"There's an old saying in Tennessee (I know it's in Texas; it's probably in Tennessee)..."

I believe I have said this before, but it bears repeating: the principal way you know I'm a liberal is not that I believe that we need to stop calling it "gay marriage" ("the right to not have the government pick your spouse" seems more to the point), or that "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society" (wait! that was a Republican Supreme Court nominee/Justice; time's arrow man....weird). No, you know I'm a liberal because I don't actually believe anything until either Jon Stewart or Ira Glass whispers it soothingly into my ear.

This week's "This American Life" is fascinating (yes: I keep that sentence on hand and cut and paste it to this blog every other entry). It tells two stories of people fed up with their political parties. It should come as no surprise that the "Democrats are stupid" story is much more forgiving than the "Republicans are stupid" story. Democrats are stupid because they don't know how to run campaigns. Republicans are stupid because... I wonder.

The Republican half of the episode focuses on Tea Partiers in Michigan and their quest to restore "conservative values" (the theme of this post is that I don't know what those are) to the GOP. I've never really taken the Tea Party seriously. That may actually be a trenchant piece of self-reflection, since it was barely 3 years ago that I could be seen waving a sign accusing the President of the United States of being a fascist. I like to think that I've grown since then. Listening to the interviewed Tea Partiers (I will resist the urge to abbreviate that TPers for the rest of the post, though it would be pretty high-larious), one contradictory idea slowly became clear in my mind. These are people who are as mad at George W. Bush as I am, but have reacted exactly opposite. We both agree (I think) that the end result of the Bush Presidency was somewhat less than desirable. We disagree why. The Tea Partiers claim that the Republican party drove this country into a ditch because they "broke with conservative values" and that the party, therefore, needs a quick shot of new blood. I claim that the Republican party drove this country into a ditch because they exemplified conservative values and that conservatism, therefore, needs to be tarred, feathered, and run out of Washington, D.C. on a rail.

My question for all you Tea Partiers out there (yeah, right; Tea Partiers read my blog) is this: in what way were the Bush years not a conservative wet-dream?

Judeo-Christian ethics were codified (remember stem cells and the aforementioned marriage rights?).

Environmental concerns had to ride in the back middle seat of the free market's station wagon.

Taxes were slashed (as we marched into not one, but two wars; I'm going to break with my half-assed attempt to remain civil here and state my belief that our grandparents, who went without stockings because nylon was needed to send paratroopers into Nazi-occupied France, are particularly ashamed of us on this front).

Missile Defense installations were funded.

Boom! Recession!

Am I missing something? How is the reaction to this that we need more conservatism in American politics?

...but it is often true...?

Late in the 2008 campaign and even early into his administration, there was a lot of talk comparing Obama to Spock. By "a lot" I mean that there was any at all. On "Wait, wait, don't tell me," Leonard Nimoy recounted the tale of how, during one of his convention appearances, a candidate for high public office stepped out of the crowd and flashed him the Vulcan hand sign; "[the candidate] was not John McCain". I think there was also a Newsweek cover.... The chatter was driven by the perception that Obama was/is rational to the point of aggravation (his logic can be most annoying), even though, "he only knows how to give pretty speeches," seemed to be an equally popular criticism.

I think I just found another parallel.

I love Star Trek (for those who didn't know that: "Hi, my name is Scott; who are you?"). I love Star Trek so much that I define it only to include television episodes that were aired between [fall 1966:spring 1969, fall 1988:spring 1994] and movies featuring Leonard Nimoy that have even numbers in their titles (though, it has recently been brought to my attention that Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain). None of those are typos. The dates are chosen very carefully. That is how much I love Star Trek.

Were it my decision, I would reserve a special place in movie hell for Abrams Trek.

My problems with the most recent Star Trek movie are many (no one but William Shatner should ever be allowed to scream: "I am Captain Kirk!" and be taken semi-seriously). Today, the villain stands out in my mind. For those of you who haven't seen the movie (DON'T), the villain is a Romulan from the future bent on destroying Vulcan. Why is he bent on destroying Vulcan? (Because he's in love; you didn't click on the link, did you? you should really click on the link). He is bent on destroying Vulcan because, in the future, Spock failed to save the Romulan homeworld from falling into an artificial black hole. Spock did not make the black hole; Vulcans did not make the black hole; but, because Spock (having already saved the galaxy from Klingon-Federation war, a giant space Amoeba, THE Doomsday Machine, whale-loving hippie goofs....) failed this once in his heroics, every Vulcan everywhere had to be punished. No Melville was spouted in the pursuit of this vendetta.

Oh yeah, I was talking about Obama. I haven't heard anyone claim that he or the Democrats caused this recession. Most of the academics (read: people who make a living trying to understand the economy through the intellectual lens that helped us invent computers and wipe-out smallpox) I've heard seem to believe that recent government action actually helped prevent the recession from becoming a depression. Nevertheless, voters seem bent on punishing the blue team this November, not because they hurt us (like the other guys probably actually did), but because they couldn't save us... enough.

Maybe the president should stop stumping and start figuring out how to slip his katra into John Boehner's coffee.