{"id":7189,"date":"2009-03-27T11:29:07","date_gmt":"2009-03-27T18:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7189"},"modified":"2009-03-27T11:29:07","modified_gmt":"2009-03-27T18:48:55","slug":"the-republican-party-we-are-innumerate-and-dont-understand-the-use-of-use-proper-nouns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7189","title":{"rendered":"The Republican Party: "We are innumerate and don't understand the use of proper nouns.""},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, so the new Republican budget proposal has come in for a lot<\/a> of<\/a> mockery<\/a> lately<\/a>, and rightly so. Much has been made of the utter lack of numbers attached to\u00a0their\u00a0proposal ((On a quick read-through, though I saw a lot of numbers included, they were all numbers taken from, or referring to, the Democratic budget.)), and I enjoyed Robert Gibbs’ reference to the ‘windmill picture:chart with numbers<\/a>‘ ratio of the proposal (1:0, for those who are keeping score). Neither of those, though, are what caught my attention when I read through the proposal ((Feel free to check it out for yourself<\/a>, by the by. It’s a quick read.)).\u00a0<\/p>\n

No, what caught my attention is how consistently, throughout the entire proposal, they refuse to refer to the Democratic Party by its proper name. It’s there in the very first paragraph (the one that’s double size and blue, so you know they mean business), “Democrat Budget” and it continues throughout. It’s even in large print on the front page of their website.<\/p>\n

Now here’s the thing. I understand that there’s a place for juvenile mockery. Hell, I’m a blogger, juvenile mockery is\u00a0kind\u00a0of what I do<\/em>. And I understand that pretending not to know how the English language works is a proud and long lasting tradition within the\u00a0Republican\u00a0Party … but c’mon<\/em>, guys. Isn’t this supposed to be a serious policy proposal? Should you have maybe considered that it was neither the time not the place to regress to Junior High?<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what the equivalent would be, really . . . Obama releasing a budget with monocles and top hats photoshopped into any photos of republicans? No, maybe there isn’t an equivalent. Good. This isn’t a race to the bottom that the Democratic Party (see?) ought to join.<\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0not\u00a0a big deal, really. It’s just a silly little tease that Republicans never got tired of. It doesn’t infuriate me or anything, it just reminds me once again that the Republican Party is fundamentally unserious. If you want your ideas to be taken seriously, you present them seriously. It’s\u00a0striking\u00a0that in the midst of the greatest financial collapse of my lifetime, in the midst of rampant unemployment, in the midst of the utter disintegration of the financial sector,\u00a0presenting\u00a0serious ideas in a serious way<\/em> is something that this current collection of jokers and fools is frankly unable to do.<\/p>\n

It’s sad.<\/p>\n

It\u00a0would\u00a0be nice to have an opposition party worth a damn.<\/p>\n

Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, so the new Republican budget proposal has come in for a lot of mockery lately, and rightly so. Much has been made of the utter lack of numbers attached to\u00a0their\u00a0proposal ((On a quick read-through, though I saw a lot … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,27,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like","category-elections-and-politics","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}