Well, all this is interesting to me, anyway, and that's what matters here. The Internet is a terrible thing for someone like me, who finds almost everything interesting.
The more I see of him, the more Ted Cruz seems like the reincarnation of Joe McCarthy - but possibly with a worse sense of ethics.
After all, as much as he lied, I suspect that McCarthy really was worried about Communism. Cruz is just an opportunist. He knows darn well that he's lying about the Republicans' own health care plan, that this is all just partisan political games.
And note that this wasn't even a filibuster. Rachel Maddow explains it very well. (Unfortunately, her video from MSNBC breaks my post so I'm going to embed it at the bottom here.)
I also wanted to embed the following clip from President Obama's speech. He's laughing, and I fully understand why. But why haven't the Republicans been laughed off the political stage by now? Is it just because Obama is black, so racists will believe anything about him, no matter how stupid?
How crazy can they get, how hilariously insane, before the American people - and our news media - will stop taking Republicans seriously?
Unfortunately, the GOP still has the power to do great harm to America. They are taking hostages, holding a gun to America's head, threatening to shoot if they don't get everything they want.
Most people think it's just rhetoric, that they're not really as crazy as they pretend to be - not all of them, at least. But what if they are? What if there are enough Republicans who really are that crazy? This probably isn't an act for all of them, so how do you tell the truly insane from the people just pretending to be insane for political advantage?
Or what if they go too far and simply see no way out but to pull the trigger? That's what worries me. When it comes to economic terrorism, it's a reasonable worry, I'd think.
Anyway, here's that clip with Rachel Maddow. (It's supposed to be just the first ten minutes of an extended clip. I hope it works, because it seems to be doing strange things here.)
Of course, the last time these people planned to "descend on Washington, D.C., en masse," virtually no one showed up. There were just a handful of deluded fools wandering around Washington, looking for the rest of their group.
This time, he expects to get "millions"? Heh, heh. But I shouldn't laugh. Most of these lunatics are well-armed, and it just takes one to start killing people.
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Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science. - Hal Clement
No matter how many times a theory meets its tests successfully, there can be no certainty that it will not be overthrown by the next observation. This, then, is a cornerstone of modern natural philosophy. It makes no claim of attaining ultimate truth. In fact, the phrase "ultimate truth" becomes meaningless, because there is no way in which enough observations can be made to make truth certain and, therefore, "ultimate". - Isaac Asimov
The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. - Treaty of Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams (1797)
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During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church ... imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. - Mark Twain
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2 comments:
How's this for insane: Larry Klayman calling for an "armed overthrow" of the government.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/26/tea-party-supporter-has-set-a-date-for-the-armed-overthrow-of-the-government/
Oh, my brain hurts....
Yup, that's pretty darn insane, Jeff.
Of course, the last time these people planned to "descend on Washington, D.C., en masse," virtually no one showed up. There were just a handful of deluded fools wandering around Washington, looking for the rest of their group.
This time, he expects to get "millions"? Heh, heh. But I shouldn't laugh. Most of these lunatics are well-armed, and it just takes one to start killing people.
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