Stephen Colbert takes it to Ted Cruz

The Colbert Report

Oh yes, he did.

Look, Milton Friedman made a joke!

The folks at the conservative "think-tank" called the Heritage Foundation thought it'd be a hoot to run this Friedman quip. "See, the government sucks so hard, we'd run out of sand if they were in charge of it. LOL!"

But as Matthew Yglesias points out over at Slate:

...the federal government IS the major landowner in arid Southwestern states. Over 80 percent of Nevada is federally owned, along with 48 percent of Arizona, 42 percent of New Mexico, 57 percent of Utah, and 45.3 percent of California. There is no shortage of sand in these federally owned areas. In fact the landscapes are often quite beautiful. Now it's not as though Friedman's underlying point here about government ownership, lack of market prices, and allocative distortions is totally crazy... But to point that out would have challenged the self-conceptions of a lot of politically conservative Westerners, who imagine themselves hardy freedom-lovers but are in fact freeloaders on massive government subsidies to the rural economy.

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand.

One great reason why Republican politicians should be barred from science committees

1. They are partisan idiots.

No, really. I mean, Noam Sheiber takes this charge seriously:

“What if House members are trying to act in their self-interest [but] they’re just exceptionally bad at figuring out what that is? What if they’re, you know, kinda dumb? For example, if you’re a House Republican, presumably you have some policy preferences: You’d like to massively cut taxes for the wealthy, you’d like to slash spending for the poor, you’d like to privatize Social Security and voucherize Medicare. In short, you’d like to enact the Ryan plan in its full, Randian glory. But, of course, there’s no way to do that as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House. And, unfortunately, as long as you’re committed to acting crazy—threatening needless government shutdowns; insisting that Obamacare is the greatest assault on freedom since the Nazi march across Europe; failing to fix massive electoral liabilities, like your perceived hostility to Latinos—you may preserve your House majority. But it’s going to be damn-near impossible for a Republican to win the presidency.”

Think Sheiber's exaggerating with that Nazi reference? Check this news story:

The South Carolina Republican Party called the Internal Revenue Service “Obama’s Gestapo” in a fundraising email on Tuesday in yet another reference to Adolf Hitler by one of the state’s two major political parties.

You know, "partisan idiots" is almost praise for these folks.

Groucho Marx explains the GOP platform

I don't know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I'm against it.
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I'm against it.

Your proposition may be good,
But let's have one thing understood,
Whatever it is, I'm against it.
And even when you've changed it or condensed it,
I'm against it.

I'm opposed to it,
On general principle, I'm opposed to it.

[chorus] He's opposed to it.
In fact, indeed, that he's opposed to it!

For months before my son was born,
I used to yell from night to morn,
Whatever it is, I'm against it.
And I've kept yelling since I first commenced it,
I'm against it!

Our Contemptible Congress

Senator Mike Lee (Republican, Utah) has spent the year promising a government shutdown unless President Obama defunds Obamacare entirely. But then, Lee's a batshit motherfucker. But now the Senate Republicans’ No. 2 and No. 3 leaders, John Cornyn and John Thune (right) are also joining this blackmail plan?

Writing in the National Journal, Norm Ornstein lays it out:

"When a law is enacted, representatives who opposed it have some choices... They can try to repeal it, which is perfectly acceptable--unless it becomes an effort at grandstanding so overdone that it detracts from other basic responsibilities of governing. They can try to amend it to make it work better--not just perfectly acceptable but desirable, if the goal is to improve a cumbersome law to work better for the betterment of the society and its people. They can strive to make sure that the law does the most for Americans it is intended to serve, including their own constituents, while doing the least damage to the society and the economy. Or they can step aside and leave the burden of implementation to those who supported the law and got it enacted in the first place. 

"But to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation--which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil--is simply unacceptable, even contemptible."

Um, you spelled "Merica" wrong

"Texas: The America of America"

The esteemed members of the Whitehorse City Council (Yukon Territory) are the Big Minds of the Day

It's sadly difficult to imagine someone in Alaska being this cool.

Tom Toles explains John Boehner's attitude to Obamacare

"We're going to do everything we can to make sure [Obamacare] never happens." 

—House Speaker John Boehner (Republican, Ohio). Comic via.

Christian voters believe in redemption (for Republican politicians)

Courtesy of the New York Times, let’s look at two politicians who, in a decent world, would not be in politics at all:

1. David Vitter is a dyed-in-the-woolen breeches conservative from Louisiana. He’s also someone committed a “very serious sin” involving prostitutes six years ago.

In 2010, he ran for the senate against Charlie Melancon, a former Democratic congressman. Today, Vitter is the senator. In exit polls, he beat Mr. Melancon among white women by a 54-point margin.

2. Dr. Scott DesJarlais is a Republican congressman from Tennessee. In 2010, and again in 2012, sordid details of his past came to light. They are too lengthy to enumerate here, but included legal problems and multiple affairs with former patients. One of these women said Dr. DesJarlais pushed her into getting an abortion.

Eric Stewart was the Democrat who ran against DesJarlais. Why does he think that Republicans voted for this blackhearted scoundrel? “Voters talk a lot about hypocrisy but they don’t vote based on it.”

Yeah, but WHY? Some posit that religious conservatives just love a good comeback-from-sin story: “Where there is a large Christian voting bloc, they believe in redemption.”

A more likely explanation: Religious Republicans can count some diehard partisan, hypocritical sumbitches amongst themselves.