You Can’t Have It Both Ways

I guess most people use facebook to show photos of their  kids, and swap recipes, and link to funny videos of cats doing normal cat stuff but with human voices dubbed in, because that’s actually pretty easy to do, I guess, and there’s a chance that lots of people will look at it because lots of people like cats and other cute animals, for some reason sloths seem to be big right now.

I suspect that most people don’t get involved in a lot of political arguments on facebook.  But,  I do.  Today’s argument was all about the South, and whether or not slavery was the main cause of the Civil War, and I raised the point that you can’t very well be flying a Confederate flag on the one hand and on the other saying that you’re the “Real Americans,” and waving giant American flags at teabagger rallies and wearing American flag shirts at Nascar races, because it’s one or the other.  The two are diametrically opposed.

Michel Bachmann, vowing to keep open the memorial she just voted to close, today

Pretty soon, as these conversations do tend to go, the talk turned to Barack Obama.  War monger Barack Obama, as he put it.  He cited Syria as an example.  I pointed out that Obama had actually not, in the end, bombed Syria (touch wood).  Then he said that Obama was a big weenie.

You can’t have it both ways.

The Republicans in the House got their government shutdown.  So, a lot of government employees will have their paychecks delayed (but not House members) and a few National Parks and things got closed.

In one interesting case, a group of Veterans found the WWII memorial closed.  This was largely a technicality, because it’s a standing, outdoor thing and doesn’t actually require any employees to be there on a permanent basis.  But, there were barriers up and signs saying it was closed.  The vets said screw that, moved the barriers, and went on in.

Good for them.

Right there, getting her picture taken with these radical lawbreakers, was Michele Bachmann.  Michele Bachmann, leader of the Tea Party.  Michele Bachmann, megavocal supporter of the government shutdown.  Michele Bachmann, the reason those barriers were there in the first place

Michele Bachmann, trying to have it both ways.