George Carlin On Rights Versus Privileges

Rights are just an idea–much like Mother Goose.

Obama’s Snowden Hypocrisy

I think “doing what this moment demands” just meant voting Barack Obama into the White House.

The Republican Congress Is Testing A New Form Of Radicalism

The Article: Anarchists of the House by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine.

The Text: A few months ago, Eric Cantor was ready to bring his latest brainchild, the “Helping Sick Americans Now” bill, to the House floor. The move was pure Cantor—a smarmy, ultrapartisan ploy. The bill proposed to eliminate funds the Obama administration needs to set up and run the health-care exchanges that are the central mechanism in the health-care law, but then Cantor’s bill would use those funds to help a handful of sick people get health insurance. There was no chance this, or anything like it, would be signed into law, as Obama obviously would not agree to tear down a program to insure millions of Americans in return for insuring a tiny fraction of that number. It was a message vote whose purpose was “embarrassing Obamacare,” as one conservative activist gloated, by forcing Obama to deny immediate aide for the uninsured. As a soulless exercise in disingenuous spin, it was well conceived.

It failed, however, because a crucial faction of ultraconservative House Republicans threatened to vote against it. The trouble was that Cantor’s bill purported to “fix” Obamacare rather than eliminate it. “Why the hell do we want to fix it?” complained conservative pundit Erick Erickson. “We should want to repeal it.” Since they have already voted 37 times to repeal Obama­care, one might think that the House Republicans’ appraisal of the law’s general merits had been made sufficiently clear. But just the pretense of working to improve the law, even while actually crippling it, offended the right. In the face of unmoved conservative opposition, Cantor had to pull his pet bill from the floor. It wound up embarrassing the House Republicans, not Obama­care.

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Russell Brand Puts MSNBC Media To Shame

They get his name wrong, they poke fun at his accent, they only find themselves capable of talking about his clothing…and Russell Brand lets them have it. It’s almost painful to watch.

Douglas Adams On Elected Officials

Politicians are already eerily similar to psychopaths. But if Adams’ statement is true, how do we go about finding these desirable, obscured leaders?