Bill Kristol tells GOP to come back to the table.

Kehama, it's best to check their own site. Here's a sample:

15 Non-Negotiable Core Beliefs

1. Illegal aliens are here illegally.
2. Pro-domestic employment is indispensable.
3. A strong military is essential.
4. Special interests must be eliminated.
5. Gun ownership is sacred.
6. Government must be downsized.
7. The national budget must be balanced.
8. Deficit spending must end.
9. Bailout and stimulus plans are illegal.
10. Reducing personal income taxes is a must.
11. Reducing business income taxes is mandatory.
12. Political offices must be available to average citizens.
13. Intrusive government must be stopped.
14. English as our core language is required.
15. Traditional family values are encouraged.

I predict that you'll find some of that to be reasonable, and some of it to be unreasonable. But then some of it seems quite at odds with their beliefs in libertarianism, such as numbers 14 and 15. As for the argument that the states should be empowered instead of the federal government, I believe that only to be their ruse.

13. Intrusive government must be stopped.

We're not gonna tell you how to live your life...

15. Traditional family values are encouraged.

...unless you're living a life we don't agree with?

5. Gun ownership is sacred.

Sacred? Really? I don't think you know what that word means. For some of us, some gun ownership is a little scary at times. And given the number of high-profile shootings lately, maybe grey this one out for a few months.

3. A strong military is essential.
4. Special interests must be eliminated.

Sooooo... soldiers are going to start... making their own guns and bullets? Really don't know that 3 is possible without 4. Also... aren't you guys funded by the Koch brothers? They might have words for you on this.

9. Bailout and stimulus plans are illegal.

We don't want to win Ohio or Michigan ever again!

Good lord, I always though the Tea Party movement was a little weird to begin with... but that list is so self-contradictory and idiotic for elections beyond the local level, I really can't imagine they're ever going to rise above the legislative branch.

Demosthenes wrote:

Good lord, I always though the Tea Party movement was a little weird to begin with... but that list is so self-contradictory and idiotic for elections beyond the local level, I really can't imagine they're ever going to rise above the legislative branch.

IMAGE(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YDcE8nhYVVU/TvozztAUD8I/AAAAAAAAAGI/D8MVwgZfEZs/s400/keep-your-government-hands-off-my-medicare.jpg)

**Brain Ragequits**

Keithustus wrote:

Some of it seems quite at odds with their belief in libertarianism, such as #14.

Seriously wtf? They've been listening to my mother?

She called me crying awhile back because the country was ruined. All because she had to choose a language at an ATM.

OG_slinger wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

Good lord, I always though the Tea Party movement was a little weird to begin with... but that list is so self-contradictory and idiotic for elections beyond the local level, I really can't imagine they're ever going to rise above the legislative branch.

IMAGE(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YDcE8nhYVVU/TvozztAUD8I/AAAAAAAAAGI/D8MVwgZfEZs/s400/keep-your-government-hands-off-my-medicare.jpg)

See also: all the people that threatened to move to Canada after the law passed.

15 Non-Negotiable Core Beliefs

1. Illegal aliens are here illegally.
2. Pro-domestic employment is indispensable.
3. A strong military is essential.
4. Special interests must be eliminated.
5. Gun ownership is sacred.
6. Government must be downsized.
7. The national budget must be balanced.
8. Deficit spending must end.
9. Bailout and stimulus plans are illegal.
10. Reducing personal income taxes is a must.
11. Reducing business income taxes is mandatory.
12. Political offices must be available to average citizens.
13. Intrusive government must be stopped.
14. English as our core language is required.
15. Traditional family values are encouraged.

So owning a gun is sacred but family values is only important enough to be "encouraged"?

The national budget must be balanced. Or... what?

It is a good thing #4 isn't #1 since the Tea Party is a special interest group.

#12 is interesting considering they ran the most non-average candidate for president. Even the precious Rand Paul is not an "average citizen".

Government must be downsized but the military must be strong. They know what happens with that recipe right?

Numbers 1, 2, 14 and 15 demonstrate that the Tea Party is really just a rebranded Minutemen. GOP support of them worked out just great here in California.

ranalin wrote:
Keithustus wrote:

Some of it seems quite at odds with their belief in libertarianism, such as #14.

Seriously wtf? They've been listening to my mother?

She called me crying awhile back because the country was ruined. All because she had to choose a language at an ATM.

A few years back, I was a part of a bank merger. The new bank offered 12 different languages on their ATMs, and while we were installing them over "conversion weekend," more than one person proudly drove up to us to tell us they were switching banks because we're "friends of the illegals now."

Seth wrote:
ranalin wrote:
Keithustus wrote:

Some of it seems quite at odds with their belief in libertarianism, such as #14.

Seriously wtf? They've been listening to my mother?

She called me crying awhile back because the country was ruined. All because she had to choose a language at an ATM.

A few years back, I was a part of a bank merger. The new bank offered 12 different languages on their ATMs, and while we were installing them over "conversion weekend," more than one person proudly drove up to us to tell us they were switching banks because we're "friends of the illegals now."

"We are a business, we're everyone's friend if they have money, even racist bigots like yourself."

I guess it's completely lost on folks that legal immigrants and visa holders (aka tourists and students) don't instantly have their old language wiped and become functional at English overnight.

15 Non-Negotiable Core Beliefs

I don't think this list is specific enough to even be discussed. Depending on how you look at it I could agree with all of those other than referring to gun ownership as sacred (I'd say important, not sacred). For example, I agree that illegal immigrants are here illegally. I also agree that breaking the speed limit is illegal. I also agree murder is illegal. It is all how you handle the punishment.

Again, I also agree that a strong military is important. What is considered strong though? Number of planes? Size of budget? Technology? I'm sure many will disagree on the details.

Traditional family values? Sure, love your children, I can agree with that. Oh wait, you mean the parents have to be married? Oh, I might disagree.

I could go on.

Saw this in the news today:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) introduced legislation to raise the debt ceiling on Thursday, apparently with the intent of showing that even Democrats would not support such a bill.

However, McConnell’s plan backfired after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called for a vote on the legislation, which would have given the president the authority to raise the federal debt ceiling on his own. The top Senate Republican was forced to filibuster his own bill.

(Raw Story)

Keithustus wrote:

I guess it's completely lost on folks that legal immigrants and visa holders (aka tourists and students) don't instantly have their old language wiped and become functional at English overnight.

Someone can correct me. But the typical immigrant with English as their second or third language has a fundamentally better understanding of linguistics, reading, spelling than most 'native' Americans?

KingGorilla wrote:
Keithustus wrote:

I guess it's completely lost on folks that legal immigrants and visa holders (aka tourists and students) don't instantly have their old language wiped and become functional at English overnight.

Someone can correct me. But the typical immigrant with English as their second or third language has a fundamentally better understanding of linguistics, reading, spelling than most 'native' Americans?

I'd venture to say there's too much variance in both groups to really make useful claims. For every ultra-educated person entering the US because employers can't find Americans with those skills (e.g. my wife), there's other family members brought along who don't know how to ask the location of the restroom. As for native speakers, we may generally have a poorer understanding of the mechanisms of grammar, but I have found with my many experiences with non-native speakers from several different countries that their grasp of colloquialisms and phrasal verbs (e.g. knock down, knock up, knock aside) can be quite limiting socially.

Ask any non-native speaker to say the fish "salmon". Almost all will pronounce the L.

I was just talking about this this morning with a couple folks from my Rotary club. It is a fairly conservative group, but we all pretty much agreed that the one thing preventing the United States from falling into the same demographic sinkhole that other developed countries are falling into (aging population creating economic drag and lack of economic vitality) is the fact that we are still, despite the best efforts of "nativists", still a highly desired destination for immigrants.

Yet another reason why Teabaggers have their heads up their rears.

Katy wrote:

Saw this in the news today:

*snip* The top Senate Republican was forced to filibuster his own bill.

(Raw Story)

That's priceless. If this doesn't perfectly illustrates just how much of a game this has all become, I don't know what will.

On the Daily Show it is wonderful how they illustrate all of these arcane rules in the senate. It really does read like the kind of road map that Indy took to find the Arc of the Covenant. Apparently on January 1, with a simply majority, Democrats can end the filibusterer, because on that day filibusterer is not in play. But only is the moon is waning and Jupiter is in retrograde or some sh*t.

Paleocon wrote:

I was just talking about this this morning with a couple folks from my Rotary club. It is a fairly conservative group, but we all pretty much agreed that the one thing preventing the United States from falling into the same demographic sinkhole that other developed countries are falling into (aging population creating economic drag and lack of economic vitality) is the fact that we are still, despite the best efforts of "nativists", still a highly desired destination for immigrants.

Yet another reason why Teabaggers have their heads up their rears.

They should agree because that is a fact. The only reason the US has a positive population growth rate is immigration and a higher than average number of births by Hispanics.

Kehama wrote:
Katy wrote:

Saw this in the news today:

*snip* The top Senate Republican was forced to filibuster his own bill.

(Raw Story)

That's priceless. If this doesn't perfectly illustrates just how much of a game this has all become, I don't know what will.

But remember, we shouldn't reform the filibuster because it's a vital tool that's needed to protect the political minority from itself.

Ask any non-native speaker to say the fish "salmon". Almost all will pronounce the L.

Which is why I'd be ok with revisions to the English language to remove crap like that. Silent letters are useless. Weird letter combinations that creation completely different sounds than what the letters would suggest are equally dumb.

Given that the Tea Party wants to have more people speaking English, making it easier to do certainly couldn't hurt.

Katy wrote:

Saw this in the news today:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) introduced legislation to raise the debt ceiling on Thursday, apparently with the intent of showing that even Democrats would not support such a bill.

However, McConnell’s plan backfired after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called for a vote on the legislation, which would have given the president the authority to raise the federal debt ceiling on his own. The top Senate Republican was forced to filibuster his own bill.

(Raw Story)

Hilarious!

Seth wrote:
ranalin wrote:
Keithustus wrote:

Some of it seems quite at odds with their belief in libertarianism, such as #14.

Seriously wtf? They've been listening to my mother?

She called me crying awhile back because the country was ruined. All because she had to choose a language at an ATM.

A few years back, I was a part of a bank merger. The new bank offered 12 different languages on their ATMs, and while we were installing them over "conversion weekend," more than one person proudly drove up to us to tell us they were switching banks because we're "friends of the illegals now."

The hilarious part is, by switching to a bank that doesn't embrace every available market, they're directly opposing capitalism. What are they, commies?

Demosthenes wrote:
Ask any non-native speaker to say the fish "salmon". Almost all will pronounce the L.

Which is why I'd be ok with revisions to the English language to remove crap like that. Silent letters are useless. Weird letter combinations that creation completely different sounds than what the letters would suggest are equally dumb.

IMAGE(http://www.topatoco.com/graphics/00000001/shel-english.jpg)

Demosthenes wrote:

Which is why I'd be ok with revisions to the English language to remove crap like that. Silent letters are useless. Weird letter combinations that creation completely different sounds than what the letters would suggest are equally dumb.

If you've never read about the Simplified Spelling Board, check out the article in Wikipedia.

I've never stayed at the Adirondak Loj, but I've vacationed in the area, which is why I know that bit of history.

I've never stayed at the Adirondak Loj, but I've vacationed in the area, which is why I know that bit of history.

Hey now, there'd no silent D in lodge unless you're weird. Either way, yeah that reads weird to me just looking at it, but I suspect most people would get used to it and then everyone else would just never know better.

Yeah that's the issue: Inertia. There's no reason why I think good and food shouldn't rhyme, but I do, and that's why English.

Boost science and mathematic teaching time by reducing the amount of time needed for spelling!

It's not just inertia. Consider the dialect problem—even within American English, for "whale" some people pronounce "hwayl" and some pronounce "wayl". "Historic" as "istorik" vs "historik". Go further afield and you have "dogs" as "dahgz" vs "dohks".

If you look at the Shavian alphabet's vowels as an American speaker, you will almost certainly note that you don't distinguish between some of these vowels, while an RP speaker will. (Specifically, my dialect doesn't distinguish between the sounds in "ah" vs "awe", or "air" vs "err", has no need for a special vowel for "Ian", and while I do distinguish between the sounds represented by "ado" and "up", I pronounce ado using the one attributed to "up" here.)

And honestly, in a lot of ways the various North American dialects and the British RP are some of the closest dialects. Just within the bounds of London, you have even stronger variations than that. The Gaelic regions have some really aggressive diphthongization which is also present along with other features in Australia and New Zealand. And wow, there's some interesting stuff in Caribbean dialects of English.

And within each one of those major regions, there are minor regional variations as well.

So... yeah. Spelling reform is a cool idea. But... it's not as easy as it looks. And making it purely phonetic is pretty much impossible, if you want the same word to be spelled the same way across dialects. And if you don't, you still have problems of the American reader looking at a symbol for a vowel that isn't distinct in most American dialects and saying "I don't even know what that sounds like, because I've never had to use it or even seen it before. How am I supposed to puzzle that word out?"

In short: it turns out that there are distinct benefits to having a written language that is somewhat divorced from the sounds of the language.

Americanism: I don't think the Tea Party, or most Americans, give a crap whether there is English spoken or spelled in different ways outside the US. Any decisions about how English and immigration and education (both for children and for immigrants) interrelate will not acknowledge that non-American English exists.

For instance, what's an RP speaker?

In short: it turns out that there are distinct benefits to having a written language that is somewhat divorced from the sounds of the language.

Can we at least agree using weird consonant and/or vowel combinations for names needs to stop? Megan, not Meaghan

Keithustus wrote:

Americanism: I don't think the Tea Party, or most Americans, give a crap whether there is English spoken or spelled in different ways outside the US. Any decisions about how English and immigration and education (both for children and for immigrants) interrelate will not acknowledge that non-American English exists.

For instance, what's an RP speaker?

Received Pronunciation, like what the Queen speaks. Even if thanks to her long life coinciding with the availability of recording devices:

Like all accents, RP has changed with time. For example, sound recordings and films from the first half of the 20th century demonstrate that it was usual for speakers of RP to pronounce the /æ/ sound, as in land, with a vowel close to [ɛ], so that land would sound similar to a present-day pronunciation of lend. RP is sometimes known as the Queen's English, but recordings show that even Queen Elizabeth II has changed her pronunciation over the past 50 years, no longer using an [ɛ]-like vowel in words like land.[65]

You know what ticks me off? People who can't pronounce their a-vowels with a short sound, and tend toward short-e instead. Example: "Hand" is pronounced by some as "hend". This wouldn't be a problem except when they discuss music by George Frideric Handel and make me wonder who is this "Hendel" composer I've never heard of?

Edit: and if someone is going to argue "it's a German name. 'Hendel' is the correct pronunciation" then I refer you to the majority of foreign words and names that have been butchered by English speakers. The term "ying-yang" is particularly distorted from its original pronunciation.