the (s)hit list

Things that are rocking my world this week:

    -The Decemberists Tiny Desk Concert

    -Niall Ferguson's awesome mini-history lesson for TED (the accent is an added bonus)

Things I could probably do without:

    -Looming grad school deadlines (November sort of snuck up on me this year...)

   -My looming existential crisis (You try staring 25 in the face in 2011)

And then there is the impossible to classify, unending Jobs Act/Debt Ceiling debacle, which is neither awesome (the proper adjective is a bit more colorful) nor easily disregarded.  Watching Eric Cantor cheerfully leading this particular parade of legislative dysfunction makes me mildly nauseous. With a look at some of the riders republicans have tacked on to the Labor HHS Edu approps bill (the usual attempts to deny women control over their own bodies, to mandate abstinence education and to de-fund NPR-- source of my world-rockingly awesome tiny desk podcasts), I have come to a startling conclusion.

The Republican leadership are total geniuses.

Evil geniuses, maybe, but brilliant all the same**. Conservatives have spent years fighting hard against any and all taxes, on the assumption that taxes are a waste of money and that what they procure us is less valuable than what we would otherwise purchase for ourselves. Now, as most people enjoy the things that our tax dollars provide (schools, firefighters, safety at home and abroad, technological advances, national parks, Social Security to keep our old folks out of extreme poverty, Sesame street... stuff like that) and would never be able to buy that stuff on their own anyway, this was a battle they were generally loosing (please see the early 90s, when taxes were up but america rocked).

So, and this is the brilliant part, the republicans have decided to MAKE this true. Rather than proving our tax dollars are wasted, they are going to systematically stop the government from providing all the good things, the services and the safety nets, that we generally get as a return on the taxes we pay. Think about it. What are republicans demanding and where does that leave us if they get it.

NPR? gone. Social Security? Cut to shreds. Oh, and lets not build any bridges or anything either.

When we finally get where the right is leading us, our government will build nothing, support nothing and help no one. Then, at long last, conservatives will be correct on the tax issue. That money is wasted which does nothing to help our country and our citizens. But so long as we continue to run schools and lay train tracks and provide much needed assistance to the poor and the sick, I will continue to pay my taxes. (Not that I have any income to tax right now anyway, but you know...)

(**note: to our more sensitive readers -- if we have any-- I don't really think all repubs are evil. I just enjoy the turn of phrase. I'll blame it on all the comics adapted for tv I've been watching lately)