Tea Party

This rambles a bit.  You have been warned.

There’s something called a Tea Party Movement happening in the US.  My understanding from reading a bit about it is that it is comprised of people who think we need to go back to Bush’s policies in order to get out of the recession that was caused by Bush’s policies.  The organizers behind it are “conservatives”, such as Fox News.  (I used quotation marks because I don’t think today’s “conservatives” have any understanding of conservatism.  But I digress.) 

And speaking of digressions: I wonder what the present value would be of all the tea we tossed into the harbor, lo these many years ago.  Just wondering.  Good tea is pricey, after all. 

But this Tea Party thing concerns me in another way.  I don’t know if people have noticed or not, but President Obama, the times I’ve seen him, has not been playing the blame game.  He has bent over backwards to not blame his predecessor (George W. Bush, for those who may have forgotten) for the ills faced by our country.  Even as he spent the first 10 minutes in office reversing all those executive orders. 

The word is Class, and it’s something that has been noticeably absent from politics for, um, a while. 

But the GOP, instead of praising, or even acknowledging it, is instead moving to capitalize on it.  (Get it?  Capitalize?)  It seems that the Tea Movement is the first step in shifting the blame onto Obama, by taking advantage of the fact that he doesn’t seem to want to play dirty. 

Now, for the intelligent in this country, such as myself, this is not a credible threat.  I see through it, thus it has no effect. 

But what we keep underestimating is the vast sea of genetic curiosities who are, believe it or not, actually registered to vote.  They’re out there, folks.  They are the reason I bemoan the anti-poker legislation this country has passed.  Those were good times.  All in with 6-2 offsuit.  Really.

But now they are being whipped into a frenzy, with talk of revolution.  The GOP leadership (by which I mean Rush Limbaugh) is behind it.  Which, in my book, constitutes evidence that their ideology is unsound.  Rational presentation of their case has stopped working, so now they have to do this.  At no point does it enter their minds that some of their ideas might actually be wrong.

And the longer-view prospects are dim.  Should they succeed, class (remember class?  This is an article about class) will be forever removed from the political arena, because it just doesn’t work.  So think about that.  And if you know some of the aforementioned curiosities who cannot think, just start a cult and invite them all in.

Rush Limbaugh Hates America

I saw this news story the night before the Inauguration.  It includes the following quote by Rush Limbaugh: 

"They didn't give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated, the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I'm not talking about search-and-destroy, but I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed." 

Pause, while this sinks in. 

Okay, let's start with the first part.  In my opinion, no one, ever, gets to claim that Bush was a "victim" of a "search-and-destroy mission".  He got away with ignoring, avoiding, and dismantling the Constitution to an unprecedented degree, starting a war on false pretenses, and being a global embarrassment to us all. 

His predecessor got impeached for lying about having sex. 

However, it is the second part of this quote, in particular the last sentence, that truly reveals who and what Rush Limbaugh is.  If you have ideological differences with someone, what you would say is, "I don't believe your policies will succeed."  If you say, "I don't want them to succeed", then what you are saying is that you don't care if the country suffers; the important thing is that your opponent is wrong.

One problem I have with the entire right-wing apparatus in this country is that so many of them think this same way.  To be honest, if they added an ounce of common sense, not to mention common decency, they would have my support.  But I will not abide any person, or group, who would rather see their enemies fail than their nation succeed.