Gloom, Despair

[O Really]

I was browsing some literature, and found some of the same ol' same ol' stories...

"A great awakening must occur within our President. He swings hard at the esay targets and soft at the big ones..."

"A top to bottom reform of our public welfare programs is long overdue...[we need] more constructive approaches to get people off assistance and back into useful roles in society."

"The Gallup organization has a new survey of some 3000 typical young Americans [that shows] most clearly that far too many of our boys and girls have a curiously flabby and uninformed attitude about our country, its history and its future, and about their own lives and futures. Too many are interested chiefly in security, an eight-hour day and a relatively easy way of life. If the spark of ambition is there, it is buried pretty deep in some of them."

[Labor leader's] "demands should be moderated, to keep costs down if American industry is to compete successfully in foreign markets...another boost in labor costs surely would give employers added incentives to replace men with machines."

"Legal wiretapping, under proper safeguards, is a must if we are to hold our own against the crime empires and spy rings that plague the nation."

"I look upon our country and much that I see disturbs me....We are now at the end of the third decade of the insanity known as 'progressive education.' This the the education where everybody passes, where report cards are non-committal lest the failure be faced with the fact of his failure...we have produced thens of thousands of high school graduates who move their lips as they read and cannot write a coherent paragraph...could what is missing be a doctrine of individual responsibility?... The welfare state that taxes away rewards for respo;nsible behavior so that it can remove the age-old penalties for irresponsible behavior is building on a foundation of jelly....We are drowning our youngsters in violence, cynicism and sadism piped into the living room and even the nursery. The grandchildren of the kids who used to weep because the Little Match Girl froze to death now feel cheated if she isn't slugged, raped, and thrown into a Bessemer converter..."

"A high school girl who arose before dawn to quiet the family dog was shot to death Monday when her father mistook her for a burglar. ...An accident? Bad luck? Extraordinary? None of these things. It happens somewhere in the country nearly every night of the year, because householder keep loaded guns around the house.."

Oh...did I mention the "literature" was the Readers' Digest...April 1962 and September, 1966?

[O Really]

Republican Party seems as divided, angry as ever

Eventually, the GOP will marginalize its wingnuts and start representing people other than rich white men but, for now, it sure is fun to watch the implosion while it loses in 2014 and possibly 2016 if it doesn't get its act together.

" ..."People are mad as hell. I'm right there with them," Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express, said late last week, declaring that she has "no confidence" in the party her members typically support."

Teapartiers being "mad as hell" is a good thing. Happy teapartiers would really be bad for the country. Problem is, it's going to be hard to dislodge most of the Republican House seats, or at least to turn them, because they've become so gerrymandered in. Worst case would be the mad teapartiers winning Republican seats that are now held by people who may drool for show, but don't drool all that much IRL. Given the teapartiers penchant for picking the worst candidates available, however, I don't stay up late at night worrying about tea party or zombie apocalypse.

[Boatrocker]

. . . Teapartiers being "mad as hell" is a good thing . . . .

"Mad" as in, really frakin pissed? Or "mad" as in, kookoo for Cocoa Puffs? Both? Don't guess it matters. They do not appear to be on the verge of a useful, rational epiphany.

[O Really]

. . . Teapartiers being "mad as hell" is a good thing . . . .

"Mad" as in, really frakin pissed? Or "mad" as in, kookoo for Cocoa Puffs? Both? Don't guess it matters. They do not appear to be on the verge of a useful, rational epiphany.

It would be better if they weren't kookoo, but then they wouldn't be teapartiers, would they? Actually, I don't find them so much to be looney because of their political viewpoint as their operational idiocy. The candidates they've put up, and the positions they've taken are pretty ridiculous. Since when is it better to lose an election than to run an "impure" candidate? What happened to "politics is the art of the possible"?