Finally

Well, Joe McLean has gone and done it. The Daily Beast columnist has put up the perfect description of my three regular commenters (juris imprudent, Guard Duck, Not My Name). Now I think I understand how they are all united even though they have differing views on religion.

Apocalypticism.

They, along with the Tea Party and many other conservatives, think the End Times are nigh. And guess what? It's all the fault of the liberals.

There are so many great lines in this piece I don't know where to start. Let's see if I can limit myself to just three and then urge y'all to go and read the rest.

They believe America teeters on the brink of destruction, and hold as an article of faith that liberals, gays, Democrats, atheists and the United Nations are to blame. This “end-times” world-view is a foundational precept of the evangelical movement, from which many of the so-called Tea Party favorites spring.Of course, the Tea Party is not just composed of members of the Christian right. Many are genuine libertarians. Some nurse an unreconstructed Confederate grudge, while others harbor a thinly disguised racism. However, the real energy, the animating force for the movement comes from evangelicals, of whom Ted Cruz, Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin are the most strident. These are the modern-day ”apocalyptic prophets.”

See, you don't have to be a Christian to believe in the apocalypse. Kevin Baker isn't a Christian. Neither is juris. Yet there is something in their libertarianism that helps them along to end times thinking. McLean does a good job of explaining the history of end times thinking. But how does that fit in to today?

For these apocalyptic prophets, the issues aren’t even political anymore; they’re existential, with Obamacare serving as the avatar for all evil. In this construct, any compromise whatsoever leads to damnation, and therefore the righteous ends justify any means. Now if you are battling the forces of evil for the very survival of the nation, there can be no retreat, no compromise, and no deals. Like the Jewish zealots at Masada, it’s better to commit glorious suicide than make peace with the devil. There can be no truce with the Tea Party because its apocalyptic zealots can never take “yes” for an answer.

Compromise as damnation...yep. McLean also notes what I have been stating previously. The GOP establishment and business wing of the party is fighting back. The coming civil war in the Republican party is going to be bloody. But how will it all end? McLean says either the pragmatists win or the hardliners revolt and leave. Either way, a center right party emerges that will enjoy support.

Not surprisingly, these moderates have both liberal and conservative views. 64% support gay marriage, 63% support abortion in the first trimester, 52% support legalizing marijuana, and they support a strong social safety net by wide margins. But 81% support offshore drilling, 90% support the death penalty and 57% are against affirmative action. So a new moderate coalition might well attract significant support from the moderate middle, establishment Republicans, Independents and centrist Democrats too.

Whatever way you cut it, my three commenters, along with the Tea Party and the right wing blogsphere, aren't going to get what they want. Oh well. At least they'll have plenty to complain about. Hey, maybe we could help them set up their own community with all the rest of the doomsayers. They could walk around all day preaching apocalypse to each other and leave the rest of us sane people out of it.

Business Wins

Tuesday's election saw GOP establishment candidate Bradley Byrne beat Tea Party fave Dean Young in Alabama's 1st Congressional District. In what clearly is a sign for the ugly war that will be waged over the next year in the GOP, the business community has clearly had enough of the psychosis and adolescent behavior of the Tea Party and like minded people.

CNN has another story on this as does Politico. This would be why I'm not too worried about the mistakes made by the president and the Democrats in terms of the ACA. We don't have to beat the conservatives. They are beating themselves.

Trouble in Paradise

I am continually assured by my friends on the right that everything is just fine with their party and if they continue to run ultra conservative candidates, they are going to win. Yet two recent AP stories (here and here) suggest otherwise.

From the first piece...

A slice of corporate America thinks tea partyers have overstayed their welcome in Washington and should be shown the door in next year's congressional elections. In what could be a sign of challenges to come across the country, two U.S. House races in Michigan mark a turnabout from several years of widely heralded contests in which right-flank candidates have tried — sometimes successfully — to unseat Republican incumbents they perceive as not being conservative enough. 

In the Michigan races, longtime Republican businessmen are taking on two House incumbents — hardline conservative Reps. Justin Amash and Kerry Bentivolio — in GOP primaries. The 16-day partial government shutdown and the threatened national default are bringing to a head a lot of pent-up frustration over GOP insurgents roughing up the business community's agenda. 

So now the primariers are going to be primaried? Hee hee hee...

It actually makes sense when you think about it. Once the money goes away from the Tea Party (because it's not really a grass roots movement), that will pretty much be it for them.

From the second piece...

A year after losing a presidential race many Republicans thought was winnable, the party arguably is in worse shape than before. The GOP is struggling to control tensions between its tea party and establishment wings and watching approval ratings sink to record lows. It's almost quaint to recall that soon after Mitt Romney lost to President Barack Obama, the Republican National Committee recommended only one policy change: endorsing an immigration overhaul, in hopes of attracting Hispanic voters.

That immigration bill is now struggling for life and attention in the Republican-run House. The bigger worry for many party leaders is the growing rift between business-oriented Republicans and the GOP's more ideological wing. Each accuses the other of bungling the debt ceiling and government shutdown dramas, widely seen as a major Republican embarrassment.

This would be why the mistakes made by the Obama administration in regards to the ACA will largely be ignored. The American people have come to realize in the last month that the Republicans are not helping out anyone and are, in fact, causing most of the problems we have as well as actively preventing our country from solving them.

And when you lose the National Review, well, then you really up shit crick...

The Final Vote

The Senate passed the legislation to re-open the government and raise the debt ceiling with a final vote of 81-18. The House vote was 285-144 with 87 Republicans supporting the bill. The president is signing the legislation this evening. 

This is a giant win for the president. Clearly, the Tea Party knows they can't fuck with him anymore on the debt ceiling or funding the government. If they threaten to do this again, it will obviously be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Sort of like their entire ideology. 

Forfeit These Services!

Samuel Warde has a nice variation on the anti-socialist pledge up over at Liberals Unite. Here are a few of my favorites...

Want to visit another country? Don’t bother unless you know a way around the border stop which is patrolled by the government and don’t forget you no longer can get a passport any more.

You need to worry about clean air or water once the commie EPA is shut down.

You no longer have to be bothered with paved roads, highways, interstate freeways or public bridges.

It's almost as if they don't understand how the real world works from the comfort of the basement of their parents home.

Hometown Epiphanies

I just got back from a visit to the town where I grew up in Wisconsin. My mom still lives there and has since we moved there from Missouri in 1973. Forty years...wow...where did the time go?

I spent most of the weekend with my hometown buddies and, as is usually the case, had a political discussion with my childhood chum named Paul. I love Paul like a brother and have known him since we were both kids but he is, without a doubt, the poster child for the Tea Party. He is loud, quick tempered, weighs 300 pounds, has a pathological distrust and hatred of the federal government, and lives with his mother.

I mention the last bit because someone somewhere needs to commission a study on conservatives regarding the following hypothesis: the political emotion of your modern day conservative is fueled by unresolved issues from adolescence stemming from a fundamental breakdown in their relationship with one or both parents. This, in turn, leads to massively irrational behavior that quite frankly helps to exacerbate the problems we have in this country largely by the blunt force of inaction but also by them being...well...assholes.

I've been talking about this for awhile but as I sat and listened to Paul's mouth foaming about the federal government "worming its way into every aspect of our lives" and our country falling apart (any day now), several ideas coalesced for me. I started to think about all the people I know who are conservative and, as I have stated previously, all behave, in many ways, like they are 12-14 years old. This is especially true when they talk about politics. It's one long adolescent temper tantrum and stomp down the hallway because "they don't wanna!" Since I now have a teenager in the house, it's all very familiar.

But I knew all this before so quickly moving on from that, I realized how many of the conservatives I know (as well as many that I don't know personally) clearly have very serious mommy and daddy issues. I started to count how many still lived at home with the parents and went over the list with my wife in the car on the way back to Minnesota. She laughed as the number got higher and higher. It didn't matter what age they were...far too many did.

Science tells me, however, that this is merely anecdotal, hence the reason why a study needs to be undertaken. Unlike my colleagues on the right, I'm not going to fall prey to the logical fallacies of hasty generalizations or misleading vividness. At this point, it is merely an observation. Consider how the ensuing study and results would be fascinating. They could ask for volunteers from the comments section of The Smallest Minority (I wonder how many of them live at home with their parents) or my own comments section:)

So, the mommy and daddy stuff lead me to the idea that your modern day conservative is very insecure about themselves and their lives. They are probably pissed off about their perceived lack of control in their lives (I say perceived because no one is forcing them to live at home with their parents) and the federal government is the perfect whipping boy with which they can spew all their unresolved life issues upon. Suddenly, everything is the government's fault, not their own. Ironically, they scream about victim culture when they themselves behave in the same way. Further, they have not come to terms with the fact that they are not in control of everything that happens to them and, like your average adolescent, don't take too kindly to being told that there are rules that we have to follow in society if it's going to be a decent place to live.

People like Paul also bring new meaning to the word stubborn. Compromise is the filthiest word in their language and when they don't wanna, they really don't wanna! In fact, Paul told me that he, along with the rest of his fellow Tea Partiers in Wisconsin, don't care if they ever win the White House again. They more or less have a lock on the House and will do everything they can to keep it that way. This jibes with what I have asserted previously. They don't care about winning elections as long as they remain pure.

In many ways, the whole conversation with him made me quite sad because a very key assertion of mine was finally confirmed. Conservatives are so afraid of irrelevance that they are now hysterical. We went down the list of all of the problems we have in this country and his answer to every one was basically do nothing. Clearly, he was frightened of any sort of success by Democrats and other liberal types as massive demonization went on throughout the entire conversation. Doing anything meant the apocalypse.

What a way to view the world...

The Puppet Masters

Oh, Really?

'Conservative Republican' at IRS defends treatment of Tea Party. 

John Shafer, who described himself as "a conservative Republican," told congressional investigators he flagged the first application for tax-exempt status from a Tea Party-aligned group that he and a lower-level agent came across in February 2010 because it was a new, high-profile issue.

Giving Me Pause

It's Sunday and I find myself this morning not being a very good Christian. Repeated more than any other command in the Bible, we are supposed to love thy neighbor. After reading this, I have to admit I'm finding it very hard to love Karl Denninger, one of the chief founders of the Tea Party Movement. Here's what Mr. Denninger had to say about Francine Wheeler, the mother of Newtown shooting victim, Ben Wheeler

Listen up, you incompetent and defective sack of meat -- your son is dead because you are unfit to be parents. You sat silently by while your state and our nation erected signs telling people who are criminally insane where they can find the maximum number of defenseless people to murder. You are personally, jointly and severably responsible for the consequences. You are unfit to possess a uterus and your husband is unfit to possess testicles.

Every time I think the Right can't get any lower, they somehow manage to find a subbasement. I suppose I could rip into him for being so despicable but it's obvious that this man is terribly unhappy. As I have said previously, conservatives don't do well with children.

They also seem to have a significant problem with denial, specifically DARVO.

You, Mrs. Wheeler, having willingly and intentionally refused to take responsibility for your acts of omission and commission that led to your son being murdered by a madman now have the audacity to stand in front of the nation and demand that everyone else give up their children to murderous goons as well. Go to Hell Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler and take your state and its alleged laws with you.

That's right, Karl. It's not Adam Lanza's fault that he killed all those kids. Nor is it his mother's fault. It's the fault of the parents of the victims. So much for individual responsibility.

The ugly is really coming out with this issue and I've realized that it's the case with others as well. When confronted with unpleasant truths about these situations, the Right categorically refuses to reflect and, sadly, digs in deeper. With the gun issue, liars and gun grabbers are everywhere with civil war imminent. Useful idiots like me are foolish because we don't operate in a state of full panic mode about the federal government 24/7.

The insecurity of these folks is so monumental that we are likely to see even worse behavior than Mr. Denninger's latest mouth foam. The threat they perceive isn't there but it's so very real to them that it makes me wonder just how bad they will get. I'm still leaning towards them all being big, cowardly babies but this latest attack certainly gives me a great deal of pause.

Like Colonel Potter said about Colonel Flagg, "I think someone mixed some locoweed into his feed."

Wait...what?

Tea Party group boycotting Fox News for becoming ‘too liberal’

Here's to a New Depth!

Two things happened after I watched this clip. First, my respect for John McCain has gone back up again. Second, my level of disgust for the Right has achieved a new depth that I didn't think was possible.

 

Two Responses?

So, Marco Rubio is going to deliver the Republican response to the the presidents SOTU speech tonight. And then Rand Paul is going to deliver the response to that response? Or the response to the president? I'm confused.

It's a good thing the GOP is united and firing on all cylinders these days.

A Gift To GOP Freshmen From The Democrats

R.I.P. The Right Wing Blogger

It amuses me to no end when my oh so enlightened right wing friends refer to the Drudge Report as "simply a page of links to news stories."

Really?

This was the front page of the Drudge Report yesterday. As soon as Hitler comes up, that's when you know which side is losing.

And take a look at this recent poll from Rasmussen Polling (a right leaning poll). Just 8 percent say they are members of the Tea Party with 49 percent of voters saying they have an unfavorable view of the movement. I recall being assured as recent as last year that The Tea Party movement would always be around, eternally robust and ever a beacon of conservatism. It seems to me that the American people are plumb tired of the crazy and would rather listen to people that live in the real world.

Of course, this speaks to a much larger issue. Right around a decade ago, the blogsphere really began to burst to life. Political hacks from all ends of the spectrum started their own sites. The Right took particular advantage of this and, in the 2004 election, were part of the reason George W. Bush won reelection. After issuing imperial edicts that John Kerry was a French war criminal, the American people, still timid from 9-11, bought all their lies.

But the two years after that election were illustrative of what happens when you vote with emotion and belief as opposed to thought. And, in 2006, the Democrats took over both houses in Congress. In 2008, they saw more gains and America elected Barack Obama president. It appeared that the influence of the right wing blogger was a flash in the pan.

The 2010 election showed us that they did have a death rattle left in them. The House swept back to the GOP based on irrational fears over health care and over reaching government intrusion. Even in that election, though, the Right blew it, running very conservative candidates in the Senate and reaching too far. By all rights, they should have taken back the Senate as well because if you take a look at the House victories from that year, not all were hard core Tea Partiers. Some were merely moderates elected by a center right public who thought the president had gone too far. These same voters certainly did not want the far right either and so, the GOP didn't take the Senate. Since the Right's main conviction is their vanity, they saw 2010 as a great victory and continued to push more and more crazy ideas in the 2012 election, pulling political philosophies from far right web sites and incorporating them into their main platform.

It didn't work. The president easily won reelection, the Democrats gained two seats in the Senate, adding more progressive candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin, and the House saw a net of seven seats for the party of the donkey. Add in the recent astronomical polling numbers for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and the message the American people are sending is clear: moderate or else. 

All of this leads us to the conclusion that the right wing blogger, and any influence they may have had over public policy, is essentially dead. Sure, they'll still have their followers similar to the old short wave radio days and they'll be trotted out on talk shows here and there but, for the most part, the days of them having any sort of substantial effect on policy are over. We're going to see this with the debates on guns, the budget, immigration and climate change over the next few months. Either they can moderate or be left out of the conversation. If the trends in the last few elections are any indication, it may even be worse for the Right in general. I suppose they didn't have much of a choice after 2008 to hitch their wagon to the star located in the Moonbat Quadrant. Now, they are paying the consequences.

I wonder just how many times Hitler and Stalin are going to come up in the next month...

Bril!

Interesting....

The Keystone Fight Is Uniting Tea Partiers With Environmentalists. 

I knew it was only a matter of time before there was some crossover. It makes sense when you really sit back and think about how one could make a case for the government failing to protect property rights.

Yeah...Just What I Thought

When it comes right down to it, most of the people that bitch a lot about the government are really the ones that benefit the most. Sort of like...hmmm...oh...I don't know...teenagers who bitch about their parents who pay the bills and provide them with a nice place to live?

Maybe the Tea Party IS Different From OWS....hmmm...