And Miller has the gaul to say he’s just as tough on the banks as anyone.

That’s odd, “Miller” doesn’t sound French!

Yeah, I actually have no dispute with this guy on a number of goals, but vehemently disagree about the way to achieve them. He actually doesn’t care about any of the social issue distraction because as he said he’s not a fundie wackadoo, but he is firmly entrenched in the “poor black people late on their mortgages crashed the global economy, climate change is a conspiracy, no problem can’t be fixed by larger and larger tax cuts for richer and richer people” school of thought. When I try pointing out the empirical evidence that does not support such positions, that’s where some part of his brain goes offline. Which for some reason always reminds me of trying to reason with a fundie….

Is wanting clean air and water and uncontaminated food supplies and secure infrastructure a “conservative” or a “liberal” position? To my mind it should be both – and yet it seems our elected representatives regardless of what they call themselves fight against such things because some corporate entity somewhere might have to provide slightly less profit to a small handful of people if we tried to do them.

You’re right, it’s not really about the label or brand.

This guy is an engineer with decades of experience. And listens to Rush every day and swears by him. I can only conclude that either some people’s brains are missing crucial connections through the frontal lobes that permit self-critical evaluations of one’s own thinking or perhaps undiagnosed delusional thinking is widespread. Could be both!

I mean, I understand coming from a different perspective, having different priorities and values. But I don’t understand embracing a worldview that forces one not only to exclude inconvenient truths but to actively engage in removing them from consideration. Of course I guess what I’m really saying is where the hell did all the honest Republicans go?

That’s exactly what I said to him. He stared back at me blankly.

I heard from a far right coworker recently that George Bush was never a “true” Republican or a conservative. (Of course, he also thinks Obama is a Socialist.) After I stopped laughing I started pressing him to identify who really represents the GOP ideal, and the only person he could come up with is Rush. I agreed with him that Rush is the true leader of the GOP. But he didn’t know why I couldn’t stop laughing when I said it.

Oh, I don’t think he’s been suckered one bit. I think he wants to be the guy who finally realized the corporatists’ dream of undoing the last bits of FDR’s program. I think they want to keep working class people paying into the system and then legalize the theft of those funds to spend on whatever the hell they feel like, minimizing any return they might eventually have to pay off to the investor. Much as the Reagan-era criminals looted pension funds and dismantled stable companies, these triangulating bastards are happy to preside over the dismantling of the social safety net in the name of corporate profits. Let them eat cat food.

Also, it’s time to starting putting the I back in SSI – Social Security INSURANCE, as in, I pay premiums for years, decades even, and then down the line assuming I’m still alive I get the return on my investment.

Nothing even remotely welfarey about it, though as we all know the goal of the “let’s go back to letting poor people die” crowd is to shift the language of social security insurance from something that you’ve bought to something that you’re being given (i.e., an entitlement), whether you “deserve” it or not.

I think the only appropriate response to these sorts of suggestions is to “negotiate” in the other direction. Oh, you think people should work till they’re 70? Let’s change it to 60, with a medicare buy-in at 55. You want more? Okay then, 55 and Medicare at 45. Less competition for jobs and better healthcare for when we need it.

I passed through security early last Wednesday morning at Denver International Airport. The scanners were roped off and had orange highway cones sitting in them. Not all lines had scanners but those that did were simply bypassing them, sending people through the usual metal detector.

I had to go through the naked scanner last week and it certainly is degrading. Knowing that just about everything the TSA people on site claim is 100% bullshit makes it that much more infuriating. I think it’s time to write to my Senators and demand they post their own full body scans on their official government websites, and require all US Senators, the House, come to think of it, everyone in every branch of the federal government should be forced to pose for them since they think it’s such a great idea. Not that I want to see them.