Thursday, April 16, 2009

Revolting Development

Wasted some perfectly good noon-hour time with the local rag, and saw fit to compound the waste by posting this comment to their article on the fair city's Teabagger event yesterday:
"Taxpayer revolt," eh? Balderdash! The teabaggers aren't protesting "federal spending." Their beloved George Bush took a budget surplus, burned through it, and then launched a trillion-dollar war based on phony "evidence" and nobody threw anything into the lake. When the economy started over the edge of the cliff and Bush began the so-called bailout plan, nobody threw anything into the lake. Now Obama proposes a plan that will REDUCE taxes for most of the middle class…and they protest?! Now the economy is showing some signs of recovery…and they protest?!

Either they have no sense at all, or the issue is really about something else--namely, their party having lost, overwhelmingly, in November. They’re out of power and out of ideas, so they resort to gainsaying, grandstanding, and hoping that the economic recovery will fail so they can say, "Told you so!"

It's not about taxes, or bailouts, or anything except the fact that they're out and they can't stand it.
It really is quite astounding to me how people who are, I presume, of reasonably average intelligence can so easily--and enthusiastically!--convince themselves that when a Republican president gives big tax breaks to multimillionaires, that's a wonderful thing for themselves...but when a Democratic president proposes tax cuts for middle-class Americans--like them!--they take up arms, and teabags, in protest! How dare that dirty dog cut my taxes! What is he, some kinda Socialist?! He should be cutting rich people's taxes instead!

One strives for optimism. But it seems a losing battle...

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