This is the second day lately we’ve awakened to a light, slightly crunchy frosting on the ground.
I don’t know whether it’s a light snow or a heavy frost. I do know the lawn drinks it like Birthers chug Insane-O-Tea®. You want a solid argument against evolution, these folks are your poster children. Chimps look at these asshats, shake their heads and say, “I ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.”
Mad Blog Media 
You have to wonder, why does the Republican party and the Tea Party hate America?
After years of pondering I can not discern a rational basis for the direction they continue to force the national conversation. The reluctance to address issues with more than denial and lies and obstruction serves only to weaken us and reduces our personal freedoms.
I love this country, but I am worn down with frustration and anger at their behavior. Which they exhibit even towards as innocuous a public institution as the local public library.
Maybe fluoridation of the water was a bad idea?
Ben, what they really are is an Infantile Party: Titty for me, but not for thee.
For all their supposed love of the so-called free market, they don’t seem to grasp the notion of TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As a Free Lunch). If you want roads, cops, firefighters, schools, hospitals, libraries, courts, prisons, health departments, DMVs, well … some poor schlub has to pay the freight.
“Not I,” said the TeaBagger.
“Well, fuck ya, then,” said the little red hen. “You don’t get to eat the delicious bread I baked. You can eat shit, is what. Now piss off.”
I think the Tea Party is just a warmed-over version of the KKK. They don’t want anybody (except themselves of course) to get ANYTHING from the government and they don’t want to pay ANY taxes that might get spent on those non-white folks. The Repuglicans need ’em to have any chance of taking power away from the Democrats. But they’ve made a classic “deal with the devil” when a guy like Mitt Romney ranks near the bottom of the Repuglican prez polls and nut-jobs like Palin and Bachmann are near the top. The upcoming debates to select a candidate will be crazier than the ones with Bush, Forbes, Bauer, Keyes and the other screwballs back in 2000…remember when most of ’em declared Jesus as their favorite philosopher? It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad to see the party of Lincoln controlled by this group of selfish morons.
Just wrote the check to Iowa for the taxes. I’m reminded of this quotation, “I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.”
They must not want civilization.
IIRC the two parties flip philosophies and bases of support around the time of TDR.
Here is a most excellent little piece on the folks that like to dress up like them good old founders –
Poor Jane’s Almanac
Yup – I want things just like they used to be… You bet’cha.
In the words of a great person from the past: “I don’t think about things I don’t think about.”
Larry T said it all.
Did y’all hear how the Atlas Shrugged movie is stinking it up at the box office? I think Roger Ebert said it best, that it’s not so much a huge sign of the political times as much as a miscalculation by making a movie for people who don’t go to see movies.
But it’s still kinda funny that in this particular point in American history, no one wants to see the most libertarian movie in ages.
I kinda sorta a little bit like Ayn Rand as a provocateur. But there’s an unintentional irony in basing the philosophy of objectivism on an observation that never actually happened. There just is no evidence that anyone of importance ever stopped working because he felt his work was undervalued or over-taxed. Granted, lots of people get to a certain level of rich-ness and comfort and stop working, and lots of people get fed up with their business and stop working. And lots of folks (beating him to the punch, I’ll say, our dear host here at the Dog Patch) never started working in the first place. But for Rand’s theory to hold water, these people need to be of value to society, and society must suffer when they pull themselves from the work force.
So what we have here is a neat little theory, backed up by zero observable evidence. Sound familiar?
That, in a nutshell, is our biggest problem right now. Lots of folks have theories, and lots of folks are on their soap box shouting at the clouds. But if you’re actually serious about your theory or ideas, you’ll do one of the following. You’ll go to school, get an economics degree, write a paper on it, and let your peers tear it apart. Or you’ll start a business that follows your model and see how it goes. Or you’ll run for office and implement your theories and then document the results. Or you’ll do any number of things that involve two key ingredients: observable data and real work. Not shouting from the TV or radio. Not talking out of your ass. Not pointing fingers and calling everyone who doesn’t agree with you an enemy.
We’re just not a serious people. Not sure if we ever were, but we’re definitely not right now. And for whatever reason, we allow non-serious people to take themselves too seriously by giving them a forum and audience.
I don’t have anything against anyone who wants to come up with a hair-brained solution* for our problems. The more ideas, the better, and the only way to have good ideas is to have a few crazy ones so the good ones stand out. But you don’t pick the good ideas by identifying the people who scream the loudest. You identify the good ones by looking at the data. And that’s where the Tea Party falls flat on their face. They hate the government, but you’d better not touch their Medicare. The deficit is our #1 concern, but don’t think about raising taxes anywhere to help pay it down. And they refuse to acknowledge the 9,999 good things the government does, all because of a couple of things that don’t go their way.
* Hair-brained: proof that bald people are smarter. Otherwise, a kooky idea would be called “skin-brained.”
By the way, pretty sure the existence of the Tea Party is proof that both evolution and intelligent design are flawed theories.
I tried to find it on youtube without success; but apparently Chris Rock was on Oprah the other day saying how the Tea Party is behaving just like children before their bedtime. Needless to say, it was hilarious.