Could we trade you Glenn Beck for Terrance & Phillip?
Just saying that next year is 200[sup]th[/sup] anniversary. Beware of Canadian tourists. They might be re-enactors (especially if they’re playing with matches) 
That poll does piss me off. How any (non-Republican) person could look at the situation and think both sides are equally to blame makes me seethe.
Are people that stupid? Can I mug a man at gunpoint, then say he needs to negotiate, and have independents say, “well, there should be a compromise somewhere between mugging and not-mugging”?
When you have a complicit media that doesn’t want to have a perceived bias so they present every story as if there are two equally meritorious sides, it’s not surprising that many people will blame everyone.
It’s why “teach the controversy” was (and still is to a degree) a rallying cry for creationism/intelligent design. Not because it was correct (it’s not; there is no controversy) but because it just sounds fair. And who doesn’t want to be fair?
Which reminds me of my favorite quote ever:
*“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” *-Issac Asimov
I figure the Tea Party or any number of militias will burn it down first.
As well, by this approach they spread the notion that partisanship is, by its very nature, dishonest and less intelligent. Many people accept that notion unblinkingly and unthinkingly, they employ tortured reasoning in order to arrive at some sort of parity of dumb.
And in many cases, that is entirely valid and reasonable, when you have an argument between centrist left and centrist right. Such is not the present situation.
As the USA moved to the right, the Democrats moved to the right, such that it is no longer left v. right, but rather right v. bat-shit-insane-right.
You should warn people to take an aspirin before reading that linked post.
In case my sarcasm wasn’t clear, it doesn’t surprise me that self-identified independents would fence-straddle the question of who is to blame for the shutdown. I really wish people would stop pointing to this group of lazing thinking morons as if they are the opposite of lazy thinking morons. Maybe this wasn’t the case years ago, but I think things have evolved sufficienty in the last decade to make the “independent” label synonymous with uninformed, superficial, and ideologically cowardly.
I swear that poll could have asked them who do they blame for the shutdown, the GOP, the Dems, or Cookie Monster, and I guarantee you that independents would have said Cookie Monster just as often the other two. Because that is just what they do.
:eek: We have good peaceful relations and an undefended border with Canada! Let’s not let anything happen to spoil that!
They’d feel right at home in Alberta, right, Sam Stone?
Based on personal experience among my conservative friends, an independent is a conservative temporarily pissed off at the GOP.
Well, remember, “independents” are all over the place. Some are centrists, some are to the right of the Pubs, some are to the left of the Dems, some are Libertarians, some are Greens, and some are simply apolitical/indifferent.
Not so much eh? Alberta has been moving slowly and steadily to the left for a while now. Check out Calgary’s (very popular) Mayor, Naheed Nanshi.
Glenn Beck has already pretty much destroyed the relationship by terroristic threats to move there. We might as well just limit the damage at this point.
Maybe not moving to the left. Maybe just melting.
I think the problem was noted by levdrakon above. “Independent” has become the hipster term for “too conservative to call myself GOP, but I still vote that way” and “still conservative and vote for the GOP, but don’t like some of the people that have taken over the Party”. Independent does NOT mean “undecided”.
Let’s send them Glenn and call it even - we still them for the whole Celine Dion thing.
Actually, I could easily see this (for some respondents) as being naive about the GOP. “Oh, if Obama actually went to the negotiating table with a good deal, they’d accept it. They’re not so crazy that they’d reject everything and blow up the country over it!”
If you don’t accept the idea that the Republicans/Tea Party just DON’T CARE, and would happily blow everything up for their “principles,” then of course Obama and the Democrats look unreasonable and stubborn.
The Soft Guys Who Smell Good like her. And we don’t have to like her, we just have to shut up about it.