False Consensus

Those of us who are real Republicans know that people are by nature bad. We're driven to selfish means of survival, excess and animus. It takes a very stable thoughtful mind to avoid these instinctual drives. Fear and lust will drive a man to do horrible things and he may come back down and look at the result of his amok time with disgust and despair, but it's pure humanity in its primal hysteric. Is there anything more human than revenge? Those of us at the top of the food chain are beholden to societal rules because if you're caught with your hand in the cookie jar, you get it cut off, but if you steal a billion, you are confined to your luxury mansion where you were hiding anyway.  We are civilized as long as we are privileged.

The underprivileged need something else. By creating a cult of fear that pushes people to charity with rewards or punishment in an afterlife, we can get these hard-working hungry lemmings to help some of us live happier lives. There's not enough stuff to make all of us happy anyway so why should we all be miserable? If we can give them something to hope for in the next life, maybe their misery and suffering will have some internal meaning. We're creating heroes and keeping the peace.

We're all sociopathic by nature, but some of us hide it better than others.  Empathy is like lust; it doesn't last long and it only distracts us from the important stuff.

Marriage Penalty

The creation of the institute of marriage seemed like a good idea. Imagine having kids (as a mom or a dad) without a contract. Dads have to decide which schools they attend or how much to beat them when they're bad? How do moms ever get a date again or the dead-beat "still looking for a job" dad to help support the family? Other than children and the tax break, there isn't a good reason to create a contract between two people. If there is an economic inequality it only invites the party with less to take something from the party with more and leave. If there's no contract, the lesser party is beholden to the greater party and must spend the money before leaving.

With love in the equation, money won't be a factor at first, but a time will come when the money is either too scarce or too abundant to be overshadowed by true love and the love will melt away like that crunchy coating on a Krispy Kreme donut that turned soggy in your car. At this point, one of you will be kicking yourself for signing the stupid contract that even your parents warned you about, and the other will be maxing out credit cards and hiding secret bank accounts. It's not like you really have a choice. Just like free will, entering marriage of your own volition is an illusion. Who stays married for 50 happy years? Boring people that would have been just as happy as asexual companions looking for cats in human form that need minimal attention.

I Can Has Cheezburger? - Only if you're willing to consider a threesome.

Health Care Less

The problem making something free is all the jerks that take advantage. There are several reasons they gobble it up; 1) Just in case I need it in the future, 2) I'm paying for it through taxes so I might as well take what I'm paying for, 3) It's not fair that someone else gets it without me getting one too, 4) If I wait until I need it, they might all be gone, or 5) If I take them all early, nobody that really needs one can get one (ha ha). These reasons are all asshole reasons but there is one real American reason that would prevent a system of free stuff from ever working. If I can get these services free and mark them up to people who will pay for them, then I can make a tidy profit and create a good business. Or even if I'm selling a competing product, it makes sense for me to absorb the free stuff, destroy it, or at least make it look bad.

The middle man is in everything. At first there were ticket scalpers and now there's Ticketmaster and StubHub. Car (or any product) salesmen are just there to squeeze the most extra money out of you they can. If someone says you would make a good salesman, it means you're a total asshole. It's the same with health insurance. When there's a service that nobody can afford (health care), you pay monthly an amount that depends on the chances you might use the service. It's a smoothing function that makes the healthy people pay for the sick unless they're willing to gamble they won't get sick. Force everyone to pay and you might as well get rid of the insurance companies. Why don't insurance companies like this idea? We've already created an industry on people gambling whether they will get sick or not. If we fix it to give sick people the best care possible, millions of people will lose their jobs, but at least they'll have health care. They shouldn't be allowed to make people buy health insurance just like the hospitals should be allowed to make all the people without health insurance pay before you pump. You opted out of health insurance so we're going to have to let you die.

If we get rid of all the useless jobs, how will stupid people have an opportunity to get rich too?  There's always the lottery.

Selfish Virtues

Why is conservatism so tightly linked with free market capitalism? Economic policy is not supposed to involve empathy, but our core philosophy must justify conspicuous consumption juxtaposed with our preachy austere convictions. This sounds like a difficult problem to tackle, but like the Bible, if you line-item-veto the parts that don't apply to you it's not difficult to piece together a doctrine of selfishness that includes a strict ethic of conservatism. Isn't the drive for survival really a drive to fulfill our primal needs (food, warmth, sex, football)? A balanced life is not static. You dip into the cookie jar and then you say a few hail Mary's to atone.

It's the same with capitalism. We play hard until we're so caught up in the game we commit personal fouls. Then we atone by giving back some of the yards we gained. This may include a short stint in jail depending on the transgression, but redemption is always possible (except in TX, GA, VA and NH). If we're forced to be compassionate by an ethic (or a government), it's no longer empathy. A selfless act is a self destructive act so if we all sacrifice ourselves we end up with useless watch chains or a set of combs without any hair. Regulating the economy would be like having God as a referee. How is it free will if you can't step over the line?

Bowling with bumpers is for the weak.

Surplus Value

The art explosion during the renaissance was caused by too many people with nothing better to do. The same thing causes war and the decline of empires. If you're hungry, you aren't thinking about art or any extracurricular activities. It's the same with money. If you have too much you can afford to get yourself in trouble. We all want that kind of trouble as an individual, but as a country why should we self-destruct like that? As long as there's a crisis in banking, energy, housing, environment, natural disaster, immigration, threat of evil, unemployment, national debt, disease, homosexuality, etc., we're not going to march on Washington and demand affordable health care or marriage between a man and his cats (deductions).

Why can't people see that we shouldn't have a surplus? If we get out of debt we must be prepared to discipline ourselves with other ascetic goals. Look how we created a religion around giving everything away, turning the other cheek and loving everyone, but turned it into the most selfish, destructive and vengeful movement the world has ever seen. Fear and greed are the only true motivators. We only want to put on our nice person mask when someone is watching. I wouldn't pee in the shower if anyone else was in there (unless asked). Why are these concepts so difficult to grasp?

Hungry people discourage illegal immigration.

Big Balkan Tent

Hypocrisy, like many other weapons is what makes the conservative movement great. All you have to do is agree with us on one or two unimportant social issues and you are an advertised member of the group, but when a critic points to some negative habit or characteristic in the party (e.g. polygamy, bigamy, racism, bigotism, fascism, greed, etc.) we suggest it's the red headed step-child of the group (Mormons, militias, token black guy, tea party, Donald Trump, etc.). They're all welcome because we can throw them under the bus and most of the time they throw themselves under the bus. Our mascot is a martyr.

Look at the Tea Party. How could a group of old white guys with enough discretionary time to whine about taxes have a slogan "No taxation without representation"? What more representation do we want? For a while I thought maybe the emotionally disturbed and the learning disabled were not properly featured, but we got both with Bush Jr. so we're all happy now. My point is that this contradiction doesn't bother us. We use it to distract you on the one hand from the real subject. Secondly it puts you at ease because we look foolish and non-threatening. And lastly, your reaction makes you look like an elite snob to everybody including yourself (guilt is a festering thing).

If you destroy us it will only make us stronger.

Blood Libel

With this post title, you may have come here looking for a different subject, but co-opting ethnic and cultural hot button terms is something we know works. From doomsaying the nuclear holocaust, warning of godless Islamofascists and bemoaning the current state of political apartheid. We're always willing to hijack controversial historical events to both patronize the affected and conflate our own issues with prepackaged emotions. For example; to get to the promised land we're going to need a governmental reformation or renaissance combined with a liberal diaspora or exodus and we'll let health care be their Waterloo. By dropping a couple of overloaded events, a word paints a thousand pictures.

Iconic emotional manipulation saves time and makes talking point crusades easier to remember. Who needs a tsunami of boring platform issues when aligning yourself with the targets of an inquisition or ethnic cleansing will bring everyone to your side without any knowledge of your position. Thankfully, most people don't know what a blood libel is because if they knew Ms. Palin was equating our position with the wrongly accused Jewish people using the blood of children in ritualistic ceremonies, their heads might explode. Between the outrage of using a blatant fear-mongering emotionally charged example and the association of our righteous political posture with the condemned Judaic tradition, their reactions would be mixed. The beauty of commandeering and compromising these idioms over and over is that they become associated with our cause instead of the original. We can systematically co-opt culture and spread like a black death pogrom. That might be a little harsh. Maybe it's more like global warming.

We all know that matso doesn't contain (unkosher) kid's blood. They have to use ground puppy bones.

Tort Remedies

So frivolous litigation is less than one percent of health care costs and removing all of them would change our health insurance fees by about 22 cents per month. I keep hearing this, but you're not saying there's no problem. It's just not the biggest problem. Plane crashes cause less than one percent of deaths worldwide, but it's enough to scare people onto trains and buses. Perhaps we would have more doctors and more competition if they weren't scared of the guy claiming that sponge wasn't in there before. How do we know it wasn't a magic trick gone horribly wrong? Where did the sponge go? Nobody knows.

Maybe we need to rethink our core values here. Our whole judicial system is based on Blackstone's "better ten guilty go free than one innocent man be wronged", but is that really best for society? It's the same deal God made with Abraham, if 10 good people were found in Sodom then he wouldn't destroy it (guess they only found 9). Maybe it's better that a couple of innocents be scooped up with the bad people to keep the rest of us safe. If we throw out anything that looks frivolous to protect the corporations, businesses will thrive and they'll start hiring again with this trickle down theory. One step better, we could start putting people in jail for frivolous lawsuits and scare away some minor real claims and then we're really taking a chunk out of health care costs because they won't have to be as "careful". Just like everything else, you get what you pay for so there would be special premium health care services with guaranteed quality for those willing to pay. It's the American way.

If planes didn't crash, who would get on a train?

Unaccountable Churches

Some will tell you our founding fathers thought an injection of religion into government would be bad medicine. Perhaps Richie Sambora was related to them and they were just worried government would get addicted to that monkey on our back. I'm okay with protecting my church from the greedy fingers of the law, but you can't have it both ways; If you want the government to share in the profits of the huge organized money making venture, you're going to have to accept a few commandments in court rooms and prayers in kindergarten. Some of those kids really need to pray anyway.

How could a small company compete today if it's not faith-based? The only alternative is the defense industry, corrections or homeland security. We've outsourced all the smart jobs, so it has to be either organized crime or extremely soft metrics. Look at Katrina; everyone talks about how bad it was, but do we know how much worse it could have been? Until we have another hurricane in New Orleans within 5 years of a major terrorist attack while we're fighting two wars, we'll never know and we set the bar pretty low for improvement the next time around. Now you want to tax the charities too? Like a potion that can cure all your diseases, all you (the government) have to do is accept the love of God and that Jesus died for your sins and you can be part of the club. It's an offer you can't refuse.

First you need, then you bleed, now you're down on your knees.

'Roid Burn

Whiny, whine, whinge! Performance enhancing drugs are ruining professional sports, killing people and messing up our children. Really? You think those obsessive personalities wouldn't find something else to mess up their bodies even more if they didn't have steroids? On a positive note, there's the healthy part of the obsession to be healthy, or at least look super-freakishly healthy. We already have chemicals in our food and air, hormones in our eggs and meat, mercury in our fish, who knows what in diet sodas and energy drinks, so a few injections of stuff that's already in our bodies is going to cause a problem? I don't see what the fuss is about.

I used to be outraged at the NFL, NBA and MLB because it's not fair that teams from other towns can bulk up when my representatives are playing by the rules, but the more I think about it, some of them only get to play 2 or 3 years before they tear an ACL or get too many concussions or die from a freak heart problem, so why can't we let them get bigger and hit harder? They're in a rough business anyway. It's kind of like not letting soldiers smoke. Most of them are not going to die from lung cancer unless it's caused by some enemy agent released on the battlefield. I really don't understand people complaining about doping in "sports" like the Tour de France. First of all, they're bicyclists so they're probably jerks anyway and secondly, wouldn't you rather see the limits of human endurance and physical capacity even if it's enhanced by daily blood transfusions, performance enhancing drugs and mind altering robot implants? Who knew anything about the Tour before Lance? I'll tell you who; elite cyclist snobs.

Don't we all watch to see them crash and burn anyway?

Taxic Shock

Like Woody said, we can live to be a hundred if we give up all the things that make us want to live to be a hundred. I know someone is going to have to pay the piper, but wasn't it the kids that all suffered in that story anyway? What did the parents do after the kids were gone? I don't think they sat around crying about their kids. They probably just made some more kids and then complained about how they weren't ever as good as the martyr kids that got taken away. Most of them just retired early.

You aren't going to convince me that we will have a better society if we pay more taxes. History is proving that. How is our life any worse now that we're paying less taxes? As long as you still have a job, you're doing ok. I mean a real job, not a Wal-Mart or McDonald's job. That probably sucks, but why should I suffer to make your life better? The more taxes we pay, the more barnacles collect on the government. If you take away the teat, all the suckers are going to find something else. If we can make them resort to a life of crime, then put them in prison and it's free labor with no taxes required to support the poor. It's a simple solution and the circle of life.

Hakuna Matata!

New Year Resolutions

I'm not big on resolutions anyway, so it really boils down to one resolution this year. I'm not going to exercise more or eat better or save money for my kid's education. My resolution is to do everything I can to piss off Democrats even if I have to cut off my own nose. I'll take this environment down with me if I can get a bunch of whiny liberals telling me to recycle and use less water in the desert. I don't care if anyone has a job as long Democrats control the presidency and congress and we can blame it on them. I'll drive my dually pickup right over your little smart car while I'm texting on the highway.

What's the best way to upset a liberal? I've started a list:

1) Bumper stickers: From the simple NOBAMA to the "Piss off a liberal: Work hard and be happy", they're the best way to get your message across.

2) Let your dog poop in the common areas without picking it up or throw trash out your window in the car.

3) Talk about Sarah Palin. We know she's stupid too, but it's fun to act like she's our mascot.

4) Elect idiots: They're easier to manipulate and they don't try to make government do anything. On the flip side, they're more likely to be involved in scandal.

5) Try to sneak religion into schools and government. We're not that big on church anyway, but it causes more grief there than anywhere else.

6) Attack the gays. We don't really care what they do but tell one joke and you've soured the mood for weeks.

7) Use communism and Hitler together talking about liberals. We know it's contradictory but the message is there.

8) Bring your gun to work and wave it around when you're talking about what happened on Game of Thrones this week and then say, "this is the same gun they used at Columbine".

Obamageddon: No we can't!