Politics: Liberal overreach

[elfs]

Far be it for me to rag only on the right. Yesterday, I was again flipping through the AM dial and it settled on Air America. And there, some nasally-voice whiner was complaining about the Consumer Products Safety Commission, about how under Bush its budget and staffing had been slashed, and how the head of the Commission had gone in front of Congress and told it that she didn't need more money or staff to do her job, and how she had been ordered by the executive to shut down the CPSC.

He was really working himself into a lather. He was going on and on, and finally he said, "And it's because the CSPC has been cut that there's so much lead in our children's toys! It's because the CSPC has been cut that there's so much E Coli coming across our borders!"

*Click* That was enough.

If you're going to rant about our government, you should not rely on your audience to be dumber than you are. The CSPC has no responsibility for food: that's the Department of Agriculture. Secondly, almost all of the E Coli outbreaks in the US have come from domestically grown product.

I'm reminded of this maddening moment:

I just read a paper on the problem of evil which asked why God allowed "the Iraq's" to attack us on 9/11. The thing that upsets me most here is that my students don't just believe that that Iraq was behind 9/11. This is a big fact in their minds, that leaps out at them, whenever they think about the state of the world.

Comments

[blaisepascal]

I don't listen to as much radio as I'd like, but from what little I've heard of Air America, it sounds like the Lionel Show. I have a friend who listens to Air America, and I have an unfortunate habit of visiting right around the time the Lionel Show comes on. In my opinion, he's as much of an asshat as the folks on right-wing radio.

[tagryn]

I'd feel more inclined to listen to AA if they were doing something original, but most of the time they're just the same perspectives one can find on Radio Pacifica, only with a bigger distribution and more commercialism. They're all preaching to the converted, like Rush on the other side. Reasoned dialogue doesn't sell well.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

But wait - Wikipedia says Iraq did it. Or at least it did after it was edited by someone with a US government IP address.

We've always been at war with Eastasia Osama Iraq Iran ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=20867043

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3258627

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

Although he's got a point. We don't need none of that damned furrin E. Coli comin' across our borders, seein' as we're makin' enough real Murrican E. Coli...