The signs change, the idiots don't.
In a similar vein, the bit below was sent to me by a friend who culled it off a list-serv:
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock, powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy.
I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility.
After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service (of NOAA - the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
I watched this while eating a breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food.
At the appropriate time (as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by NIST - the National Institute of Standards and Technology - and the US Naval Observatory), I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve bank.
On the way out the door, I deposit any mail I have to send via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at public school.
After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.
I then log on to the Internet (which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) and post on FreeRepublic.COM and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the Government can't do anything right.
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7 comments:
I'm a bit conflicted, because I like the ideals and drive behind the whole teabag--er, Tea Party deal, but I just can't follow them the whole way. This is a perfect example.
OTOH, have you read much at all about the Coffee party? There was a big article a few weeks ago in our paper about them, and it made it sound like a pretty good rebuttal to the Tea one. Admittedly, I haven't done much looking into on that front, but just thought I'd mention it. Make myself sound somewhat up-to-speed and all that... ;)
I laughed all the way to the point where freerepublic was mentioned. I used to waste valuable life energy going 'round with believers of that site, and we weren't even on that site! But, as they were busy insulting everyone who didn't believe, they blindly regurgitated the rhetoric and threw out the canned epithets ("speeple", "kool-aid drinkers"), and when challenged by me would simply copy and paste that day's posting! "Free"-what? Certainly not free-thinking!
Seahorse
I have been thinking for weeks about how creepily familiar the TP-ers are; I remember the racist protests of the '50's, and that is exactly what I see here again.
As an American, I am dismayed by how little these people are willing to think. As a US government employee in DC, I am infuriated by their ignorance: not one of them, I am willing to bet, would go to where I've been and do the work I've done, but they have the nerve to insult me. As an American, I am happy to spend more to buy US-made products, and if I have to pay more taxes to see that my fellow Americans are healthy and secure, I'm perfectly willing to do that.
By the way, where were these tax protesters when the country was (and still is) spending billions of 'their' dollars and wasting tens of thousands of lives to invade other countries whose internal affairs were none of our business? They were standing up at Little League games with tears in their eyes, singing about how they 'love' the USA.
Well. I feel better now. Thanks, Patrick.
I am with Cassandra Was Right, where was this "movement" when Bush & Co led us into two wars and then proceeded to cut taxes on the wealthiest citizens?
Where was the outrage then, the concern that we were spending more money than we were taking in? Didn't hear a peep. But lo and behold, we vote in a black president with a strange sounding name, and all of a sudden there are all these predominently white groups cropping up disguised as concern for "fiscal responsibility".
And the tea-baggers I have actually had conversations with, the first thing they bring up is the color of our president.
To me if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck ...
Cassandra WAS right, except I don't think we have to go that far back in American history to see racism expressed in groups. How can we forget the militia groups and skinheads of just a few years ago? Some of those have gone on to form the new tea party groups, and the emphasis of April 19th in their tiny brains. Hate just seems to morph merrily along. Agreed entirely, too, regarding government employees and the jobs they do. In another life I worked on The Hill, in private and public sector positions. I was usually impressed by the work done and the workers doing it. As for taxing to pay for others' health insurance, the fog-headed protesters blithely ignore the fact that we ALL pay for the uninsured anyway, every time they have to use the ER as primary care. But, they'll just call the rest of us "sheeple", and try to shout us down. Or spit on us, throw bricks through our windows, vandalize our homes (did those dumbasses ever consider they could have blown up an entire NEIGHBORHOOD to Kingdom Come by severing a gas line ???), or whatever else the likes of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann tacitly or directly encourage. They are losing control of their ugly minions. "The falcon cannot hear the falconer, Things fall apart". Yeats was right, too, and someone had better sober up.
Seahorse
Ooohh! Yeats. Nice!
_ _ _ _ _ _
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html
_ _ _ _ _ _
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
P
Much better with the complete stanza!
Seahorse
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