One of the main reasons many Tea Party members are so stubborn is because they are on a Mission From God.
They sincerely believe that these are the End Times and Jesus will be here soon. Of course, religious fanatics have been making such predictions since the year 666, but somehow the fact that every single one of them have been wrong again and again doesn’t deter these folks. 
All the signs were present last time, but they’re really present this time so it’s bound to be true!
Loony Michelle Bachmann is one of those believers. “The baton of global leadership has been passed by America to the Mullahs, the Marxist world, and other dark forces,” she stated recently, all but calling Obama the AntiChrist. “Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha, come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand.” I am not making this up.
This is important because, like many religious fanatics, they are convinced that they and they alone know the true meaning of whatever holy book they wave around, and everyone else is a heathen who just doesn’t get it. And, not surprisingly, many of these same people identify with the Tea Party and their fanatics. They believe they are fighting for God — against those who would allow abortions, against those evildoers who would encourage gay marriage, against the unwashed who would support taxing the very rich. (I’m not exactly sure how that last one matches what is in the Bible, but they seem to think very strongly that it’s important.)
And that’s why compromise is not possible with these people. They think they are performing God’s will, and if we oppose them, then clearly we must be working for the Devil. There is no other possibility in their black-and-white simple little worldview.
Just ask Justice Antonin Scalia, who believes the Devil is in the details. “In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore. It’s because he’s smart. He just got wilier.” In this interview, he made it pretty clear that he believes that evil in the world is caused by the Devil, who is apparently a lobbyist and probably a Democrat too. It’s the only thing he can come up with to explain how it is possible people could disagree with him.
Politics is the art of compromise. Compromise is what reasonable adults do in order to accomplish things. It is not, however, what fanatics do, because otherwise they’ll burn in Hell.
So the next time you wonder why these crazy politicians refuse to compromise, keep in mind that they don’t care about this world — they’re just trying to work their way into the next.
Yes, Columbus didn’t really discover anything, because there were already millions of people in America. Yes, others from Europe had been here before him.
And yes, he promoted slavery and thought there was nothing wrong with killing the natives and taking their land — But so did just about everyone back then. (EDIT: I wrote this article years ago and have since learned that he was indeed worse than the average person in those days, so some of this no longer applies.)
Whenever we judge those in the past, I think it’s important to look at them in relationship to their times. 
Those who were ahead of their time deserve much more respect than those who may have done great things in their time but did nothing to advance humanity in any way.
We must realize that taking over the natives and controlling them was how things were done. Europe held vast parts of Africa, India, and the east under their control, where the “sun never set” on their empire. That in no way makes it right.
Columbus was a product of his time. It’s not like he said, “Let’s exploit this new place I found and subjugate the natives,” and then everyone said, “That’s a terrible, evil idea!” No, they all said, “Hey, great! Just like we did to the natives in the Congo. More stuff for us!”
Slavery was a part of the history of the world for thousands of years before Columbus. He didn’t invent it. The ancient Greeks, with their democracy and philosophy, thought that enslaving those conquered in wars of expansion was perfectly fine. The Bible has rules about slavery and those rules aren’t “slavery is bad.”
We can’t hold everyone to today’s standards. Jefferson and Washington, who proudly grace Mount Rushmore, had slaves. Lincoln would never have agreed to give women the right to vote. Do you think Teddy Roosevelt would have supported gay marriage?
Society advances. There were people who disagreed with Jefferson and Washington about slavery (notably Franklin and Adams). There were people in Lincoln’s time who even advocated for woman’s suffrage. There are always people ahead of the majority, pushing to make the world a better place.
Maybe in the future we will have provided some rights to dolphins and whales. Or maybe there will be some other new right we haven’t even considered today. I certainly wouldn’t want someone 500 years from now calling us all evil and terrible for treating them so poorly.
Columbus is important not because he “discovered” a place where people already existed and had been visited by Europeans long before him. He is important because his “discovery” was a big turning point in the history of the world, for better or worse.
So when you judge Columbus, keep these thoughts in mind. So let’s use Columbus Day not as a celebration of the subjugation of natives, but instead as a day to think about how far we’ve come and what roads lie ahead. Let’s treat it as a day of contemplation, like Veteran’s Day is supposed to be, where we learn from our mistakes.
The Republican Party has today, on the 11th day of the Shutdown, admitted to what we always knew: This is a hostage situation.
Previously, the hostage was Obamacare: “Defund this or we won’t take care of our financial obligations.”
That didn’t work, so now there is a new hostage. “OK, then how about Medicare? Will you change that?”
At least they are admitting at this point that they are holding a gun to America’s head until they can get what they couldn’t accomplish through democratic means.
Seriously, what is the message they are sending? If you don’t win elections and don’t have enough votes to get what you want, then threaten to destroy everyone until you get your way? This is democracy? This is what our forefathers planned?
At least with this new action, the Republicans are pretty much admitting this, because there really is no other explanation that you can give with a straight face.
Gallup says this is lowest either party has ever rated in twenty years, since they started asking this question.
Look at the numbers. And look at that drop, which matches perfectly the shutdown (or as the Daily Show calls it, “Shut Storm”). Americans are smart enough to know who to blame for this.
As my last two posts have commented, this is suicide for the Republican party. The fact that they cannot see that it is shows how deluded they are and how out of touch with the American people.
