Also Too, There. Is. Still. No. Tea. Party.

“...they turned to prayer, beseeching
that the sin which had been committed
might be wholly blotted out.”

-- 2 Maccabees. 12:42

Ripped from the annals of "No One Could Have Predicted...", this from this Andrew Sullivan's Pot-'n-Popes-'n-Stuff blog (which has temporarily become his Pot-'n-Popes-'n-Libertarians-'n-Stuff blog since he turned it over to an entire floor of his dorm while he takes a month off to contemplate the meaning of man's existence in an indifferent universe. Or something.)

Anyway, even though this really (and hilariously) speaks for itself, I will probably risking gilding that lily and add my two bitcoin's worth at the end....

Libertarians In Name Only

AUG 26 2014 @ 1:17PM

by Dish Staff 

Tim Fernholz highlights new Pew data on libertarianism in America, which shows that only 11 percent self-describe as libertarian and understand what the term means:

The survey showed a fairly even split among Americans considering whether the regulation of businesses does more harm than good, or if aid for the poor helps or hinders, though a majority does think that corporations make too much profit. Libertarians, meanwhile, leaned strongly against any interference in business or help to the poor, though not as strongly as you might think: 41% of libertarians saw government regulation of business as necessary, and 38% supported aid to the poor.

Indeed, perhaps the most interesting finding is that self-described libertarians favor US involvement in world affairs more than the average citizen, despite their reputation for an isolationist lean. And, even more weirdly, 16% of libertarians said US citizens need to be willing to give up some privacy in exchange for greater security.

Kilgore thinks that “Pew has at the very least cast some massive doubt on all that ‘libertarian moment’ polling from Reason“:

These findings of the non-particularity of “libertarian” views, mind you, is after Pew has melted the category down from 17% of the public to 11%, since a lot of “libertarians” could not accurately distinguish “libertarian” from “communist” or—get this—“Unitarian.”

Allahpundit’s analysis:

What you’re seeing in the poll results, I think, is a bunch of doctrinaire libertarians having their brand diluted by a bunch of conservatives/ Republicans who are disgusted with those labels right now, for whatever reason, and are thus hoping to claim “libertarianism” for themselves. Do you support aggressive policing, a muscular foreign policy, and a social safety net but are disgusted with how big and intrusive the federal government’s gotten and how complacent the GOP has gotten about it? Congrats, you might be a “libertarian.” In fact, this reminds me of what David Frum said recently about the “libertarian moment”...

So, as usual, linky-love and compliments for all the usual suspects like the Washington Times, Hot Air, David Frum.

But heaven help you if, years ago, you starting writing post after post pointing that the sudden surge in self-identified "independents" and "Tea Partiers" and "libertarians" were obviously millions of Republican cowards fleeing the scene of their many, many, many crimes:

...

Most newly minted “independents” seem to be little more than Republicans who are fleeing the scene of their crime, but at the same time still desperately want believe in the inerrant wisdom of Rush Limbaugh. They are completely incapable of facing the horrifying reality that they have gotten every single major political opinion and decision of their adult lives completely wrong, so instead they double-down on their hatred of women and/or gays and/or brown people and/or Liberals, and blame them for the miserable fuckpit their leaders and their policies have made of their live and futures.

Like German soldiers after the fall of Berlin, they have stopped running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms.

Heaven help you if you were writing back in 2009 that one of the most important lessons of 9/11 which every single person in the Mainstream Media was conspicuously ignoring was that Conservatives were now completely dependent to getting cost-free rebranding do-overs from the media every time they committed another atrocity:

...

So, for example, when you hear the same people who fanatically supported President George W. Bush when he famously told Iraq war critics to fuck off --

"Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election."

-- now insisting, less that a year after the 2008 elections, that President Barack Obama needs to:

"...scrap the current grandiose plans and to start over."

or when you see the mobs on the Right being whipped by talk of secession or revolution or spilling the "blood of tyrants" into a nearly-pornographic frenzy, understand that what you are witnessing are the echoes of political decisions made in the wake of September 11, 2001.

Political decisions that trained the Right to believe, on a visceral level, that a sufficiently bloody and horrifying disruption to the life of the country can -- if properly exploited -- wash away their eight otherwise-unforgivable years of sin and restore "their country" to its proper, wingnut default setting.

That if the right sacrifices are made to the right Gods in just the right way, then they can be virgins again.

Heaven help you if, years ago, you chose to stand apart from the credulous Media Lemmings and point out that the only fucking reason this brazen scheme to escape brutal judgement for their multiple, bloody, Bush-era treacheries, hypocrisies and lies was not being laughed out of existence was that Conservatives had turned the media into their eager co-conspirators:

...

The thing is, I don't especially begrudge these Four Heist Men of the Teapocalypse their ludicrous little charade; Hell, if I'd spent the last decade happily sucking the dicks of the people who destroyed my country, I'd guess I'd be dressing up in pantyhose and jaunty little hats and pretending I'd been asleep since the Ford Administration too.

Phil Ponce, on the other hand, is a different story. Letting these clowns use the the public airwaves to put across their underhanded, one-sided scam is unforgivable, and letting himself be used as their sweat rag in the process is beyond embarrassing.

If Royko were alive, he'd be dangling Ponce by his ankle from a fifth story window right about now, making him conjugate the verb "muckrake".

In Latin.

Backwards.

Else how's that boy ever gonna learn!

There. Are. Four. Lights.



And. There. Is. Still.  No.  Tea. Party. 

And while nobody in Mr. Sullivan's circle is ever going to acknowledge that, once again, Liberals like me were right all along...and while the day will never come when I can afford to take a month off to think about whether the Universe is itself conscious ab ovo or if conscious is just one of the Universe's emergent properties (and if time is actually non-linear does that distinction even matter) at least I can sleep at night.