gulliver

gulliver's Journal

January 19, 2013

Winning over Republicans with the Seven Deadly Sins

An easy trick to remember when trying to persuade Republicans (who may also hide under the name "conservatives&quot of anything is to pepper your argument with appeals to the Seven Deadly Sins: wrath, greed, laziness, pride, lust, gluttony, and envy. Try it. It's fun.

Here is an example. Let's say you want to turn a Republican against mountaintop mining. And let's say you personally care about natural beauty, animal and fish habitat, and the health of residents who live along the rivers and streams near the mountaintops.

If you try to talk about those things directly with the Republican, you will fail. They have a completely different view of the mountaintops, fish, and people. The mountaintops have money under them. There are fish everywhere, so who cares about the fish near the mountaintops. And the people are people they don't know. Case closed. Blow up the mountain.

So instead, base your argument on sin.

(Greed and Envy) If we blow up that mountaintop, it will hurt our tourism. Other places nearby will get more of our rightful tourism dollars than they already are. (Envy) And you can just bet that all the money will end up in the pockets of bunch of fat cats in their mansions.

(Pride) We are better than that. We don't need that pittance of mining business like that other place or state we always tell jokes about. (Greed, Sloth/Laziness, and Anger) That mining company thinks it can take our resources and leave a mess for us to clean up later with our tax money. They've got another think coming.

(Lust) Besides, that area is a great place for parking. The view sets the perfect mood. (Gluttony) And I don't care if there are other places to park. You can't have too many.

January 6, 2013

Does your neighbor having an AR-15 in his house make you feel safer?

I don't mind people having pistols and hunting rifles in my neighborhood. But if one of these assault weapon weirdos lived in my neighborhood, I would feel a lot less safe. And I would also be angry as hell.

Their kind is simply not needed. I don't want my property values dropping because I have some half-wack numbskull in my neighborhood who "wants" an AR-15. I would be petitioning my property owner's association to get the guy's gun banned in the bylaws.

I feel sorry for people who have to live near these types, and especially sorry for their friends and family. These types think they set themselves apart in some way by having a special weapon. I mean, it's so impressive that they know about muzzle velocities and ammo calibers. My goodness, they even know the names of the parts of the gun!

I think the good news is that most reasonable folks are starting to get the proper perspective on the assault weapons weirdos in their midst. It won't be long before AR-15-type owners will have to leave that phase of their life behind or find themselves shunned and unemployable.

January 1, 2013

We need an excise tax on the wealthy to pay for the wars.

We should continue undoing George W. Bush's effect on the country. Every step we take in that direction is healthy. And one thing the Republicans need to understand is that they still have a long way to go on paying for the damage they and their leader, George W. Bush, caused us. There is the little matter of the wars, for example. That piper still hasn't been paid.

Bush and the Republicans put us into an unnecessary, ruinously costly war in Iraq. Then that huge Bush/Republican mistake lengthened and grossly inflated the cost of the arguably more necessary Afghanistan War. Unfortunately, the Republicans put all that cost on America's credit card. They gave George W. Bush our plastic, and he wore it out.

Republicans can't be allowed to skate on that. They need to make good on their debt to the American people. Someone besides the middle class American taxpayer needs to cough up some money. I think it should be the wealthy backers of the Republicans and their hero, George W. Bush.

If the Republicans aren't punished in some way for Bush's war folly, they have every incentive to repeat it. Republican backers like Halliburton directly profited from the wars. U.S. taxpayer money is still sloshing around in those Republican pockets.

Moreover, testing the limits of Guinness Book chutzpah, Republicans now use the war debt they saddled the country with as an excuse to cut infrastructure and social spending. The Bush/Republican incompetence is actually paying off for them. They think they get to waste all of the country's money on war mistakes and then juggle the books to take money out of programs they oppose politically.

That can't be allowed. We remember where our money went, and we remember who spent it. Bush's bill is still not paid and that it's a Republican bill. The people who made the mistakes are the ones who should be paying for them.

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