Warning: these are all political, except for the last one. I’m in one of those moods.

:: I’m sorry to have to say this, but I really hope the teabag woman who thinks this is a great system, loses her health insurance and has to go get her health care in an animal stall. If she’s lucky enough to even get that. If she believes charity health care in soaking wet tents once a year is a mark of a well functioning market, she is so stupid she deserves it.

I’m not sure anymore if some of these people are even human.

:: When Teabag Joe and Jane show up at a health care town hall, they garner sympathy because they look like a regular frustrated person. Whatever their message is, it gains credibility because they’re not a career politician, they’re wearing shoes that don’t match their pants, and they seem genuinely angry about something. And in a debate about our personal health, that goes a long way. And this makes me wonder – why has nobody in the vaunted Obama operation, nobody holding any of these town halls, tried to contextualize their positions by using actual real people who want or need universal health insurance? Michael Moore found a bunch of people – sympathetic people – and I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but he’s fat. (Remember when Bill Clinton made the GOP look like a bunch of tools at the State of the Union by citing one of his invited guests, a guy who had aided the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing and saved lives on that day, and then after the guy’s unanimous standing ovation, dropped the fact that the guy was now broke because he worked for the government and the GOP had just shut down the Federal government? Yeah, good times. I’ll never forget the look on Trent Lott’s face when he did that. Maybe Obama will figure this out eventually.)

:: There are only two outcomes here. Either we get very good at spotting and stopping these attempts at a brownshirt takeover the minute they crop up; or they’re going to get very good at public intimidation, and keep ratcheting it up further toward outright violence and goon rule. That’s how it’s going to be for the rest of this administration. The sooner we resign ourselves to the zero-sum nature of this fight, the sooner we can get on with getting good at it.

:: There’s a bizarre love triangle among the Republican party, the media, and the lunatic right-wing fringe, and it’s not going to end well for anyone involved. The Republican party is dooming itself to long-term irrelevance by alienating the young and non-white; they may even be setting themselves up for primary challenges from nutjobs. The media is losing what credibility it has by parroting teh crazy. And the lunatic right-wing fringe is headed for an inevitable series of “Sister Souljah” moments when Republicans wise up and realize they have to denounce the teabaggers.

:: Nixon, after becoming Ike’s vice president, said Republicans “found in the files a blueprint for socializing America” in the White House. Civil rights leaders were accused of being a Soviet plot. The Civil Rights Act was believed to be intended to “enslave” whites. A prominent right-wing radio host insisted that JFK was building a political prison in Alaska to detain critics of the administration. When FDR proposed Social Security, the conservatives of the era not only screamed about “socialism,” but told the public Roosevelt would force Americans to wear dog tags.

These were all fringe, radical arguments at the time, and were ignored as insane by responsible journalists. No one in America would turn on the evening news or pick up the morning paper and read about pathetic right-wing conspiracy theories. If Fox News existed at the time, Sean Hannity would be doing special reports on each of these unhinged ideas, and Americans would be told that they were worthy of discussion.

:: “Let me get this straight: they show up at public events, try to derail real discussion of the issues by being loud, belligerent assholes, and get on the news? Unbelievable. They stole my bit.” – Westboro Baptist Church minister and flamboyant gay activist Fred Phelps

“Jesus Christ, Mom. I’m like a year old and have downs syndrome and even I know that’s bullshit.” – Trig Palin

“Iz in ur Oh-Arr, yoothanizin ur gramma.” – Universal Health Kitteh

“They’re actually having a debate about this? What the fuck is wrong with them?“ – Pretty much every non-US citizen in the entire world

:: This was not a museum: it is a haunted house. It is a carnival ride. It shows throughout in the layout — the rubes are supposed to be shuttled through efficiently, get their little thrills, and exit so the next group can make the trip. If they’d had a few million more, I imagine they would have invested in tracks and little cars and turned it into the Creation Ride. The creators of this place wouldn’t recognize a museum if they woke up in the middle of the Smithsonian on a bed of museum maps with a giant sign saying “MUSEUM” in front of their faces and an army of docents shouting directions at them. They seem to have gotten all their information about how a museum works by visiting Disneyland. (There’s probably some kind of correlation between the state of the health care debate and the fact that the Creation “Museum” is doing bang-up business.)

:: Science fiction is eternal; it is the demigod cousin of literature itself, a cat with an infinite amount of extra lives. Long live science fiction. (Huzzah!)

All for this week.

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6 Comments

  1. His majesty has out done himself today. I especially love this Machiavellian tidbit:

    "Shut down the hate talkers. In most parts of the country, the teabaggers are coming straight out of right-wing talk radio audiences. For hours every day, they're mainlining raw emotion and toxic misinformation. They're going put your kids before "death panels!" They're going to kill your granny! You're going to have to call the White House to get a bone set! You'll be a Real American Hero if you get out there and join the "resistance!" Cutting off this endless torrent of lies, fear-mongering, and validation will go a long way toward powering down the whole movement. (Conversely, what happens when these kinds of radio instigators are left to spin it all the way out to the end can be summed up in two words: Radio Rwanda.)

    So rich, as if calling them "teabaggers" is not hatred at all and their not mainlining raw emotion either. CENSORSHIP yes that is the answer to perceived fascism! The outrageous level hypocrisy of the whole socialized movement is summed up in this paragraph.

    "Death panels" is a phrases that resonates with the uneducated masses.

    "Change we can believe in" is another

    Thee Earl of Obvious

  2. The piece on the evolution museum is a very biting commentary. To wit:

    "There is no rational argument that can address the claims of a group of people who claim absolute authority from an invisible man whose voice is heard only in their heads. andd

    But if you know even a scrap of the actual science being misrepresented, you know that he's an ignorant fool who is telling lies to children, and he transforms instantly from Santa Claus to predatory propagandist. I think that's what they actually mean by "same facts, two views".

    and

    "I do not think I like these people"

    I guess an equally biting review on a museums of other faiths is forthcoming. Can you imagine if the good professor made those same comments in conjunction with ANY other faith based museum or display? Lordy the fireworks.

    No apparently the way to get from associate professor to full fledged tenure is to only bash certain faiths.

    For the record, I am christian who does not indulge the type of people who believe in strict interpretation. I know they are nuts. I think the whole evolution argument can be avoided with one, yes ONE word. "in the beginning god created LIFE". This seems rational. I guess the more tolerant and open minded members of the faith don't count.

    Oh, well. Turn the other cheek

    again

    Thee Earl of Obvious

  3. Oh, dear – I actually agree with Earl "For the record, I am christian who does not indulge the type of people who believe in strict interpretation….I think the whole evolution argument can be avoided with one, yes ONE word. "in the beginning god created LIFE".

  4. heh heh

  5. Kelly, I once was a political blogger and found myself reading only rightish blogs.

    I'm not sure when it happened, but I realized I was in an echo chamber and was just buying in to all the arguments I read and dismissing other points of view because I refused to read them.

    Then I woke up and decided to read some other views.

    I think you may be at the same point, just at the other end of the political spectrum.

    Or maybe not. I'm not trying to be bossy, you know?

  6. Kevin: I'd only point out that what I link and what I read aren't necessarily the same thing.

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