Author: Muttrox

This is What I Hate About Georgia

When there is something that makes me say, “That is one stupid state”, the odds are good it’s my own state of Georgia. Sigh. Are you curious to know about those idiotic partisan kamikaze dolts who risked our countries good faith and credit and wreaked vast destruction on the country for no reason?

Here they are. The 32 hardcore house republicans who couldn’t take no for an answer. Or even yes for an answer. Or any kind of answer unless it came from their efforts to hold the country hostage. This will go down as a shameful episode in American History, and one more nail in the coffin of the modern Republican party.

I am not surprised that Georgia overindexes by 500%. Not a bit.

My First Gym Class

Despite the many hours of my life that have been spent in the gym, this is the first time I have ever attended a class. There was a spinning class, which I know now is a unnecessary alternative word for biking. As I have been biking regularly as part of my workouts I was looking forward to it. The regular instructor was out so there was a DVD instead.

It kicked my ass. I quit after twenty minutes. Wow. That was hard!

Along the way I learned the exact demographic this was designed for – 30 to 40 year old women who are neither attractive nor unattractive and can’t stop smiling vapid smiles.

Context on the Shutdown

Your viewpoint on the GOPs tactics depends less (or should depend less) on your feelings about the existential threat of Obamacare, and more on the precedent it sets. The precedent for using a non-partisan crisis as a hostage for partisan gains, and the precedent it sets for constitutional powers. This is a genuine constitutional crisis.

Jonathan Chait is easily my favorite writer on what is really going on. But the best context is from Abraham Lincoln. Yes, that Abraham Lincoln.

From the Cooper Union address of 1860.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. This, plainly stated, is your language…

In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle….

Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored – contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong…

My Latest Favorite Song #6

I’ve been on a bit of a Rolling Stones kick lately. I’m most of the way through Crossfire Hurricane, a pretty great documentary. This live version of Tumbling Dice is incredible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiKdqJzMTtc

Wish the video was more interesting, but there you go.