with Francois Guisot   (1787—1874): "Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head." It was later revived by French Premier Georges Clemenceau (1841- 1929): "Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head."]

Interestingly, this bit of old, tongue—in-cheek political wisdom may be more empirically correct than previously thought. A Duke University study indicated that:

"older adults have less connectivity between an area of the brain that generates emotions and a region involved in memory and learning. But they also found that the older adults have stronger connections with the frontal cortex, the higher thinking area of the brain that controls these lower-order parts of the brain.

"Young adults used more of the brain regions typically involved in emotion and recalling memories. 

"'The younger adults were able to recall more of the negative photos,’" said Roberto Cabeza, Ph.D., senior author and Duke professor in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. lf the older adults are using more thinking than feeling, ‘that may be one reason why older adults showed a reduction in memory for pictures with a more negative emotional content.’"

This would seem to indicate that younger people tend to emote rather than to think, and would explain the kind of failed logic that attempts to find causation between two things that are both strongly perceived as negative. [Here’s where I speculate that perhaps many older liberal adults have some kind of neurological problem causing their brains fail to mature normally. ;-) ]

Science and speculation aside, there is a common logical fallacy that says because something occurs before something else, there is a causative relationship. This fallacy is called the "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc Fallacy," which translates as "after this, therefore because of this." For example: In 2011, after Sarah Palin put out a campaign strategy map "targeting" politically vulnerable congressional districts in 2010, Loughner committed his crime in one of those districts, therefore Loughner did what he did because of what Palin did. By this illogic, one could argue that any event that preceded the shooting caused it.

In any case, I’ve said my piece on the recent political shenanigans. Maybe now we can all focus on the real issues here: First, the Tucson shootings were an unmitigated tragedy, and we need to support and comfort the victims and/or their families; second, Loughner might not have committed his crime if the legal and social services system had worked, indicating a need to re-evaluate the way we legally handle obviously mentally-ill people who may pose a danger, and third, both sides (but especially the left) should stop using these events as political weapons.

I’ll close with a quote from Nick Gillespie's blog entry on Reason.com:

"I don't think that today's political rhetoric is particularly overheated or vitriolic and, even if it were, I don't think that would be a problem. I suspect that most I people are like me in that they respond to folks who actually believe in something and are willing to fight for it when it comes to a particular political issue. I don't like bipartisanship, which usually means that all of us get screwed, but it‘s easy enough to respect someone you virulently disagree with if you think they are arguing in good faith."

Hear, hear

How the Progressive Era Changed the Constitution in One Case, and Completely Ignored It in Another In Order To Ensure Progressives’ Power.

When States’ Rights Were Taken Away

Ever wonder why States’ Rights aren’t being protected?  The Progressive Era saw the Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, which provided for the direct election of senators.  The amendment supersedes Article I, § 3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, transferring Senator selection from each state's legislature to popular election by the people of each state. It also provides a contingency provision enabling a state's governor, if so authorized by the state legislature, to appoint a Senator in the event of a Senate vacancy until either a special or regular election to elect a new Senator is held.

Before the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, senators were elected by the individual state legislatures. However, problems with repeated vacant seats due to the inability of a legislature to elect senators, intrastate political struggles, and even bribery and intimidation gradually led to a growing movement to amend the Constitution to allow for the direct election of senators.

HOWEVER:  The Framers of the Constitution created a bicameral Congress primarily as a compromise between those who felt that each state, since it was sovereign, should be equally represented, and those who felt the Legislature must directly represent the People, as did the House of Commons in Britain. There was also a desire to have two Houses that could act as an internal check on each other. One was intended to be a "People's House" directly elected by the People, and with short terms obliging the Representatives to remain close to their constituents. The other, the Senate, was intended to represent the states to such extent as they retained their sovereignties not expressly delegated to the national government. The Senate is thus not intended to represent the people of the United States equally. The Constitution provides that the approval of both chambers is necessary for the passage of legislation. The Constitution stipulates that no constitutional amendment may be created to deprive a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate without that state's consent. 

How Progressive!  – let’s eliminate inefficiency by taking away the State governments’ representation, and let’s do it in the name of expanding Democracy.

Taxation Without Representation in the House

The original House consisted of 65 members, one for every 30,000 citizens. After the first census the number rose to 105, and it grew steadily as the population increased and new states were added. In 1910 Congress fixed the membership at 435, and districts are reapportioned every ten years following a new census.

Public Law 62-5, (NOT a constitutional Amendment) passed by the United States Congress on August 8, 1911, set the number of members of the United States House of Representatives at 435 effective with the 63rd Congress in 1913. It also included a provision for the addition of one seat each for Arizona and New Mexico when they became states. The number of members increased temporarily to 437 when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as states during the 86th Congress (seating one member from each of those states without changing the apportionment of the other seats), but after the 1960 census and the 1962 election, that number went back to 435.

HOWEVER:  Under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are supposed to be apportioned among the states by population, as determined by the census conducted every ten years. Each state, however, is entitled to at least one Representative. The only constitutional rule relating to the size of the House says: "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand."  

By that rule, we should have nearly 12,000 members of the House of Representatives now.  Unwieldy? You bet.  Should there be a modification (say, 1 Rep to 300,000 ≈ 1200 Reps), probably.  But with only 435 members in the House, We the People are being deliberately under-represented and entire points of view are being disenfranchised, concentrating power in the hands of a very few.  This results in taxation without representation.  Again, how Progressive!  More Congressional districts would mean more democracy, perhaps even more third party representation and the necessity for coalition government rather than only one or two party rule.

We've recently moved into our new house, and I've been searching the Internet lately for some real artwork to put up.  As my friends know, I love wolves.  However, most wolf artwork out there is (a) boring, (b) bland, (c) silly or (d) amateurish.  I must have looked at over 2000 images on Google and they all fell into one of the above categories.  Then I found Kendahl Jan Jubb's website, and I knew I'd found what I'd been seeking.   Below are some examples of her work, graciously sent me by her director of sales, Ram Murphy.

Visit the site, http://www.kendahljanjubb.com/default.htm  and if you see something you like, give Ram a call at 1-866-721-7050 toll free.  Kendahl does commissions, and also offers Giclee prints and regular prints of her work.   Since I am much too poor to afford real art, if you want to make a contribution to my art fund, I'm accepting personal checks, cashiers checks, money orders and of course, cash.   ;-)

I don't know what Kendahl's politics are, but hopefully she won't be too offended by my endorsement.

 

"Autumn Meadow"

"One Wolf"

"Autumn Wolf"

Once again, it’s been a while since I posted, and yes, I have been busy with life. However, with the firehose of stupidity coming out of Washington lately, it’s hard to have time to compose my thoughts about one outrage before there is yet another roaring down the pike at us.

I am physically nauseated every day watching the new national socialists (a.k.a., "progressives" or "Democrats" or "Republicans") move us ever closer to state corporatism. Forget Nancy “Liar, Liar Pants on Fire” Pelosi’s outrageous behavior, the President’s illegal firing of an inspector general to protect his cronies, the bed-wettingly frightening prospect of letting ACORN and Rahm Emanuel control the census, the biggest national deficit in our entire history, not as a country but as a species, the political deal to trade the safety of our troops for a hundred billion dollars we don’t have for the IMF and the media’s absolute complicity in all of it.

I want to talk about health care tonight.  Walk with me, won’t you, down the Primrose Path to our state-corporatist-socialist future.

Is or is it not true that health insurance is basically a bet with distributed risk? The insurance company (the house) collects your premium (stake), betting that you will not need a payout. Your bet is that you will. The insurance company collects the premiums of its entire client base and pays out of that pool, and takes some of the money to cover costs and to make a profit. The company also sets some rules to minimize its risk: no preexisting conditions, or higher premiums for clients with higher risks, etc.   The broad pool of clients makes for a large pool of money, facilitating the ability to cover costly procedures for what the company hopes will always be a small minority of its clients.

What the company doesn’t do very well, however, is negotiate prices for services rendered. Medical care providers, following the profit motive, will ask the highest price they think they can get. Since there is no real limit to how much can be paid, the very existence of the insurance companies inflate the price for medical care – the balance of supply and demand has shifted in favor of supply in this case.

Enter government. Against all common sense, but with the best of intentions, government decrees that health care providers must provide services to patients regardless of their ability to pay. Since the health care providers can’t bill people with no ability to pay, they recoup their costs by inflating their prices yet again so that the people who do pay through their insurance companies get stuck for a portion of the cost of caring for patients who can’t pay. It is an unofficial tax to support a social program that is levied and collected by the healthcare providers simply so they can remain in business.   Health care costs soar, premiums soar and now it is nearly impossible for anyone with a moderate income to afford health care and/or insurance.

Then government strikes again, this time with government-sponsored health (and now drug coverage) insurance like Medicare, Medicaid and TRICare. Because it’s the government and can’t be sued, the government simply says to the health care provider, “Okay, here’s what we’re willing to pay, take it or leave it.” Usually it’s only a small percentage of the actual bill, so the government stiffs the provider who has to either (1) raise their rates on everyone else to cover it, or (2) refuse to accept Medicare, Medicaid or TRICare. (That’s why so many doctors have stopped taking TRICare, leaving those patients dependent on less skilled, less-qualified or less-experienced doctors. Moreover, because of all this madness, small businesses that once could afford to pay for medical and dental insurance suddenly have to cease paying this benefit because it’s too expensive anymore, thereby adding more uninsured patients, once again increasing costs to everyone.

Now the government wants to create a single payer system. It’s not politically viable for them to say we’re taking over the health care system, so they say the government program won’t be a mandate, just an option available to people so everyone can have health insurance. (But wasn’t the creation of big health insurance programs the start of the problem to begin with? But I digress…) Oh, and by the way, to help pay for it, we’ll start taxing workers’ health care benefits. (Another Obama campaign lie). So now no small business can afford to pay the cost of insurance and the additional taxes, so the government program grows. Health insurance companies can’t compete with the efficiencies of scale that government has, so they quietly go bankrupt and out of business. 

Now we’re stuck with a huge government program and what will amount to the defense contractors of health care who will bid for government contracts. Since the government will determine what it is willing to pay, and because everyone will be on the health care dole by then, every hospital will look like Walter Reed: understaffed, with vast waiting rooms and horrible wait times. Forget nipping out for a couple of hours to see your doctor – you’re there for the day, baby, and that after waiting six months or more just to get an appointment.

Since the government won’t pay as well as they should, the skilled and qualified physicians will probably quit, leaving the field open to lesser doctors, increasing the risks of incompetence and malpractice. Can’t really blame the doctors, though. As Dr. Sanity put it on June 13th:

"I will simply not practice medicine anymore. I will take my psychiatry books and my years of experience and do something else. I used to wait tables when I was in college. It's an honest living and Obama isn't interested for the time being in nationalizing restaurants--yet.

"Let me be clear. I don't believe that people have a "right" to health care; because, what advocating such a "right" basically means is that you believe you have a "right" to my mind; you have a "right" to my professional competence; i.e., you have a "right" to enslave me."

In fact once you declare that health care is a “right,” you have declared it to be a “public good” like national defense. In that case, the only model that makes sense is to create a National Healthcare Service Corps, probably under the Department of Health, that is run the same way that the military services are and with the same corporate infrastructure to back it up – pharmaceutical and medical equipment labs vs. weapons labs. Now in addition to the military-industrial complex, you’ll be able to add a medical-industrial complex that’s just as inefficient and just as dependent upon and wasteful of trillions of taxpayer dollars as the lefties always want to accuse the DoD of being.

Personally I say screw ‘em. Lets do away with government health care programs and massive health insurance companies that do nothing except create a feeding frenzy for the corporate healthcare industry that inflates costs beyond all reason. ($12 for a couple of Tylenol? $350,000 or more for a month in hospital?) Let’s see what happens when we re-introduce actual market forces. Maybe, just maybe we’d get more healthcare professionals and more and better care rather than the rationing that will surely accompany a single-payer government-run system.

(Hat Tip to Michelle Malkin for the picture.)

On April 1, 2008, the CEO/Primary Director of Breath of Hope, Inc., (hereafter referred to simply as Mrs. Propst, due to an "anonymous" complaint about my earlier having used her full name, despite the fact that her full name appears on many other sites, including her own http://www.breathofhopeinc.com/about.html) filed a trademark request with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to own the rights to the phrase “Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness” and a logo of a turquoise ribbon. This request was initially denied. It was resubmitted without the logo and went onto the supplemental registry on September 17, 2008. Preceding and following this registration, Breath of Hope, Inc. filed complaints and sent threatening correspondence to other Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH) support organizations and families who used the term “Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness.”

This story has received little press, apart from some coverage on BoingBoing and TechDirt. (Hey, Wired Danger Room! Still worried about the Pentagon’s mind control rays? Why don’t you lose the tinfoil hat once in a while, Noah.)

A few words about Mrs. Propst. Mrs. Propst sadly lost her daughter to complications arising from a CDH in 1999. She then volunteered at CHERUBS, one of the first online communities for parents coping with the effects of CDH on a child, and seemed to be just what the organization was looking for. Soon however, her increasingly erratic behavior led to a series of conflicts that began to affect the entire CHERUBS online community. Mrs. Propst eventually quit the CHERUBS community, but bizarrely, she began attempting to reenter the site under a variety of alias personas. She has generally been unceasing in her attempts to attack the CHERUBS website, even going so far as to hire “professional” hackers to carry out denial of service and malware attacks. You can read more about the whole sordid mess here.

The latest outrage is, as noted above, an attempt to copyright a phrase commonly in use. Her rationale is as follows:

“Breath of Hope, Incorporated has been criticized for the trademark which was done to protect the campaign from being marketed by Corporate America. What Breath of Hope did was have the foresight to make sure that the families and children who have been affected by CDH are not being profited on and the funds raised through the Awareness Campaign will go to education, research and possibly a cure one day. In order to use marks from a company, individual or an organization – you can obtain license to do so. This is to protect the mark. When other nonprofits request the use of the mark the license and guidelines will explain how it is to be used so Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness® doesn’t go the way of pinkwashing. Any other non-profit out there that benefits families, encourages research or truly makes a difference for this birth defect that occurs just as often as Spina Bifida, Cystic Fibrosis and Downs Syndrome will freely obtain a license which will protect this campaign and those that have been affected by congenital diaphragmatic hernia the birth defect.”

Ooooh! Watch out – Corporate America is out to screw over disabled children! Thank goodness we have someone like Mrs. Propst to protect us all. <Sarcasm off.> Just who is she to determine what organizations are worthy enough to be “licensed?” Based on her “Fatal Attraction”-type behavior, do you think CHERUBS will get a license? Somehow I doubt it, just as I doubt that any “licenses” she deigns to grant will be “free” in any sense of the word.

On December 4, 2008, CHERUBS filed a “Petition to Cancel” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office against the trademark “Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness”. According to the website:

”It is our goal, along with 7 other CDH organizations and over 4000 CDH families and medical care providers who signed an on-line petition, that this trademark be canceled so that all people affected by Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia be able to raise awareness without the threat of lawsuits. Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia is a severe, and often deadly, birth defect that affects over 1600 babies each year in the United States alone and it would be extremely detrimental for one person or organization to dictate who can raise awareness for this birth defect. Because threats and complaints have been filed in the past and recently by Breath of Hope, Inc against organizations and persons using the term “Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness”, we felt that we had no choice but to stand up for CDH families and to fight for their rights to raise awareness.

”It is our sincere hope that the United States Patent and Trademark Office will see that it is in society’s best interest to cancel this trademark. We also hope that Breath of Hope, Inc and <<First Name Omitted Due to "Anonymous" request and LJ Policy>> Propst will refrain from any further attempts to harm members of the CDH community and will handle this matter in a mature, professional, non-vindictive and compassionate manner and put CDH families and their awareness rights first and foremost – as should be the behavior of any non-profit organization for families affected by Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia.”

As you may have guessed (and those of you who know me already know), we have a child who is a CDH survivor; therefore this whole situation is somewhat personal for us, and many others. In fact, my wife and I were recently banned from the CHERUBS website, despite over four years of membership simply because our IP addresses are geolocated closely with Mrs. Propst’s (we recently moved). Her unceasing attacks – despite several restraining orders and charges of cyberstalking - on the CHERUBS site are definitely having an affect: mostly on people innocently seeking community in face of grief or mortal fear for their child; people trying to come to grips with what seems like the gross unfairness of fate. Mrs. Propst should be ashamed of herself. She is not the first, last or only parent to lose a child to CDH, and her bid to copyright a commonly used phrase is nothing but sheer malignant narcissism and greed.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I’m sorry about that.  Life intervenes, and we often lack all the time we would like – at least if we’re working for our family’s betterment instead of voluntarily sitting on our butt waiting for that support check.

All that aside, I saw a couple of items today that I had to post about. The first just for the sheer, jaw dropping surrealism, and the second because it’s the first ray of hope for America I’ve seen since November.

Item 1: From the American Thinker

“Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.

“’In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,’ Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“’In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.’

“Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, ‘Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.’

“Putin also echoed the words of conservative maverick Ron Paul when he said, ‘we must assess the real situation and write off all hopeless debts and ‘bad’ assets. True, this will be an extremely painful and unpleasant process. Far from everyone can accept such measures, fearing for their capitalization, bonuses, or reputation. However, we would “conserve” and prolong the crisis, unless we clean up our balance sheets.’

I mean, what the hell kind of through-the-looking-glass world have we fallen into?

Item 2: Rick Santelli Rant on CNBC

 Select Transcript:
 

“The government is promoting bad behavior. We certainly don’t want to put stimulus forth and give people a whopping $8 or $10 in their check and think that they ought to save it.

“And in terms of modifications, I tell you what. I have an idea. The new administration is big on computers and technology. How about this,  President and new administration?

 “Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages? Or would they like to at least buy cars, buy houses in foreclosure … give it to people who might have a chance to actually prosper down the road and reward people that can carry the water instead of drink the water?

“This is America!

“How many people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage, who has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?

“Raise your hands!

“President Obama, are you listening?

“You know Cuba used to have mansions and a relatively decent economy. They moved from the individual to the collective....Now they’re driving ‘54 Chevys.

 ...
 

“It’s time for another tea party.

 ...
 

“What we are doing in this country will make Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin roll over in their graves.”

? Where do I sign up? (Of course it would be Chicago, not Boston, and Lake Michigan, not Boston Harbor, and dumping …?  instead of tea…)

Cult of Personality (2009 update)

(With Apologies to Living Color)

Look in my eyes, what do you see?
The Cult of Personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you want to be
I’m the Cult of Personality

Like Mussolini, (not Kennedy)
I’m the Cult of Personality
The Cult of Personality
The Cult of Personality

Neon lights, a Nobel Prize
When a mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You don’t "have" to follow me
Only you can set me free

I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your T.V.
Oh, I’m the Cult of Personality

I exploit you, still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three
Oh, I’m the Cult of Personality

Like Joseph Stalin, (not Ghandi)
I’m the Cult of Personality
The Cult of Personality
The Cult of Personality

Neon lights, a nobel prize
When a leader speaks, that leader lies
You don’t "have" to follow me
Only you can set you free

You gave me fortune
You gave me fame
You me power in your God’s name
I’m every person you need to be
I’m the Cult of Personality

I’m the Cult of

I’m the Cult of

I’m the Cult of

I’m the Cult of

I’m the Cult of
Personality