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In the Indiana State Legislature, a newly elected representative that was backed by the Tea Party lobby introduced a bill to raise the price of marriage licenses. If you want to get married in Indiana, the bill will raise the marriage license fee to $76. If however, you take the marriage counseling she wishes you to take, it will stay at $17. It has been pointed out to her that she ran on a platform of less government intrusion. Now she wants to add more of it.
Count on these Republicans (who have taken over the Tea Party) to do just exactly that sort of thing. They aren't against invasive, omnipresent government - just what they perceive to be "left-liberal" invasive/omnipresent government.Quote:
Originally Posted by grouch
I wouldn't piss on a Republican if he was on fire....
Wow! A $59 dollar increase for an optional course! What an excellent example of the Tea Party's hypocrisy!
Yep.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ranger
The "family values" schtick incites me to (in the words of the Reichsmarschall) reach for my gun. That and the flag-humping (and usually, draft-dodging) patriotism and donkey-braying Gawd Talk - often as not by dudes getting BJs in the bathroom at the Greyhound station or sending nekkid pictures of themselves to skanks on Craigs List.
Meanwhile, they never do a single meaningful thing to scale back the power/reach of government. They'll wear those god-damned flag pins and prattle on about "freedom" and Ahhhhhhhmmmmerrrrika while systematically undermining the Constitution and whoring themselves out to corporate interests.
By any sane standard - if the Constitution means anything (other being a curious historical document) these wheedling, influence-peddling shysters are traitors and deserve to be regarded as such by anyone who isn't on the take and doesn't want to be, either.
I should've included a sarcasm tag in my last post.
a few gay Republicans and the fact that Bush wasn't a fiscal conservative... so vote Democrat? F' That! Party of the entitlements and handouts are the Democrats... talk about traitors.
The Republicans are no better - they just dole out the payola to shyster banks, big corporations and the "defense" industry.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ranger
Voting Democrat isn't the answer, of course. But neither is voting Republican. The end result is always the same: More government, less freedom.
The only way out (my opinion) is for the authoritarians (left and right) to go their way, and those of us who value freedom - the real deal, based on the non-aggression principle which holds that the only time it is moral to use force or compulsion against another person is in self defense - to go our own way. Peaceful separation, if possible.
No more transfer payments of any kind. No "help" from the government - provided by others, against their will, at gunpoint. No taxes on income or property. No empire-building; just legitimate national self-defense. The individual free to live his life as he sees fit, so long as he does not harm others in the process. If not, leave him alone.
Period.
What makes the Republicans especially loathsome, though, is that they mouth pieties about small government while doing everything they can to make it bigger. About "values" - while shitting all over them.
At least with the Democrats, you get what they say they'll deliver: More government. Nihilism. Etc.
With Republicans, you get more government too, but you're supposed to overlook this because they talk about "freedom" and are "patriotic."
Unfortunately, a lot of the dumbos out there buy it, because they see the flags, they hear mumbling about Gawd and "values."
Personally, I don't give a damn about who's gay. What drives me nuts is the unctuousness combined with hypocrisy.
And Bush? That cretinous beady-eyed inbred halfwit is a "conservative"? Are there still people out there who believe that?
If there is a God, he's pissing his pants about now...
Valid points about the power grab on both sides. Unfortunately our wacked out government has a 2 party system so you are supporting one or the other (directly or indirectly, by action or inaction.)
Neither party is going to give up their power, I really don't see that peaceful separation thing ever happening.
I can ignore the calls to a mighty sky wizard along with the hypocrisy of preaching values. Those things are easy for me to ignore since they don't thrust me into the position of a debt slave.
It's the growing taxes, rules, restrictions, bailouts, enviro-wackies and other generally f*cked up government programs that turn us working stiffs into debt slaves and insure that our standard of living is flattened (redistributed) to equal the typical welfare recipient or convict. I swear the Democrats want the common working man to be poor and dependent on their dole.
The Tea Party is for smaller government. So why the tea party hate? Where is the better option? A 3rd party candidate? One that can get elected? WHERE?
I agree we have to start somewhere; and the Tea Party is somewhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ranger
But it's only a start.
And there's still too much Republicanism suffusing it - support for the police state (in the name of "fightin' fer freedom," as The Chimp constantly put it), neo-conservative global hegemony, corporation-snuggling, etc.
My starting point is this: Nothing is forever. That includes the two-party duopoly and the shibboleth of "democracy" we have today. Perhaps even the United States.
I am old enough to remember the Soviet Union. No one, before the late 1980s, ever imagined it would be gone by 1991.
The same can - and very well may - happen to the United States.
As someone who believes that when it comes to government, smaller is better - and that government split up is even better than that - I look forward to the wheels turning.
There is no hope of reforming the system we have because (among other things) there are just too many Maggots who like it, support it, have a vested interest in it.
But there are still millions of people who believe in not living off others, or forcing them to do anything against their will; who want nothing from their fellow men except goodwill - and offer the same in return.
I have major problems with any politician who touts "Family Values". Back in the 90's, that was the main Republican mantra. My response to that was "Greed, hatred and intolerance is not any value I want to instill in my kids". This was about the time the Republicans shut the government down and with the White House staff laid off, Mr. Bill had an unpaid intern "taking care" of business. Hmmmm.......aren't the Republicans talking about doing that again?
It's their best dodge.Quote:
Originally Posted by grouch
Don't do anything productive - just talk about the flag and family; toss in some gay-hatin' and Bible-thumpin' and the result will be the violent support of trailer park denizens all across the land. In between guzzling Miller Light and buying another piece of NASCAR crap for the mantle, they'll be supporting The Chimp (or his likely successor, the Tundra Twit).