What Dan-O calls a compost

I sometimes slum around other blogs that sport a different political position from mine. This is important, because if you only listen to a single viewpoint you fail to consider all angles of a given situation. In my high school debate days, I prepared my case by taking the opposing viewpoint. This allows you to formulate a valid response.

There is an interesting debate going on at Ms O'Brien's. She has shut down comments. Interesting in that either some of my comments were somehow not posted, or they were deleted. I hope it is the former.

It is Ms O'Brien's position partisan bickering and gridlock in the Congress give comfort to the enemy -- it aids and abets terrorism.

This argument is fear mongering at its worst. Pass our agenda or the evil ones win.This has long been an excuse to institute tyranny. It was wrong when used to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts, and it is wrong now. This argument is akin to telling your three year old to go to sleep or the bogeyman will come out of the closet. It is bad parenting and worse political philosophy.

For the sake of argument, I will address the issues presented in the post and comments at Erin's anyway. There is the quick and easy response -- if you do not want gridlock and partisan bickering do not press an agenda that is an athema to the other party and a majority of Americans! Do not write bills without input from the opposing party and try to cram them through in the dark of night. That is the quick and dirty answer.

The more appropriate answer is twofold. Partisan bickering is as old as the Republic. The only time either party cries about it is when they are unable to pass their agenda. Get over it. The beauty of our Government is that the minority has its say and the majority has its way. It is disingenuous to pretend the Republicans are responsible for stopping the Obama/Pelosi/Reid statist programs when in fact the Democratic Party had a super majority in both Houses. As I have stated many, many , many times here the Democrats could pass any piece of legislation they so chose. It is the failure of the leadership of the Democratic Party to get things done, not the GOP. And seriously Erin, if the deficit and weak dollar is helping the terrorists, it is not the gridlock causing that. You can blame the stimulus that did not stimulate and the trippling of the deficit in one year of the the Obama administration. I know you have seen the graph that shows the whopping deficits began when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007. Again, you might not like the source, but as Gradgrind said "facts is facts" (catch the literary refernce -- not all Conservatives are dumb)(although some of us are piss poor typists).

If you read the comments to O'Brien's post, there is a thread about terrorism and its nature. Jonas, whom I respect, maintains that terrorism is a product more of environment than religion. He is a scholar of religious studies, so I am sure he knows what he is talking about. He is right that we do not see terrorist attacks from Muslims in Toledo, Dearborn and such. He also should recognize there is a very common element to terrorist attacks in the past twenty-five years -- they are virtually all committed by Muslims. You do not see the equally poor and oppressed of Haiti putting explosives in their Fruit of the Looms, or Mexicans flying into buildings. You do not see the poor of Brazil blowing up pizza places and taking schoolchildren hostage. Cubans are not bombing Embassies and as far as I know, not a single Ecuadorian has beheaded a reporter shot up an Army base.

Then there is my buddy Cosmic Navel Lint. Alas in fairness I must admit he banned from his place when I made the indecent comment that the Constitution of the United States limits the power of the Federal Government. I would like to link him, but he asked me to never come back. I have been asked to leave better places. Mr. Lint is as lightweight intellectually as his nickname suggests. He is your typical Kos Kid, he can only fall back on blaming Fox News when he is confronted with an intellectual challenge. I am surprised to did not invoke the "Palin is dumb" meme, and throw in Quayle and Nixon references as well, they are part of the playbook. In Cosmic Lint's world facts are irrelevant if they are presented by non-liberal sources. In his world Fox is untrustworthy because of Beck and Hannity, but he sees no similar issues with Olbermann, Madow and the like. He is unable to discern between opinion and news.

Even worse, the piece of Lint is unable to grasp basic civics of American political structure. Perhaps this is the European in him. He is of the mindset we are just dumb hicks who blunder about the world. He considers us barbarians who lack the political savy and nuances of sophisticated denizens of the EU. To him America is just a bull in the china shop, too dumb to know that socialist policies are best for us. Maybe he is just ashamed deep down in his genes. after all, we Americans defeated the superior British twice and saved their ass twice. You always hate those to whom you are indebted and don't we all resent being bested?. That is just a theory anyway. Somehow I am confident Cosmic naval Lint will find a way to blame Fox News -- that is his stock retort. Sometimes I think he is the bloggyverse version of a cuckoo clock. Instead of an irritating "cuckoo" he chimes a repeated "foxnews, foxnews".

And by the way, CSN, there are lots of Democrats, many Republicans and a couple of Independents in the Senate. There are no teabaggers, Tea partiers, or tea anything in the Chamber. Teapartiers are not a political party. And for the record, we get it. You wrote "teabaggers" Tee hee. What are you thirteen? If that is the best insult you can come up with (it is not even original), I would just retire from commenting on politics and debate in general. Are you going to next try and titillate us (hee hee he said tit) by shouting penis? Perhaps you could put a little more effort into studying the Constitution and American Politics before throwing your two centshalf a Euro.

Anyway, I will end this post with a paraphrase of the comment that was deleted or lost over at the lovely Ms O'Brien's: I have to quit arguing with fools and idiots, they just drag me down to their level and beat me with experience.