With all due respect to Charlie Pierce, these people aren't morons; they're zombies. They can't think, and all they want to do is make a meal out of anyone who isn't a zombie. You can't reason with them because their thought processes are minimal. At this point, anyone trying to do so is either a fool or a knave.
I'm definitely in the camp that we didn't win this one. We merely barricaded ourselves behind Constitutional principle and chopped off whatever appendages the zombies stuck through the holes in the barricade. I actually am impressed with Obama shutting down Harry Reid's attempt to allow Susan Collins to open the barricades, thereby letting in the zombie "compromisers". In this instance, Obama clearly understood the stakes he was playing for. (And, for those who know my writing, I do not say that lightly.)
The zombies will be back again in February. We aren't winning; we are merely beating back onslaught after onslaught. And each time, the number of zombies keeps growing. A wave of zombies living on the radioactive power source of Koch Brothers funding. They can't die, but they can sure kill our democracy.
This time, the Neo-confederate zombies controlled an entire house of our legislature for weeks - right down to the evangelical nutcase who grabbed the mike to spout Dominionist zombie gibberish on the floor of the House. This time they cut off $24 Billion of our nose (NEZ) to spite their face.
Our planet is literally burning down, while we spend our time beating off murderous brain-dead fanatics that have been let loose by the radical reactionary SCOTUS, and funded by Bircherite greedheads. It is a real-life horror movie. You may think its just another really scary reality TV show; but it just cost billions and damaged our country's standing in the world. And still, the lying shill corporate media is making excuses for them and giving the zombie-master, Ted Cruz all the free air time he wants. They might as well post the 800 number for his cannibalistic campaign to kill America.
If this rant has a point, it's this:
Who the fuck tries to negotiate or compromise with zombies?
I'm talking to you, Democrats. Do you think they are going to be less truculent after being stopped but not defeated? We didn't touch the core sickness of the GOP. The zombies from the Neo-confederate countryside are still healthy, well-fed, and more zealous than ever in their belief that they fighting to save their America from the majority.
We need to fight right now to split the GOP and leave these zombies out in the open where we can target them without the cover of their fellow-travelling grifters and gangsters. We need to spend the next three months exposing these festering losers and dead-enders as the monsters they are.
They sure aren't Christians. They want children to starve or die of cancer. They want seniors to eat cat food while working until they drop. They want all workers to accept wages that, even with stingy government programs, are already slave wages.
They sure aren't lovers of our Constitution, as they just spent two weeks demonstrating via pre-planned, attempted extortion/sedition/nullification against Obamacare, topped off with Eric Cantor's slimy, dictatorial change to House Rules.
And, most of all, they are the most brazen, shameless liars and double-crossers ever to pass themselves off as champions of the people in the history of this country. That is even more true at the state level, where zombie legislatures, run by ALEC and the local gentry, are busy disenfranchising "the un-saved"(blacks, liberals, gays, women), destroying the social safety net, and literally selling towns off for scrap (Detroit) or privatizing them to escape paying their fair share.
The Congressional delegate zombies, once again, have a clock ticking towards February. They just did quite well, by their lights, playing this game; and nothing fundamental has changed for the zombies. They are still brainless kamikazes, who we must assume are planning more disruptive parliamentary firefights.
Given their M.O., I have no doubt these assholes will spend the next three months catapulting the propaganda from Faux Noise and the giant turd-mouth Limbaugh That hate-mongering propaganda will be repeated in so-called evangelical pulpits that dare the IRS to shut them down.
In fact, that reminds me of one crack in the barricades that we must seal. The IRS has to remove the tax exemptions of so-called preachers who advocate the destruction of the government via Tea Party sedition. Of course, the NEZ will scream "jack-booted thugs" and all the rest; but this time, the country might actually look at the law and the facts and decide that its time to stop paying these un-Godly traitors via tax exemption.
Oh, that reminds me, where was the Catholic Church, that "champion of the working man" in the midst of all the misery inflicted on working people by this shutdown? Those non-zombies who are Catholic need to pressure the Catholic leadership - that pack of molester-protecting hacks, appointed by the misogynist-of-Rome, John Paul II - to give support to the American government they have professed to be defending ever since Pius XII gave Hitler a pass. Maybe we need a schism in the Catholic Church as well the GOP, to rescue it from its increasingly right-wing hierarchy.
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Is there a theme here? Religion, zombies, religion, zombies. Could be.
RANT OFF
Well, I'm more than happy to fight with anyone who takes offense at anything I have said.