Far East Cynic

The Social Network.

You can tell a Tea Partier-but you can’t tell him (or her)  much.

I have a friend on Facebook who loves to post trite quotes from the Founding Fathers-most often taken out of context-in an effort to show his derision for those of us who do not share the ugly vision for this country, that they pretend to love. Like the impetous soul that I am and when fueled by a beer or four, I often rise and take the bait. Especially when it comes to hackneyed District Court judges from Pensacola.

Well, as Facebook works,  this leads, to his friends coming back, and talking about how all liberals are “hateful”-simply because I had the effontery to use a mild, but quite accurate term of:  “teabagger”.

Jesus H. Christ.

When you can’t show make fun of people who absolutely deserve it-what is the world coming to?

There was one quote of one of his female friends that got my attention:

So you think Japan is the only country out there who has “fixed costs” they cannot lightly dismiss? Do ya maybe think that the US has fixed costs? Do ya think that maybe the US has saddled itself with entitlement costs that it has NO hope… of ever repaying? THAT is precisely the entire point. ALL of the “entitlement states” are going BANKRUPT, starting with JAPAN. They have debt of 200% of their GDP, second only to Zimbabwe. Public entitlements are crushing economies of ALL sizes, ALL over the world. From cities, to states like California, to countries like Spain, Ireland, Greece, and yes, Japan. Creating a new TRILLION dollar entitlement, that uses the worst possible fiscal gimmicks (like double counting Medicare savings, counting 200 Billion dollars in cuts to payments to doctors-then passing a SEPERATE bill to “refund” the “doctor fix”, using 10 years of taxes to “pay” for six years of benefits, etc.) is a disaster. The bill has now been declared unconstitutional in its ENTIRETY because Democrats were too stupid to include a “severability clause”, a mistake that a first year law student wouldn’t have made.
This was a bad bill, rammed onto the American taxpayer literally in the middle of the night. Written in secret (“We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”-Nancy Pelosi), unread by ANYONE who voted for it, supported by the most rediculous of fiscal gimmicks, and now found Unconstitutional by TWO Federal Judges.

Now most of this is just the standard Fox News line-presented also as fact without context, but the “Social Network” does not allow you enough space to drive such drivel back into the cave.

So yes its true-and it is also irrelevant.

And it does not mean a damn thing about the United States debt situation-its apple and oranges. Not that my Facebook acquaintance would know that-because that would require doing more than a little research.  As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, ” If Japanese government bonds were widely held by non-Japanese investors, the S&P action could have caused severe damage to the economy. But because the assets are held largely by domestic players, analysts say it has had no negative effect.”

Now twenty years down stream-yea there are probably some problems in store if Japanese women don’t get on their backs, knees, or stomachs and start conceiving some babies-so as to increase the Japanese revenue base.

A mega Tsunami wiping out Shanghai wouldn’t hurt either.

But I digress from the real point of this post.  Adults have ruined Facebook (even me).

The authors at the link are right-Facebook started as a young peoples medium, designed to share information that might get you drunk, high or laid-or some combination thereof. Blogs were made to talk about politics. When you are younger , you don’t care about politics so much. However when you become older, politics becomes more personal, especially when there is a herd of people who are literally out screw you over keep you from getting the things you need to make your life better. Which is one reason for me why the health care debate is so personal and I have little patience for those who can’t understand the obvious.

Plus, like blogs-Facebook has all the worst parts of the internet with not so many of the good things. People become one dimensional. Its a lot easier to dislike them-especially if they are only the friend of someone you knew 20 years ago and have absolutely nothing in common with now.  And the availability of the Facebook apps on all types of computing devices makes it just to easy to lash out and correct people when they spout stupidity.

Now that is something I knew already-but its good to get a reminder from time to time. And I’ll still post on Facebook-but I’ll try to avoid it when drunk or pissed off.

But it won’t be as much fun.  Wish all I had to do was worry about getting drunk, high, and or laid. But those days are long gone.

Which brings me back to one other things my Facebook acquaintance probably didn’t know about Japan and why they have it over us-they, don’t particularly like Facebook.

Smart people.