A series of random objects

Terrorists still want to be warriors

Why let them get that distinction by trying them as soldiers in a war?

Ideas that don't stick

Are usually ideas that are really, really complicated. Deficit reduction, the supposed rallying cry of many a tea partier, happens to be really, really complicated. I still want to see SOMEBODY associated with it start articulating how to do it before I take it seriously (Paul Ryan doesn't count because he immediately became persona non grata when he did it, and I'm not sure how popular he is among tea partiers anyway. Ron Paul might count here, though the anti-imperial republic rhetoric only goes so far among such people, hence Palin's equally popular presence). I have no problem sitting down and gutting the budget piece by piece. The absurdity of a people who seem not to actually want to cut perceived essential services (to themselves) and then claim to want the budget deficit closed or reduced is only a good joke for so long. But in any case, it does seem clear that somehow the election was seen as a momentous event that shifted popular opinion and responses to ongoing trends. The expanse of executive power and privilege, state authoritarianism, expansive government welfare or intrusion into market activities, etc. All of that did not start in late 2008. But apparently lots of people needed some dividing line to become aware of it. Sad really.

Speaking of heavy mouth breathing fun seekers

Glenn Beck. That is all. I put Woodrow Wilson pretty far down on my list of successful Presidencies myself and I think FDR is way overrated (TR by contrast is in my personal top 2 or 3). But seriously. Get a fucking grip dude. Equally true, Obama is not the second coming of Lenin either. He's basically the same as Bush 2.0, for reasons that ought to be obvious (power of the Presidency is only sometimes an independent power that exists outside of other political forces).

ACLU continues to be on my friend list

Doesn't understand the continued and vociferous objection to corporate speech, or rather, to little guy speech that is not considered acceptable speech. Corporate power exists either way. Transparency is a nice idea that I'd support, but really, how many people actually pay attention to political campaign ads in a way that would spur them to pay attention to who funded them or who backs who?

Jeopardy

I should really get back into Jeopardy mode sometime.

and of course, social networking

Can foster divorce. Or successful relationships. One could also assume that this might help explain the sort of spiral that people raised in "unsuccessful" relationship environments can go through as well. I'm probably a lot less susceptible to peer groups, but I do observe modestly successful and apparently pleasant relationships among those peers (I don't attend to them myself, as an outsider, and for the most part don't think people expect me to do so). I suppose I could take that as a positive sign. If I were so inclined to want to look for such things. I'm still built as too much of a skeptic I think.

End it

Already. There isn't an empirical set to support these claims. The excuses get tedious and ever more entrenched rather than seeking to actually explain behavior.

Speaking of defence, and things we should gut

How about that military budget getting a thorough comb some time. How bout it tea party? If you won't take social security and medicare/aid off the table while intoning on your endless mantras of "socialism", how about grabbing some low hanging fruit off the military budget?

Oh yeah, and this guy was fired after all His Monty Python enjoyment to the contrary, I'm not sure he was the best choice in retrospect. Of course, 1) I didn't support him getting fired (or at least, I was ambivalent) and 2) I didn't support the situation he was put in charge of in the first place, which was more the cause of my disagreement anyway.