Category Archives: Politics

Not Much Fear, But Certainly Loathing

Politics

But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I’ve concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They’re full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry’s medals and Barack Obama’s Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them.

Matt Taibbi writes about his time with the Tea Partiers in Rolling Stone.
Edit: Here’s another great quote:

It’s not like the Tea Partiers hate black people. It’s just that they’re shockingly willing to believe the appalling horseshit fantasy about how white people in the age of Obama are some kind of oppressed minority. That may not be racism, but it is incredibly, earth-shatteringly stupid.

The Way Things Work

Politics, Well Worth Reading

Two excellent articles from the New Yorker provide informative glimpses into the tipped scale of our political system.

In “The Empty Chamber,” author George Packer explains how the U.S. Senate has become constitutionally incapable of taking necessary action. Obstruction has become the new status quo, with the body’s storied history of deliberation used to rationalize paralysis.

(James Fallows reached a similar conclusion in his largely optimistic “How America Can Rise Again” in The Atlantic:” That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke.”)

The other bit of essential reading is “Covert Operations,” which has Jane Mayer lay out the network of think tanks and advocacy groups organized by billionaire Koch brothers to advance their conservation agenda. Tea Parties, the Cato Institute, non-profit organizations designed to boost or exempt their for-profit activities–they’re all under the Koch umbrella. It’s a thorough, and distressing, portrait of influence.

Anti-Mosque Protest Turns Ugly

Politics

File that in the “who’d have thought” category. The bigots protesting the construction of a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan start an nasty scene with a bystander.

Apparently their “Mus-dar” is triggered by anyone who happens to have dark skin and wear a skullcap. (Makes you question their ability to sniff out terrorists, huh?)

Bonus points to the prick in the hardhat, who apparently grew up fantasizing about attacking war protesters as part of the Silent Majority.

Daily Show: Mosque-Erade

Politics

“What Newt Gingrich is saying is that Islam, like every religion, has to be responsible for its biggest assholes.”

-John Oliver

A great piece from the Daily Show on the controversy surrounding the construction of a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan. As Jon Stewart points out, all opposition to the project is rooted in attempts to shamefully equate Muslims with terrorists.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Mosque-Erade
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Edit: The New Yorker also has an excellent take on the issue in their latest Talk of the Town.

Edit Two: Frank Rich knocks it out of the park in the New York Times.

Falling Down

Politics, Well Worth Reading

Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French chronicler of early America, was once misquoted as having said: “America is the best country in the world to be poor.” That is no longer the case. Nowadays in America, you have a smaller chance of swapping your lower income bracket for a higher one than in almost any other developed economy – even Britain on some measures. To invert the classic Horatio Alger stories, in today’s America if you are born in rags, you are likelier to stay in rags than in almost any corner of old Europe.

Another good “death of the middle class” piece, this time in the Financial Times. The people profiled don’t seem blameless, but it looks like their biggest mistake was believing that a rising tide lifts all boats.