GOP And Taxes

Just to get people to think about just how damn difficult this tax and budget business is going to get, I'd like to propose this:
Getting the GOP to agree to tax increases on the rich and not gutting social security and medicaid/medicare is like trying to get a Fundamentalist Christian to acknowledge Evolution or one of you to become an entirely different religion.

You are not dealing with facts and numbers here, you're dealing with a religion.  You can't go so far as to call it an ideology because of the faith backed nature of it.  Listen up, the Earth was not created six thousand years ago and supply side economics does not work.  Neither of them works because they ignore reality and facts in favor of faith.  Now why in the hell supply side has become a religion is way beyond me, but then Creationism is also.  Now I suppose that since there have been a couple books around for thousands of years that talked about the Garden there is some damned excuse for Creationism still being around, but for Cripes Sake this supply side nonsense only has St Ronnie, not God on its side.

None of that matters because it still is a religion and pushing the GOPers out of it is going to take a hell of a lot more than being nice to them.  What it is going to take is a choice between damnation and survival - most of them are way too big of cowards to chose martyrdom.  Now, you figure out what that is going to take.  Mr President and fellow Dems?

Really Mr Rather? Paul Ryan Isn't Who You Thought He Was?

I watched with a certain amount of disbelief as Dan Rather blurted out something I considered rather unobservant on Rachel Maddow's 9/10 Show... words to the effect that he was astonished that Paul Ryan has done so poorly in television and other interviews.  Rachel in a rather nice way tuned Dan up.  She pointed out to him some of what I'm about to go off on.

Paul Ryan is exactly as much of an intellect as you could expect from someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously once out of puberty... or high school, anyhow.  This ought to be a starting point for anyone talking about Ryan's abilities.  Ayn Rand's writings are about stoking the testosterone fueled imaginings of superiority over 'the other' - the ones who don't run things and just do.  You are aware of 'just do' - they cook your food, they build your house, they clean your house or others houses, they don't get the big bucks and they don't get their pictures in the 'nice' magazines.  Worker bees.  Not one goddam cent the Ayn Rand Superiors have is generated by their own sweat and blood - some pissant worker bee makes the things and gets them their income and those folks are disposable, they are "the takers."  They're takers because they make the shit and buy the shit and want to get paid something for it and they're not grateful to the great men who'd as soon they starved while they work.  If they don't work thanks to the decisions of their betters then they can just starve, or if they can't work because they got dealt a real shitty hand - they should have found a better dealer - like running mate Mitt did.  It is a simplistic world where force and influence are all that matters and where the only consequences are when the truly great are inconvenienced - only a very limited intellect would be impressed.  That is for starters.

Paul Ryan has "shone" within the simplified world of the conservative media and amongst his similarly minded and within a pissant CD in the same state where Michelle Bachman has prospered in a similar venue.  Results are quite understandably different when the surroundings aren't composed of his friends and sycophants and include people who are willing to look at a record and analyze talking points policy.  Wanting something to be so does not make a four hour plus marathon into a sub-three hour one and it does not make the fevered imaginings of Ayn into workable policy and it doesn't make ideology into goddam mathematics.  The real rules of the world say that you can't make money in to match money out without actually doing it - ideology be damned.  The real world says that you can't make rape into several other things without really pissing off anyone who gives a damn about women and after you've tried to do it you don't get to claim it is all a misunderstanding.  Some people pay attention to these things and will question it outside Janesville WI and the GOP House Caucus. 

Why the hell Dan Rather is surprised that a pip-squeak ideologue doesn't do well when challenged on his bullshit is way beyond me.  Paul Ryan's ideas have been in full view for some time and they've not been misrepresented and they stink in practical terms.  To put it simply - they are in practice stupid, if ideologically sound.  Paul Ryan has to deny that a vote for Sequestration was a vote for Sequestration and do it in front of people who say, "What the hell?"  This is from the Party that accused John Kerry of flip-flopping for voting differently on two different variations of a Bill.  Paul says he did it to force a better deal... he voted for what he voted for outcomes be damned and wants to pass that off as principled action.  Yes, he thought he was playing hostage taker just as those GOPers thought the rest of their Debt Ceiling hostage taking was a good idea - real world outcomes be damned.

The unexplainable doesn't get explained by Paul Ryan and Dan Rather is surprised.  When you try to do things that make no damned sense at all it is real hard to make it sensible, or even make sensible responses to questions about them.  The measure of an intellect is not the ability to parrot stupidity and pass it off as policy, the measure of intellect is an ability to face reality and do a somewhat good job of matching your desires to it and working within its constraints.  Buying the idiotic punditry that making stupid policy involves nerve and out-of-the-box-thinking is asking to be disappointed or astonished that its object can't live up to its billing.  An actual intellect knows how to adapt and innovate and improvise in the face of conditions, not hew to wishful thinking that things will just work because it wants them to.

Paul Ryan is a chimera of the right and the teabaggers, not anything more and his resolute stupidity is going to cost the GOPers for uplifting it into something is doesn't in the least resemble.  And yes, they deserve anything they get for it... and if the electorate buys into it, well hell, then we'll get what we as a nation deserve and too bad for those who knew better...  

Teabaggery Newsflash - Sorta

Yes, I mock these people fairly often. They are quite possibly the most hypocritical political outfit in existance. Um, and gee - they are the GOP base and have been right along. If you've been in doubt, somehow, this outfit actually asked.

Well now, how the hell do you like that? They white, they're the X-tian Right, and they're homophobes. Do you remember the 22% who backed GeorgeII to the bitter end?

Threat From The Right?

June 16th at 7PM ET Chris Matthews will host "Rise Of The New Right." You get to hear a lot these days about "the new right" and how it is flexing its muscles. Oh noes...

Let's just back this runaway train up a bit. The Teabaggers seem to be polling at around 22-27% of the electorate. Does that number sound a bit familiar? It ought to, go back to the nadir of BushCo polling and you'll find that 22% number for their support. If you consider that somewhere around that percentage wanted a bunch of BushCo leaving town in orange jumpsuits and chains ... well hell.

The more pictures and film and ink spilled on the Teabaggers the noisier they got and the higher their profile. It was a given that the Rush and Beck fans would take this crap seriously but it became a theme for MSM and it is ludicrous. More people demonstrated against the Iraq War and ... well it certainly didn't get a year and some's daily coverage. Be under no illusion, had media ignored the 'baggers there'd have been hell to pay with screams about the liberal media bias. OK. It just seems as though some kind of sense of proportion ought to be present.

Go ahead and tell these "journalists" they're just aping Glenn Beck and listen to their denials ... then laugh your ass off.

Rats In Teabaggery

Which one of you did this?

[R]ecent Tea Party people who allegedly denounced a Parkinson’s patient or spat at gay and black congressmen might well have been agents. Offensive signs might be Made in DC too. Next might come calls for violence by alleged Tea Party types, and perhaps acts, which can be used to suppress dissent. Peaceful resistance is not only right, it is all that works, unless you are with the state. If anyone urges the use of violence, the state’s characteristic action, he is probably an agent.

It isn't as though they're ridiculous enough without help. Oddly enough the Columbus, OH Parkinson's mocker portrays himself as an ordinary guy who "snapped." The State sure better come up with some better provocateurs.

I'm still waiting for one of their planks to call for the head of those responsible for the BushCo egregious assaults on civil liberties in the name of terrorism... How about maybe financial reform? Nah - instead they're the tools of the GOP as it sticks it to the ordinary guy.
Damn, Balloon Juice beats me again...

The Tea-liban, Al Teada? Cantor Update

There aren't many of you who will read this that don't know I think Teabaggery is mainly composed of stupid ideas. I can't help that they espouse ideas that have nothing to do with reality. I can't help that it is apparent that there is a strong current of racism in their "Party." I can't help that some of their members use violent and abusive language and images.

What this also doesn't mean is that all of or even most of the people who adhere to the stupid ideas of Teabaggery are violent racists. That brush is entirely too wide for the stroke that needs to be made. Something their leaders and GOP fellow travelers need to think about is that extreme rhetoric doesn't just amp up enthusiasm; it also gives a green light to nut cases. Fear is a great motivator and it does tamp down critical thinking - but it also scares people with a light grasp on reality.

The problem is that the narrow success they've had with fear will dissuade them from looking at what the outcomes are. They will point to the actions of idiots and nuts as isolated cases and ignore that their fear mongering justified those people in their own minds. The examples provided by so many diminished the distance between lunacy and accepted behavior. How much distance is there between Boehner's own statements on the House floor to spitting, throwing bricks and cutting gas lines ... or far worse.

The First Amendment allows them to make stupid, inaccurate, and inflammatory statements, just as it allows me to call them fellow travelers of terrorists.

***Update***

Rep Eric Cantor says that his office was shot at. That would be horrifyingly dangerous and stupid behavior - if true. The problem is that I can find no reference to it other than Cantor's and the other is that guns do get fired in cities and bullets do travel, so whether Cantor's office was a target could be open to question. I would find a brick through my window infuriating and a bullet hole terrifying. Whatever your ideology it is simply wrong and dangerous.

As for the equivalency argument bullshit, c'mon - liberal or left "leaders" are not running around using violent racist lying rhetoric. I'm real sorry GOPers and Teabaggers, that rhetoric is coming from you. At some point that crap is going to make somebody's life very bad and you'll just stick your fingers in your ears and go, "Lalalalalala."

***Updated Update***
Damn Cantor you lying sack (misrepresenting) here is the relevant police report. I'm a Democrat (oooh he owns guns) and not anyone I know that knows a bit about guns and bullets would misunderstand what the visible evidence meant. So, he is either ignorant as a post, stupid as a box of rocks, or he's a lying sack of .... oh that's right, GOP.