Good riddance already?

Time magazine gets tough on the Republican party and its ideals... They seem to predict that the end is almost near. I would prefer the party still lurk in the background serving us a constant reminder of the depths a nation could plumb. On the other hand, what will we do without the constant entertainment from the honorable Mr. Rush if the party fades away...

The party's ideas — about economic issues, social issues and just about everything else — are not popular ideas. They are extremely conservative ideas tarred by association with the extremely unpopular George W. Bush, who helped downsize the party to its extremely conservative base. A hard-right agenda of slashing taxes for the investor class, protecting marriage from gays, blocking universal health insurance and extolling the glories of waterboarding produces terrific ratings for Rush Limbaugh, but it's not a majority agenda. The party's new, Hooverish focus on austerity on the brink of another depression does not seem to fit the national mood, and it's shamelessly hypocritical, given the party's recent history of massive deficit spending on pork, war and prescription drugs in good times, not to mention its continuing support for deficit-exploding tax cuts in bad times.

Eugene Remy Maes (1849 - 1931), 'The Cock Fight', oil on canvas, 35" X 47"

Interesting riff on libertarianism and piracy

From here:

For Ron Paul’s growing legion of dope-addled contradictarian libertarians, Somalia is like nirvana. There are no taxes. No public education. No national healthcare. No national debt. No labor laws. No environmental laws. No business regulations. No unions. No import or export restrictions. No meddlesome big government—or small government for that matter. And everyone smokes khat, which is a leafy plant that temporarily deludes its users into feeling as if their problems are gone. Somalia, a country that hasn’t had an operating central government since 1991, is a libertarian Republican’s wet dream.

... Killing pirates, it turns out, is a good political move. President Obama, in the eyes of an amoebic media, is now a decisive leader ready to take those 3am phone calls Hillary Clinton and John McCain warned us about. He allowed pirates to be shot. He’s a real leader. Now that he’s cut his teeth, faced that first ritualistic bloodletting of a US president, and experienced the power and prestige that comes from defeating pirates, perhaps it’s time to take on real, big-league pirates. Perhaps it’s time to deal with the pirates on Wall Street who have been holding our economy hostage. Maybe, if they run, we’ll even pursue them to their Somalia-like offshore tax havens.