They Are Not Tea Parties, They Are Tea Tantrums. It Is The Adolescent, Unserious Hysteria Of The Collapsing Conservative Movement"

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Andrew Sullivan has a wonderful post over at The Daily Dish whereas he asks the question, "Just what are the purpose of these Fox News/Pajamas Media Tea Parties?".

The Tea Tantrum Movement

I spent the better part of an hour earlier today scanning the various sites and blogs to try and understand what specifically the Fox-Pajamas tea parties are about. Having absorbed about as much of the literature as I can, I have to say I'm still befuddled.

Option 1: It's a protest of the bank bailouts orchestrated by Bush and now Obama. But surely these tea-partiers understand what would happen if we didn't bail the banks out. Are they advocating letting major banks fail? Or are they advocating a Krugman-style government take-over? No idea.

Option 2: It's a protest against tax hikes. But there have barely been any! Are they arguing that the planned return to Clinton era marginal rates is an outrage worthy of the colonists ... only months after an election in which the winning candidate ran on exactly that platform? Is that postponed future increase so radical that it demands a protest modeled on one in which people were taxed with no representation at all? Truly bizarre. And when you consider that we have gone through a very long period of relatively low taxation for the very successful, and a very long period in which their wealth has soared, and after an election where a majority of such people voted for Obama, the extremism seems unrelated to anything substantive underneath it.

Option 3: It's a protest against illegal immigration. Ok, so why the tea? Weren't all the original tea-partiers illegal immigrants?

Option 4: It's a protest against government debt. Yay! I will leave aside the somewhat awkward fact that Fox News and Pajamas Media barely covered the massive debt racked up by the Republicans during a period of economic growth. Instead, I'll proffer a simple point: If the tea-partiers are concerned about debt and concerned about taxes, one presumes they favor drastic spending cuts. But what are the tea-partiers proposing to do to Medicare, Medicaid, and social security?


I'd love to see a proposal that they support on any of these entitlement programs, but particularly Medicare which is the culprit for much of the debt burden. Where is it? Or are we really going to hear more diversions about "pork"?

As a fiscal conservative who actually believed in those principles when the Republicans were in power, I guess I should be happy at this phenomenon. And I would be if it had any intellectual honesty, any positive proposals, and any recognizable point. What it looks like to me is some kind of amorphous, generalized rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don't feel part of the culture at all. But the only word for that is: tantrum.

These are not tea-parties. They are tea-tantrums. And the adolescent, unserious hysteria is a function not of a movement regrouping and refinding itself. It's a function of a movement's intellectual collapse and a party's fast-accelerating nervous breakdown.

Iowa Supreme Court Unanimously Upholds Same-Sex Marriage

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decision.gifIn an unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the right of same-sex couples to marry. The court, which was reviewing a district court decision allowing six gay couples to marry, found that “limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution”:

In a unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court today held that the Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.

The decision strikes the language from Iowa Code section 595.2 limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman. It further directs that the remaining statutory language be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage.

The ruling “makes Iowa the first Midwestern state, and the fourth nationwide, to allow same-sex marriages.” In the opinion, the judges compared protecting the right to same-sex marriage to past rulings by the Iowa Supreme Court that protected women’s rights and struck down slavery and segregation laws:

So, today, this court again faces an important issue that hinges on our definition of equal protection. This issue comes to us with the same importance as our landmark cases of the past. The same-sex-marriage debate waged in this case is part of a strong national dialogue centered on a fundamental, deep-seated, traditional institution that has excluded, by state action, a particular class of Iowans. This class of people asks a simple and direct question: How can a state premised on the constitutional principle of equal protection justify exclusion of a class of Iowans from civil marriage?

In its opinion, the court addressed concerns that today’s decision would trample on religious views of marriage, writing that “religious doctrine and views contrary to this principle of law are unaffected. “A religious denomination can still define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.”

Richard Socarides, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay civil rights, told the Des Moines Register today that the “decision could set the stage for other states.” AmericaBlog’s Joe Sudbay calls the ruling “a huge win for marriage equality,” writing that “more and more Americans support marriage equality and it’s only going to increase.”

Update: Iowa Senate Republican Leader Paul McKinley released a statement calling on the Iowa legislature to "immediately act to pass a Constitutional Amendment that protects traditional marriage, keeps it as a sacred bond only between one man and one woman."

Update: The Des Moines Register said that the ruling makes Iowa the fourth state nationwide to allow same-sex marriages. Massachusetts legalized it in 2003, as did Connecticut in 2008. California's Supreme Court legalized it in May 2008, but Proposition 8 effectively banned it again in Nov. 2008.

Update: Politico's Ben Smith writes of the ruling: "It's really a sweeping, total win for the gay-rights side, rejecting any claim that objections to same-sex marriage can be seen as "rational," rejecting a parallel civil union remedy, and pronouncing same-sex marriages and gay and lesbian couples essentially normal."

Update: Statements on the ruling by Iowa Gov. Chet Culver and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) are here.

Etymotic Research: Kickass Customer Service

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I purchased a set of ER 6i Isolator Earphones back in the summer of 2007 from Amazon after hearing Leo Laporte rave about them on TWiT and other TWiT Network shows. First of all, for someone who works in downtown Washington, DC and rides the very noisy Metro every day, these Earphones are fantastic. Their rubber grips go down inside your ear canal blocking out 80%+ of any exterior noise. They produce high fidelity sound for their size, and albeit a bit pricey, are very nice. They have an extra-long chord for reach into a messenger bag or a backpack if you do not wish to store your iPod in your pocket and feature a nifty little clip to latch the chord onto your clothing so as to not allow it to get caught on objects as you walk by.

Now all of this is very well, except that I am very rough on my equipment. Within about 8 months of my owning these, the left earphone began to cut out. The connection of the earbuds to the mini-jack began to become stretched or frayed (I'm guessing). I was kind of frustrated but found out they came with a 1 year warranty. I called up Etymotics and to my surprise, did not hear a phone tree when the line picked up, but instead, a nice woman on the other end who promptly diagnosed my problem. She happily told me that it was covered under the warranty and told me that Etymotic Research would replace them for me. After getting an RMA number I shipped these back to Etymotic the next day, and within a week, had my replacement set back.

Fast forward to this last week. I now have an iPhone (as of December 2008) and purchased a set of Hf2 high-fidelity hands-free headset + earphones. These have even better sound quality than the ER6i's, but are made specifically for the iPhone, duplicating the functionality of the microphone built into the chord along with the single button for controlling the answering of calls or flipping through music when in iPod-mode. I love this set of Earphone, or at least I did until I took them out of my bag last Friday to discover one of the plastic housings around the base of the left earbud had become cracked. I SUSPECT it was my fault in that they were crushed inside my bag up against something. I called Etymotic Research and once again, a very cheerful customer service rep who answered gladly told me they would replace them, gave me an RMA number and told me they would ship a replacement as soon as their recieved my damaged ones. As of right now, it is the Friday after that call, and my UPS tracking number says that UPS will be delivering my replacement set today.

 

Etymotic Research is awesome.