Posted this in comment to a posting on the blog: The Political Omnivore.  The article was about a possible "civil war" within the GOP between the Tea-Party members and the more 'centrist' members.  I was questioning validity of the use of the moniker "Tea-Party".

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One thing I don't get is why there is still reference to a "Tea Party" when, as I understand it, it originally consisted of libertarian minded folks - that is, people who wanted fiscal and government restraint, while at the same time professed civil-liberties permissiveness.

That original movement was very early on hijacked by several GOP politicians in what was (to me at least) a transparent grab at the group's ground-swell of populist energy.  That hijacking resulted in a "Tea Party movement" within the GOP that immediately dropped the civil-liberties element, and ran with the fiscal/government restraint component.

Now, again as I understand it, the GOP is self-proclaimed to be the party of small government and fiscal restraint while also being the party of conservative social values.  So somebody please explain to me how that standard GOP body is any different than this current "Tea Party" group.  By my view, there is currently no such thing as a "Tea Party".  It's just GOP.  Right-extremist or centrist, the difference is in degree, not content.  The original Tea Party was an actual change in content - a change that does not now exist.  Neither therefore does the Tea Party.

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...Reply from The Political Omnivore. Interesting and valid point. Glad he agrees my reasoning is accurate, in spite of still needing a name for the "TheseGuysWhoReallyLikeTedCruz" group :)...

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politicalomnivoreNovember 12, 2013 at 1:48 PM

My response to this is worth its own post (so it'll take a little while)--but immediately: Whatever you want to call it there is the very-conservative group (the 'Tea Party') and the 'establishment group' (the "GOPe") and they are "fighting it out."

This is a very bad description of what's really going on--but nontheless there is a tension in the party and using these words to describe it gets us *somewhere* ahead of "theseguyswhoreallylikeTedCruz" or whatever. But, yeah: there's some truth to the above too. Like I said: more than just a note here.

Then There is Her

...and then I see her, and the pointlessness of it all somehow just doesn't matter anymore :).

Death

What is the point of death?
We spend all our lives living...loving...learning in so many ways.
We (hopefully) build this "self" with ever improving wisdom.
We build relationships. friendships. families. loves.
We try to impart to the world what we've learned, we try to learn from the world what we don't yet know.
We carry on this incessant quest for knowledge, comprehension, understanding.
We carefully, or haphazardly, or a bit of both, construct our mind. our self.

One week we balance our checkbook, and the next week, we die. Why?

It's all gone. Gone. Decades and decades of work, almost an entire century, evaporate in the few short hours required to leave this planet.
Leaving behind only legacy, the memory - for however briefly that might last.
Many are able to at least leave their lingering impression on children, grandchildren, a following world.
Those of us not favored in this way, we might as well not even have existed?  Is that it?

So no. I don't fucking understand.
Looks pretty damned pointless.