“So how do you keep a party torn between those needing to govern and those elected to prevent governing? You stick to the easy stuff — like hating gays. At a Republican National Committee meeting in Los Angeles on Friday, members unanimously voted to reaffirm its stand against same-sex marriage. The vote added to the language in the 2012 platform, urging the Supreme Court to ‘uphold the sanctity of marriage’ in their rulings on Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act.” [The National Memo]

“A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene…. The two main organizations identified in the UCSF Quarterback study are Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks. Both groups are now ‘supporting the tobacco companies’ political agenda by mobilizing local Tea Party opposition to tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws.'” [DeSmogBlog]

You may have noticed that we recently had an election. The results of which seem to have taken a lot of people by surprise. In particular our teabagger friends who seem to be going so far as unfriending those suspected of harboring Democrat (sic) tendencies and refusing to speak to relatives at Thanksgiving. (BTW, that, I think is the single funniest posting I’ve yet read combining as it does a truculent narcissism coupled with ignorance worthy of Trump. I have my doubts that that whole site is all an elaborate hoax.) Despair has been experienced. America has been declared dead. Gays are running amok. We’ve turned into Europe (as if). Any day now we can expect the mass exodus to Canada.

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Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any dumber, along comes Tea Party in Space, vowing to fight NASA’s intransigent socialism and replace it with free-market space travel.

Not content with blowing apart the economy, the Baggers are now planning their assault on the final frontier. Space! (bow chicka bow chicka bow bow)

Book your seats now. What could possibly go wrong?

Full disclosure: Part of me suspects this is a joke. But let’s all believe it’s real. It’s funnier that way.

This really shouldn’t be a surprise … GottaLaff put together a video from Mitch Daniels’ appearance on this morning’s MTP (he’s the governor of Indiana):

Did not know that brainwashed Texas schoolchildren applauded when JFK was killed:

My favorite historian:

Sadder, wiser, those of us gathered on the Washington Mall in the freezing morn of Mr Obama’s inauguration can see now that of all the brave, unsustainable hopes uttered by the new young president, the most unsustainable of all turned out to be his Biblical plea to “put away childish things”. He might as well have tried to legislate the word “dream” out of American public discourse. Dreams? Reality? It’s not even close, is it?

And if you haven’t seen Schama’s A History of Britain, shame on you.

An America Lost in Fantasy Must Recover its Dream [Financial Times]