My friend Jeff Jarvis had a burst of creativity the other night.

He's a wonderful guy, very enthusiastic, and often his enthusiasm comes with a lot of expletives. I have to admit they make me uncomfortable, and I'm someone who swears liberally myself. (Though I wouldn't consider myself a liberal.) I think you make your point better if you say it directly and leave out the flowery stuff. If you don't, the words become the story, not the ideas.

Anyway...

He came up with a hashtag. I'll let him tell you what it is.

Anyway, the disaster in Washington, which I think of as Republi-Geddon or is it GOP-ocalypse, has certainly spawned its share of humor.

For example, I posted earlier today we ought to give them a tax holiday for five Americans for every Representative. That way the richest among us can pay no taxes, which appears to be what they want, and the rest of us can get on with having an economy. I thought of a problem though. They couldn't use the subways, or even the sewers, and certainly not the airports. After all, those are ours, they belong to the taxpayers. I assume they believe in property. Yes? What's mine is mine, after all. And if you don't pay for it, it's not fair for you to use it. So if you need to take a leak while you're in one of our cities, good luck finding a place to do your business.

BTW, the police and fire departments are ours too. And the military.

The meme I'm having the most fun with is #InspiringGOPMovieScenes. There are so many great Republican-inspired and inspiring scenes in the movies. I keep thinking of more.

There's the final scene in Dr Strangelove where Slim Pickens rides the H-bomb as if it was a bucking bronco.

Later, Vera Lynn sings We'll Meet Again.

Perfect music for the apocalypse.

Then there's the scene in The Godfather where Don Coreleone is meeting with the other mob bosses. Don Barzini, who was clearly a Republican, said the wonderful line: "After all, we're not Communists." Everyone had a good laugh.

Then there was the scene in The Untouchables, where Robert DeNiro, playing Al Capone, illustrates the importance of teamwork using a baseball bat and the head of a mob boss. Obviously this is a scene that House Speaker Boehner wishes he had the power (or cojones) to pull off with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist.

BTW, where is Karl Rove in all this? Haven't heard much from him.

But the absolute best movie scene of them all for inspiring true Republicans is Anthony Hopkins playing the title role in Oliver Stone's Nixon. He's about to resign in disgrace, and delivers a wonderful Republican soliloquy to the portrait of JFK. "When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are." Wonderful scene. Grabs you right where it hurts.

 7/27/2011; 4:02:39 PM.   .

How about a new law that allows every member of Congress to name five citizens who pay no taxes.

They don't have to create any jobs. A free ride. Enjoy!

I think that's what this is really about. Maybe there are 2000 really rich Americans who don't want to pay taxes. Okay, let them have what they want.

Only one catch. We get to find out who they are.

How's that for a compromise!

 7/27/2011; 10:51:08 AM.   .

Ooops. I never got around to writing up yesterday's ride.

Basically the same one I always take.

Map: 1 hour 4 minutes. 11.53 miles.

 7/27/2011; 9:43:45 AM.   .

Just re-read Paul Krugman's landmark blog post about the cult that is destroying America.

In the last paragraph he says: "The 'both sides are at fault' people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it's out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray."

I'm sure they know better too.

I started blogging because the tech press has the same problem. They report conventional wisdom even when it is contradicted by facts.

I was making new Mac software back in the mid-90s. But reporters were writing that there was no new Mac software. I knew they knew that there was. They were all Mac users, and they were using the new stuff themselves. I knew these people personally, so I asked them why they reported this. Here's what they said: Everyone knows there's no new Mac software.

The paper Krugman writes for is better than CNN at exposing important information that we need to make decisions, but they're mostly still reporting conventional wisdom, as opposed to reporting what they know to be true.

If you want to have a sense of what's actually happening, you have to piece it together yourself. Try to get an idea of how much the reporters are echoing what everyone else is reporting, vs reporting what they see with their own eyes.

This is the real problem in our culture, not the fact that crazies are voting in Congress, sending us into the trashbin. That's how the crazies got elected in the first place.

The problem is that we all don't listen to each other. If we stopped giving so much credence to who is saying what on CNN, stopped taking them so seriously (they're all entertainers, basically) we'd get out of this trap right away.

PS: Yesterday's post about why tech news is so boring is on-topic as well.

PPS: This is why I enjoy reading David Frum's blog. A Republican, he reports what he sees, not what his party tells him to see. What's in it for me? I get to see the world from someone else's point of view, without the humiliation of being openly lied to.

PPPS: Another important Krugman post. The non-crazy Repubs could accept the deal the President offered them, approve it (with Democrats voting in favor of it too), and we'd be done. Their political careers would be over. Krugman asks: So? How about some courage. And maybe, just maybe -- their careers would be born again. Maybe the people would be happy they actually stood up for them instead of being whipped into a frenzy by Rush Limbaugh et al. (Another thought, maybe the Republicans want to nominate President Obama for his second term, and we can have a progressive run against him as a Democrat.)

 7/27/2011; 8:47:47 AM.   .