It's not easy being Green. Or Tea.

You know, to be entirely serious, i do feel bad for the Teabaggers whenever they issue one of their "clarion calls" or "calls to arms."  Things aren't going well for them, and they're stuck in the classic splinter-party conundrum.  They want to abandon the GOP and go third party, except they know that this will forever shunt them off to the third-party ghetto where they'll never win another election.  Third parties don't even get invited to debates -- that's messed up.  They'd rather stay inside the GOP and take it over -- but are stymied by the larger number of centrists and moderates who resist the glorious purification.  Hell, any Republican who can do simple math knows that they'd be in control of the Senate right now, if not for the likes of Christine O'Donnell and Todd Akin.  So what do they do now?  I mean, how long are they going to have to wait to see real change?  They've been at this for, what, at least three years now?

Sadly, they may have a bit longer to go.  Look, guys, have you ever heard of the Green Party, or Ralph Nader?  People on my side have been disillusioned and dissatisfied for ages.  Back when you teadrinkers were happily lining up at the trough and voting for Bush, we were screaming that neither of the two parties represented OUR interests.  We wished that the Democratic Party was a true liberal party that would take drastic action against corporate malfeasance, make bold moves to improve the environment, decrease the size and the scope of the military, allow full rights to gays, and hey -- decriminalize drugs!  Any moral person can see that the Drug War is senseless and evil!

See?  We've barely scratched the surface on those issues.  A Green Party activist who's been plugging away for 25 years can look back and say, well, at least we have gay marriage?  Legal weed in two states?

The struggle goes on.

So teabaggers, be patient and keep at it.  You've got a long road ahead.  Things might look better in a few decades if you don't lose hope.  For now, you're going to have to accept that Chris Christie or Jeb Bush is going to be your nominee in 2016, rather than Rand Paul or Ted Cruz. 

Also, we must accept the loss of Christine O'Donnell.  Gosh, she was cute.

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Methods in the Mouth of the Mountain of Madness

Most of my friends and acquaintances look at the teabaggers and the actions of individuals like Ted Cruz, and ask "are these people insane?"

And i tell them -- perhaps.  Perhaps they are.  But there is a method to their madness.  You have to delve into their thinking and see the big picture that exists inside their mental minds!  It goes something like this...

We hate America as it is.  We desire a new America.  We long for a massive structural collapse or other catastrophe to completely snap the spine of the nation.  If such an event happens, Washington DC will simply go away.  The President and Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will all get on planes and fly away to France and the states will be left to fend for themselves.  The Red States, being full of fertile farmland and virtuous people, will thrive.  The Blue States, which have no natural resources and are populated by moochers and leeches whose only occupation is to "move money around" and fiddle with weird technology that no one really needs, will become impoverished hellholes.  And any smartypants losers from those states who escape the hordes of looting blacks and rioting Mexicans will have to beg our forgiveness before we allow them to enter our Red Utopias.  Ha, ha, not so smart now, are you, city man?  Who's your daddy!

Am i exaggerating?  Hardly.  They sit around their little blogs and daydream of exactly this, and they say things like...

"My secessionist energies are devoted to a free Cascadia. From San Fran to British Columbia on the Western side. More than enough food and resources. Ports for trade, travel and fish, and the natural protections afforded by mountain ranges. Politically, farther left than blue could ever hope to be – bioregionalism at its finest.  I’m getting to this late – but why would redtopia not sell food to bluistan? Pre-schism trade relationships would likely still exist, and trade is probably a better deal than economic/social isolationism."

"When the alternative is to sell to people who have nothing but demands, and those funny green pieces of paper, I think they would sell to anyone who actually has the money. The blue areas won’t have that money, because they will have no wealth to back it up.  Wealth is not those little green pieces of paper, that’s just money, useful for trade, but not backed by anything but the promises of a government that is about to collapse. Wealth is arable land. Wealth is energy. Wealth is potable water. Those blue areas are notoriously short on all three.  You keep thinking that US currency will be worth anything by that time. I imagine the Weimar Republic thought the same thing."

No matter how many times i read such slop, i never stop being amazed at it.

 Glossing over the ridiculous simplicity of reducing states to geographic stereotypes, let's imagine the other more plausible scenarions that would occur before this daydream could materialize.

-- If the US does indeed suffer an economic collapse on some unprecedented scale, we'd see some sort of default/bailout in the international arena.  While i'm no American Exceptionalist, i do recognize that there are nations -- China, for one -- who can't afford to see the US reduced to a bucolic farming community.  The US would limp on, worse than before, but it would remain intact.

-- If ever did get past some point of no return, Washington DC and the central power structure would not "go away," and more than Moscow did after the fall of the USSR.  If the presidency and the Constitution became null and void, they would almost undoubtedly be replaced by some sort of regime that would exercise even MORE dreaded Federal authority than the government we have now.  The impulse to hold the nerve center together at the cost of extraneous limbs is hard to overcome.  We would not have pure freedom, we'd have true tyranny for the first time.

-- There would be no hand-to-hand Civil War that the gun nuts and NRA boosters dream of.  Government agents would not go house-to-house to try to seize your ramen and your bullets.  No, we'd have more of a situation where the General in Charge of the Interior would demand that the North Dakotan oil would continue to flow as it should, else suffer some light bombing runs.  Just because the Constitution trumpets the virtues of a "well-armed militia," this doesn't mean that hunting rifles and shotguns will ever be the deciding factor in any intranational conflict.

Honestly, is this not the same sort of logic that made the Confederacy to believe they'd win in the first Civil War?  They're hitting all the same notes -- we're better people, we have farms and stuff, factories and railroads won't make a difference, and God is on our side anyway. 

Is that really at the heart of this all?  Do they want to fight the Civil War all over again so they can triumph this time?

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It's Teatime

Well, that was a fun senseless debacle.  

Sometimes, in the midst of these political jujitsu grapples, it's easy to lose sight of the essential issues.  To the people on the right, the issue is Teh Debt.  Everything, they claim, is insignificant compared to the one defining priority -- reducing the national debt by any means necessary.  That's why Obama (or any Dem president) is by definition, unnacceptably evil -- because any president, inheriting the recessions and the wars of the previous president -- would be presiding over a country where the debt is increasing.

That brings me to my bullet points.  This is why Teabaggers are WRONG.

1.) To imagine that any president could have assumed the office in 2009 and immediately slashed the Federal Debt is insane.  It couldn't have happened without crippling the country.  Stop dreaming that this was somehow a plausible idea.

2.) The only way to decrease the Debt is steadily, over time, through a combintion of increased revenue, cuts to entitlement programs, the elimination of waste, and a reduction in the defense budget.  Democrats have compromised on entitlements, but Republicans have refused to do the same when it comes to taxes and defense.  They demand not ONE penny in higher taxes, and not ONE penny cut from the Pentagon -- because the Republicans take their orders from billionaires who don't like paying taxes, and defense companies like Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, etc.  Let me just state this again -- the Republican Party works for billionaires, and ONLY billionaires.  Ever since the Reagan era, they've been pursuing a long-term strategy of using deficits as an excuse to eliminate programs they don't like.  The government is in debt?  How awful!  Sure, we could raise the capital gains tax or eliminate some defense programs, but why even think of doing that when you could eliminate the EPA, gut the IRS, and kill the departments of education and energy?

The Republican Party uses crisis as an excuse to pursue things only found on the Billionaire's Wish List.  And thanks to talk radio, they've very successfully fooled millions of blue-collar people into supporting their aims.  Seriously, as we speak, there are rednecks in poor rural areas who feel very strongly that the EPA needs to die, not because they've EVER dealt with the EPA, but because they've absorbed their masters' propaganda.  It... is... sickening.

3.) Of course, the Republican party is now two parties, and the supposedly-insurgent Teabaggers are just as bad in these respects as the old guard conservative elites.  They think they're different, but when it comes to compromise, they both take the same hard line -- all the money we need to save must come from social spending, and not one penny from the Pentagon or the Koch Brothers' capital gains.  The old elites used to demand tax cuts and deregualation under the guise of "it's better for the economy, and you'd better give us what we want unless you want everyone to suffer."  The new teabagger elites now demand tax cuts because they've listened to too much Mark Levin, fetishize the Revolutionary era, and pursue some fever dream of "doing what the Founders intended."  Because the Founders were infallible beings of pure light and goodness, i suppose.

This supposed civil war in the GOP amuses me, because both sides are equally as vile.  It's a bit like watching radical Sunnis and radical Shiites kill one another because they both want to be the only genuine crazy cult in town.

4.)  Nobody believes that you know anything about prudent tax policy when you act like the teabaggers do.  When you dress up in tricorne hats, adorn yourselves with Lipton bags, carry racist signs, and are obsessed with sideshow issues -- Obama's a muslim, abortion, FEMA deathcamps, UN oppression, fluoride in the water... you don't look or sound serious.  You look like a bunch of loons.  

That's pretty much it.

Accept some higher taxes on the rich.  Accept some cuts to defense.  Stop making youselves look stupid.  We can totally deal.

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Tiger Balm

I'm feeling a bit flu-ish today, so here are some wise words from someone else.

"It happened slowly, didn’t it? The change in the Republican Party? I don’t know. Maybe it’s nostalgia. There have always been the wild, vicious voices of the right. The devil on the shoulder of the conservative movement that whispers in its ear, “burn it down, burn it down.” But those voices were to be ignored, humored, tolerated, placated, or just deceived. That was the way of things, and we were protected by the obvious: people who believe foolish things tend to be easy to fool.

Then it all changed. The Republican elite caught a ride on the tiger. But the tiger got sick of waiting for the gazelles it was promised, the gazelles that were always one election away. The tiger was hungry and angry and tired of being used and the longer it waited the more appetizing the elite on its back became. So the tiger got a radio station and a news channel. The tiger got organized and mobilized. And finally the tiger realized it didn’t need someone kicking its sides telling it which way to run and who to eat and when to eat and why it wasn’t time to eat and the time to eat would come, don’t worry, you’ll eat soon enough.

So the tiger ate its master and now here we are.

America needs a strong, rational, positive, practical conservative movement. It needs that bulwark against liberal delusion and hubris. It needs a voice that says we are imperfect, that life is complex, that government can create need even as it meets need, that you can’t fix everything and freedom is worth some danger and sorrow. And there are smart, honest conservatives at the ready to be that voice, to help govern practically and sincerely with that voice, but they are drowned out by the guttural scream of craven utopians raging against reality.

This moment in American political life is insane. That a group of narrow-minded zealots could push us to the brink of economic ruin, that they maintain a base of support in their frenzied, quixotic, incompetent gambit, that there is an apparatus that exists to defend this kind of nonsense—it came on us slowly but it is no less an emergency. This is broken. This cannot go on."   -- Jon Lovett.

I.... agree.  Is all i can say.

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Brang down dem Burricades!

So damn, the shit continues to get more and more real.  Yesterday, this group of Real Americans took to the streets and tore down some dividers... er, foot traffic partitions... no, i mean some BARRICADES in order to protest the government shutdown that they originally clamored for.

...wait, really?  When they heard that the big bad Federal Gubmint was going to close down, they imagined that the parts they liked would be personally exempt?  Christ, what a bunch of babies.  Pull your diapers up, guys.

Look, i ain't mad at these guys.  I like civil disobedience and mischief so long as no one gets hurt.  So more power to you, redneck swarm, you stir that shit up.  The people i have a problem with are all the conservative bloggers who are cumming themselves stupid over these photos, and screeching about people power and takin' it to da streets, and fucking BARRICADES.... 

(Les Miserables, this ain't.  The Friends of the ABC, they are not.)

...because, come on, if the people in that photo were any group apart from old white rednecks, if they were young, or black, or gay, or female, or had long hair -- the same bloggers would be calling for them to be pepper-sprayed, beaten, and arrested.

You know this.

But seriously, just revel in the insanity here.  They want the government to go away, and they they throw tantrums when it does.

Babies.

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Bubble realities

If you've ever seen Donnie Darko or certain episodes of Star Trek, then you know that bubble realities exist.  Every once in a while, the Universe Prime spits out a temporary, false reality that exists for a short amount of time, allowing characters to experience some delicious bit of unreality, before collapsing back into the spacetime manifold.

This, i think, happens to Teabaggers on a pretty frequent basis.  Take last week, when the following imaginary scenario bubbled up from the ether before collapsing under the weight of reality.

-- Someone suggests that truckers might, should, will stage a massive protest by blockading the DC beltway in their rigs.  The entire city of Washington will grind to a halt.

-- A leaked "secret" journal at Redstate.com proves that Obama will deploy the National Guard to disperse the rolling patriots, in the name of national security.

-- Things will turn ugly, shots will be fired, it will rage out of control.

-- Teabaggers everywhere are aghast at this shocking abuse of authority, and take to the interwebs to blather "in terms of “level of agitation and unrest”, I see no way this motherfucking Marxist and his politoboro can survive another three years. No way!"

-- Impeachment proceeding begin!  And hundreds of thousands of yokels descend on the White House to demand the ouster of the wicked king.

....then, none of that actually happens.  But the poor baggers are left almost believing that it did.  It... might have happened?  It could have happened, if it had happened it would have happened just as the internet buffoons imagined.

I mean, can you believe that Obama sat in the White House, snickering and masturbating while patriotic Real Americans were pulled from their cabs and shot in the back of the head?  I know, i was shocked.  Too bad it didn't happen.  That would have been just, well, shocking.

Bubble realities.

Wait!

We have word of a new bubble reality forming in the Northeast.... it looks like a technical glitch has caused EBT cards to stop functioning for a time.  Our yokel sources claim that this is a "test run" for the "big one," an upcoming Obama-caused disaster in which all food stamp cards are revoked, causing millions of young hungry black males and other minority urban youths to flee the cities, and overrun suburbia in order to rape and pillage the well-stocked pantries and virtuous white wives of the Real Americans.

Buy some more guns, people, shit is about to get real.

in terms of “level of agitation and unrest”, I see no way this motherfucking Marxist and his politoboro can survive another three years. No way. - See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51485#comments

in terms of “level of agitation and unrest”, I see no way this motherfucking Marxist and his politoboro can survive another three years. No way. - See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51485#comments

in terms of “level of agitation and unrest”, I see no way this motherfucking Marxist and his politoboro can survive another three years. No way. - See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51485#comments

The State of Things and Crap

Gosh, darn.

Well, i just got back from my momentous vacation -- i saw my best friend again, and we spent a day strolling around downtown DC, which was pretty darned cool even if i couldn't go inside any of the buildings...

...now, it's back to business as normal.  Let's see, Obama is still rightfully holding the line against the Republicans, who apparently believe that naked extortion should be a legitimate political tool from now on.  I would ask any conservatives reading this to simply stop, breathe, and imagine that the players were reversed -- imagine, if the Republicans controlled the Senate and Mitt Romney was president after thrashing Barack Obama by a margin of 5 million votes -- but the Democrat-controlled House said "we want a national gun registry and for most guns to be totally illegal, and until you give us what we want, the government stays closed, and we might even force a catastrophic debt default because 'surrendering' at this point is not an option."

How would you feel?

Sure, Republicans, you trounced them in the last election, but you have to negotiate with them and outlaw virtually all guns.  Police must begin seizing every rifle and shotgun in the hands of the citizens, or there's no deal.

Look, be reasonable, the Democrats control the House, so obviously they get everything they want, and you just have to accept that.

Look me in the fucking eye and tell me that you'd be just fine with that.  And you wouldn't call them traitors, or unreasonable, you'd just shrug and say, gosh, i suppose Romney should cave before it's too late.

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