by Allen Kolmes
Many moons ago I waxed wistfully about the (im)possibility of the Tea Partiers somehow being neutralized by an army of equally batshit liberals. As expected, that has not happened.
So what else can be done to stop the flood of dangerous incoherence coming from the TP (great initials!). Certainly not reasoned argument. This is a crowd who has as a central plank in their platform the concept that the POTUS is a neofascist crypto-muslim Luo tribesman. Their argument style originated with George Bush's proclamation that the fact that the U.N weapons inspectors never found WMDs somehow constituted proof that Hussein in fact had them.
Current use of that logic--Obama's birth certificate proves that he is lying about his origins.
There may be an opportunity here...like maybe if the NY Times editorial page started yelling "taxes suck," maybe the TPers would reflexively start yelling "taxes good." Right.
Then I realized--this is a group whose heads are about to explode. This observation comes both from hearing their pronouncements in the media, and from observing their behavior firsthand at a town hall meeting last summer.
What if we could somehow make their heads actually detonate?
So help me out here. What can we say or do to a TPer to make their intracranial pressure exceed the resistance of their substantial skulls? Please submit ideas.
A few suggestions:
Announce that we should socialize arms production.
Agree to eliminate Social Security--as long as we also eliminate the Department of Defense
Announce that cars and trucks should be taxed per cylinder.
Tell them that Obamacare provides funding for illegal aliens to get in vitro fertilization.
Then duck and cover.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
IT'S MY MONEY, DAMMIT!
Pet Peeve #2: People Who Claim That Taxes Are Taking Away My Money
by Allen Kolmes
This claim makes a lot of superficial sense. After all, the money is essentially (if sometimes infinitesimally briefly) in the possesion of the person who earned it before it is forcibly removed (withholding) or semivoluntarily relinquished (payments) and sent to the government.
Where this claim goes seriously wrong lies in the fact that one's money is not earned in a vacuum. One's money is earned working in partnership with the system.
Take my own situation. I work hard, using skills that took me many many many years to perfect. And I am compensated very well for it.
But I am not the one solely responsible for my having acquired those skills. All of my education took place in taxpayer supported institutions. A significant portion of my knowledge was originially learned by scientists working with public support. Half of the insurance payments that ultimately make it into my paycheck is provided by the government. The hospitals I work in are safe and functional places to work because of government regulations and their enforcement. The roads I drive on to get to work were built by the government. Etc., etc. Without the government, my job would not exist. So, yeah, I feel I inherently owe part of the money I make to the entity that makes it possible
by Allen Kolmes
This claim makes a lot of superficial sense. After all, the money is essentially (if sometimes infinitesimally briefly) in the possesion of the person who earned it before it is forcibly removed (withholding) or semivoluntarily relinquished (payments) and sent to the government.
Where this claim goes seriously wrong lies in the fact that one's money is not earned in a vacuum. One's money is earned working in partnership with the system.
Take my own situation. I work hard, using skills that took me many many many years to perfect. And I am compensated very well for it.
But I am not the one solely responsible for my having acquired those skills. All of my education took place in taxpayer supported institutions. A significant portion of my knowledge was originially learned by scientists working with public support. Half of the insurance payments that ultimately make it into my paycheck is provided by the government. The hospitals I work in are safe and functional places to work because of government regulations and their enforcement. The roads I drive on to get to work were built by the government. Etc., etc. Without the government, my job would not exist. So, yeah, I feel I inherently owe part of the money I make to the entity that makes it possible
We Get Whiny, For a Change
By Allen Kolmes
Epic has decided that we have not been nearly whiny enough. After all, the midterms are practically upon us! And all we have had to offer is positive, upbeat, solutions-based material.
So it is clearly time to start whining.
And in that spirit, we at Epic (actually, just me, Allen Kolmes--I don't dare tell RFB or he'll out whine the
s#&t out of us) proudly announce a new series--Pet Peeves!
Pet Peeve #1--People Who Complain That Politicians Are All (pick one or many): negative campaigners, flip-floppers, afraid to tell the truth, whores, hypocrites, etc., etc....
People complain about politicians as if they are some sort of subhuman subspecies--some horribly uniquely inately corrupt, hypocritical, morally ambiguous subspecies created by Satan to inflict themselves upon us otherwise good people.
Bollocks! The above adjectives no doubt do apply to members of the political class. But this is not the result of faulty hard wiring. Nope. Politicians are in fact homo sapiens just like the rest of us, and at the stem cell stage no different than future, say, fashion designers and auto mechanics. What they are is proof that evolution does occur.
Because the political process is totally Darwinian. The system selects for certain behaviors. It selects for negative campaigning, because that's what gets votes. It selects for telling voters what they want to hear--even saying two contradictory things to two different audiences, because that's what voters want to hear. It selects for people who don't tell the truth when telling the truth will lose votes, because voters vote against politicians who tell them what they don't want to hear. It selects for people who provide simplistic explanations to complex problem, because voters don't want to think too hard. It selects for people who preach to voters what they already believe, because voters don't want to even consider ever changing their mind. It selects for people who distort the facts, because voters don't want to take the trouble to research the truth. It selects for people who will do whatever it takes to get money, because voters respond to advertising.
So who is to blame for the lousy politicians we get? (Hint for Sarah Palin fans: NOT the politicians.)
There is a word for politicians who don't pander, tell the truth, refuse to run negative campaign ads, and don't accept donations from special interests in return for future favors:
LOSERS.
So stop complaining about how crappy our politicians are and start complaining about how crappy our voters are. Get over the fact that Meg Whitman employed an illegal alien, or that Jerry Brown shtupped a rock star to whom he was not married while on safari while governor . Research their policy positions, instead. If you don't like something a politician says, at least be willing to consider the possibility that they are right and you are wrong. If an issue sounds too easy to understand, it probably is--learn the nuances of it. And fight to get the special interest money out of politics by pushing for public financing of election campaigns. And maybe, just maybe...our politicians will suck a little bit less.
Epic has decided that we have not been nearly whiny enough. After all, the midterms are practically upon us! And all we have had to offer is positive, upbeat, solutions-based material.
So it is clearly time to start whining.
And in that spirit, we at Epic (actually, just me, Allen Kolmes--I don't dare tell RFB or he'll out whine the
s#&t out of us) proudly announce a new series--Pet Peeves!
Pet Peeve #1--People Who Complain That Politicians Are All (pick one or many): negative campaigners, flip-floppers, afraid to tell the truth, whores, hypocrites, etc., etc....
People complain about politicians as if they are some sort of subhuman subspecies--some horribly uniquely inately corrupt, hypocritical, morally ambiguous subspecies created by Satan to inflict themselves upon us otherwise good people.
Bollocks! The above adjectives no doubt do apply to members of the political class. But this is not the result of faulty hard wiring. Nope. Politicians are in fact homo sapiens just like the rest of us, and at the stem cell stage no different than future, say, fashion designers and auto mechanics. What they are is proof that evolution does occur.
Because the political process is totally Darwinian. The system selects for certain behaviors. It selects for negative campaigning, because that's what gets votes. It selects for telling voters what they want to hear--even saying two contradictory things to two different audiences, because that's what voters want to hear. It selects for people who don't tell the truth when telling the truth will lose votes, because voters vote against politicians who tell them what they don't want to hear. It selects for people who provide simplistic explanations to complex problem, because voters don't want to think too hard. It selects for people who preach to voters what they already believe, because voters don't want to even consider ever changing their mind. It selects for people who distort the facts, because voters don't want to take the trouble to research the truth. It selects for people who will do whatever it takes to get money, because voters respond to advertising.
So who is to blame for the lousy politicians we get? (Hint for Sarah Palin fans: NOT the politicians.)
There is a word for politicians who don't pander, tell the truth, refuse to run negative campaign ads, and don't accept donations from special interests in return for future favors:
LOSERS.
So stop complaining about how crappy our politicians are and start complaining about how crappy our voters are. Get over the fact that Meg Whitman employed an illegal alien, or that Jerry Brown shtupped a rock star to whom he was not married while on safari while governor . Research their policy positions, instead. If you don't like something a politician says, at least be willing to consider the possibility that they are right and you are wrong. If an issue sounds too easy to understand, it probably is--learn the nuances of it. And fight to get the special interest money out of politics by pushing for public financing of election campaigns. And maybe, just maybe...our politicians will suck a little bit less.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)