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Wednesday
Tuesday
It's Coming
Among the many themes I find the need to repeat here -- since it's evident people of the teabagger mentality don't and might never get it -- is that the budgetary disaster of Messers Romney and Ryan will, if enacted, lead to the end of civilization as we know it. And if I've never put it exactly in those terms, it's undeniable -- they not only don't deny it but seem proud of it -- that it'll lead to defunding of such critical government functions as police, firefighters, infrastructure, education, research, environmental protection, etc, etc, ad destructum.
Want proof? Here's the pudding, in tidy microcosm:
Well, you get what you pay for, as it's said. And the only thing Rs want to pay for is tax cuts for their fellow wealthians, and more military spending. The rest of it? Who cares, right? Besides, we know that when you cut taxes, money pours into government like fetuses to that company Romney invested in, right? Always has.As Colorado Springs battles a rash of burglaries after a wildfire that still licks at its boundaries, it does so with fewer police and firefighters.
The municipality, at 416,000 the state’s second-largest, auctioned both its police helicopters and shrank public-safety ranks through attrition by about 8 percent; it has 50 fewer police and 39 fewer firefighters than five years ago. ...The city where the Waldo Canyon fire destroyed 346 homes and forced more than 34,000 residents to evacuate turned off one-third of its streetlights two years ago, halted park maintenance and cut services to close a $28 million budget gap after sales-tax revenue plummeted and voters rejected a property-tax increase.
“It has impacted the response,” said Karin White, a 54- year-old accountant, who returned home June 28 to a looted and vandalized house...
Hasn't it?
Afterbirth
And so a new RWS™ lie is born, fully adulterated at its nativity, becoming a universal right-wing talking point faster than Mitt Romney fired people when he ran Bain; faster than he changes principles.
(And faster than that, Chief Justice Roberts, a right-wing hero of the first order until mere moments ago, has fallen into disgrace for referring to the Constitution. It tells us much about their concept of judicial review, and what defines judicial activism.)
The lie, of course, is that the Affordable Care Act is the biggest tax increase in US history (or, as Rush Limbaugh put it, in the history of the world.) Surpassingly, virtually every word in the claim is false, making it the Platonic ideal of a RWS™ talking point.
First of all, CJ Roberts is the only one of the nine who characterized the individual mandate as a tax. Eight rejected that idea. Does a one-ninth opinion make it, in fact, a tax? Second, the only thing he called a tax was exactly that: the individual mandate; ie, penalizing those who are able but refuse to buy health insurance. That. And only that, he saw as a tax. Which, compared, say, to any of the eleven tax hikes Reagan approved, approximates null. Because, among other things, most people won't be affected. As the first above-linked reference points out, in Massachusetts, where Obamenycare has been in effect for several years, only about 1% of its citizens paid the penalty.
But never let the facts get in the way of a good talking point. Ever since Sarah Palin lied about death panels, it's been the modus operandi of R opponents to fixing our pathetic health care system. Lies are easy, and god knows they work. And these are the people asking us to trust them to run the government. Liars and obstructionists; hypocrites and deceivers. None of which, by any reasonable standard, is an exaggeration.
There is an amusing aspect here, though: The Rominee has said he fixed health care without raising taxes in Massachusetts. So while the RWS™, the teabaggRs are all shouting "tax tax tax" nonstop, to anyone who'll listen, Mittens is saying "no no no, it wasn't a tax when I did it."
I'll ask it again: c'mon conservatives. When will the weight of reality get you to abandon these people? You're as smart as a thirteen year old, right? Assuming you value honesty and fact-based policy, they've long since abandoned you. Clearly, they believe you're stupid. Is there no point at which the conscience of a conservative would demand better and kick these liars off the stage?
