America as Pakistan

Quote of the Day: 

With Tea Party conservatives and many Republicans balking at raising the debt ceiling, let me offer them an example of a nation that lives up to their ideals.

It has among the lowest tax burdens of any major country: fewer than 2 percent of the people pay any taxes. Government is limited, so that burdensome regulations never kill jobs.

This society embraces traditional religious values and a conservative sensibility. Nobody minds school prayer, same-sex marriage isn’t imaginable, and criminals are never coddled.

The budget priority is a strong military, the nation’s most respected institution. When generals decide on a policy for, say, Afghanistan, politicians defer to them. Citizens are deeply patriotic, and nobody burns flags.

So what is this Republican Eden, this Utopia? Why, it’s Pakistan.

-Nicholas Kristof, in Sunday's New York Times, raising a huge red flag at the House of Representatives' efforts to take a machete to the budget at a time when a still healing economy  needs all the funding it can muster.

Playing with Fire

A highly qualified, Nobel Prize winning candidate for the Federal Reserve Board has had his nomination blocked by the Republicans for no reason other than tea-bagging politics.

These Fascist fucks have been so brazen in their efforts to block every damn thing this president does that I find myself stunned by an American public seemingly unaware that the Republicans would much rather let the economy fail so that they can turn around next year and blame it all on the guy in the White House.

It's all rather treasonous, if you ask me.