Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

There's nothing quite as funny as watching a bunch of anti-government idiots bitch about how the government isn't providing them the service they demand:

One of the underlying complaints of far-right "Tea Party" protestors is a rejection of taxpayer-financed public services. If the government imposes taxes to create programs to benefit everyone, the argument goes, it's "socialism." They recommend cutting spending and letting people fend for themselves. It's what "freedom" is all about.

Occasionally, though, those principles run into practical problems in amusing ways.

Protesters who attended Saturday's Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system.

Rep. Kevin Brady called for a government investigation into whether the government-run subway system adequately prepared for this weekend's rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.

[snip]

Apparently, Brady heard complaints from some of his constituents who traveled to D.C. to protest "big government." They were disappointed to discover, however, that the government hadn't done more to satisfy their public-transportation expectations, and now want other government officials to address the problem.

In some instances, Brady said constituents relied on private enterprise -- taxi cabs -- rather than the (ahem) public option. The conservative lawmaker described this as a bad thing. Local officials, Brady said, should have made "a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit" to the public.

Read that sentence again and replace "transit" with "health care coverage."

Indeed.

Witness the pathos! The poor Teabaggers were forced to take private transportation and everything:

The WaPo has more:

Rep. Kevin Brady ( R ) said an 80-year-old woman and her 60-year-old daughter were forced to walk and pay for a cab because the subway system was so crowded. He said he heard many complaints from people who traveled long distances to attend the event, which served to challenge some of President Obama’s signature policies.

Oh. My. God. They had to take a cab? The horror of it all.

And who's to blame for this sorry state of affairs?

But earlier this year, Brady voted against the stimulus package. It provided millions upon millions of dollars for all manner of improvements to … the D.C. Metro.

Well, my goodness, whoever would've imagined Rep. Brady would turn out to be as much of a raging hypocrite as his constituents? And, as John Cole discovered, that's not all!

It gets even better:

Back in July HR3288, a Transportation and HUD appropriations bill, came up for a vote. It included $150 million for emergency maintenance funding for the DC Metro.

Brady voted against it.

The only appropriate response to people like this is open, mocking laughter.

So, my darlings, the next time you hear a Teabagger whine about Big Guvmint Taking All Their Muny, remind them that when given a choice between a public option and a private, they demanded the public option and whined about how inadequacies caused by this:

A large part of the reason that the DC metro has had so many problems in recent years is that it doesn’t “have dedicated tax revenue.” It has often run into protests from people such Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who has said that we shouldn’t “steal opportunity from our children so that we can have a ride on the Metro.” The American Public Transportation Association says that “recession-imposed limits on government budgets and increased demand are doubtless among the reasons why ‘transit systems are strained all over the country.’”

... Forced them to be late to their little Tea Tantrum, because they didn't want to spring for the private option.

Also remind them of all the socialist services they used for their Tantrum:

I broke my calculator trying to figure out on how many levels this is pure, teabagging, hypocritical irony.

• Those millions tens of thousands of teabaggers used the facilities of the government-run National Park system.
• They left a significant amount of trash behind in garbage cans (mostly anti-socialism signs, of course) for the government-run sanitation department to dispose of.
• They arrived at the Tea Party on government-built and -maintained roads.
• They relied on government-funded police to provide security.
• Many of them are on government-provided social security and/or Medicare.
• And, most ironically, they used government-run public transportation to get around the city.

And then ask the most important question of all:

But should you really take public transit to an anti-government protest?

The answer seems obvious, but people oblivious enough to protest the quality of one of the services their big anti-government protest was meant to decry spending their tax dollars on whilst availing themselves of many other government-run services they also don't want to spend their tax dollars on are a little too dense to understand the obvious. Obviously.

And the cherry on top of this stupid sundae:

In an interview just now, GOP Rep Kevin Brady defended his now infamous complaint that the D.C. Metro should have done a better job moving tea partiers to the 9/12 protests.

[snip]

Brady had previously suggested that D.C. Metro’s failure might have resulted in lower turnout at the 9/12 rally. Asked to square this complaint with his vote against the stimulus, which provides millions of dollars for D.C. Metro, he insisted there’s no contradiction.

“The stimulus is supposed to be for creating jobs, for creating new lines and expanding and modernizing their existing facilities,” Brady said of the stimulus money alloted to D.C. Metro, adding that the money has “nothing to do with the day to day operations of it.”

Brady didn’t directly answer when I asked him whether it was contradictory to expect government to do more — at potentially increased taxpayer expense — to meet the needs of a protest organized around opposition to government spending.

I'll just bet he didn't.

Now that we've thoroughly mocked the pathetic losers who expect government service without paying taxes for them, we can move on for a quick look at some of the other dumbfuckery.

Rush Limbaugh thinks we should segregate buses.

Boehner's afraid Michele Bachmann's batshit insanity could harm the GOP's reputation. I hate to break this to him, but she exemplifies the GOP's reputation.

And the neocons, along with their good buddy Joe "He's With Us on Everything But Iraq... and Health Care Reform... and, Well, Pretty Much Everything" Lieberman, question the military wisdom of the Secretary of Defense and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Amazing, aren't they just?