Monthly Archives: August 2011

Entitlements: Plan C

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[pullquote]Plan C is you can shiver hungry in the dark for all I care[/pullquote]

You boomers are in trouble.  Your parents lived through the depression or were directly impacted by it, and they came up with a whole circus of social safety nets.  This system was never built to last even if it had not been abused, but it has been ransacked.  They used it as intended, and you have abused it, hollowing out the programs while expanding them, so that all that remains is a system of empty shells.  Now you want to retire on it, and there’s nothing left.  So you’ve borrowed the money from overseas, and told them that my generations will pay for it.

Well maybe we will, and maybe we won’t.

It’s not … Continue reading →

She Likes Us! She Really Really Likes Us!

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Now if only we could find a better use around here for Maureen Dowd than as ballast, she’d be a shoo-in.

Tea Party budget-slashers didn’t sport the black capes with blood-red lining beloved by the campy Vincent Price or wield the tinglers deployed by William Castle. But in their feral attack on Washington, in their talent for raising goose bumps from Wall Street to Westminster, this strange, compelling and uncompromising new force epitomized “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and evoked comparisons to our most mythic creatures of the night.

They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved … Continue reading →

A Secular Defense of the 9/11 WTC Cross

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Apparently some atheists are upset that a 9/11 memorial will have the “WTC cross” found in the wreckage of steel girders where the towers had stood.  I am agnostic, but I am not easily offended by displays of religion.  It is a freedom which I feel very well pays its own freight.  I used to be fairly militant in my atheism, but that stance made little sense to me after some years.  How could I be so smug and inflexible on a topic where my whole thesis was that certainty without evidence was unacceptable?

The cross discovered in the smoke and rubble was a powerful symbol to many who served on scene, and was a comfort to those who toiled in the swirling mist of human and architectural … Continue reading →

George Monbiot – How the Billionaires Broke the System

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[Update: BREAKING: Monbiot may not actually be a Marxist.  But Cripes!  I’m not nearly so far off in my characterization of him as he is of the Tea Party, and that’s me, baby.  That’s me.]

Popular Commies at it again.  Or still.  Skip to the chase: it’s the Koch brothers who ruined America.

The US deficit reduction plan makes no sense – until you remember who’s behind the Tea Party movement.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 1st August 2011

There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the rich. Cutting spending means taking money from the poor. Not in all cases of course: some taxation is regressive; some state spending takes money from ordinary citizens … Continue reading →

Humble, Grateful GOP Thanks Tea Party

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From Senator Mitch McConnell’s remarks to the Heritage Foundation November 4, 2010.  Just after the Tea Party delivered the GOP a stunning victory:

Republicans have a plan for following through on the wishes of the American people. It starts with gratitude and a certain humility for the task we’ve been handed. It means sticking ever more closely to the conservative principles that got us here. It means learning the lessons of history. And, above all, it means listening to the people who sent us here.

[pullquote]So we renewed our commitment to our core principles — win, lose, or draw.[/pullquote]

While the media was still groping to define the 2008 election, Republicans were taking stock. We knew the principles that had made our party great were the same principles … Continue reading →

Weekly Standard Editor Fred Obama

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Excuse me while I retch.  Weekly Standard Editor Fred “Reagan and Boehner, Two Peas in a Pod” Barnes misses the point, which is that this deal is not “good”, it is bad.

What would President Reagan do in the debt limit battle? That’s unknowable, but we do know what his goal would be: get the best deal possible under the circumstances. Reagan never let the perfect or the unattainable keep him from achieving the good.

via Reagan and Boehner, Two Peas in a Pod | The Weekly Standard.

Reagan did not accept a negotiated defeat at Reykjavik just because it was “the best we could get” from the Soviets.  Instead, he walked away, preserving the initiative, retaining the ability to fight on his terms.

Boehner, on … Continue reading →