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• Thursday, September 4, 2008 11:30 AM

  @ Patrick Morgan

  Nice rundown.

  I laughed particularly hard at the "nanny state" comment. If voters want small government, they certainly shouldn't be looking for it in the GOP. (Most GOP members don't seem to have really thought about what small government is. They think it's a goverment with huge military spending, subsidies for big business and interference with the public's privacy, but no welfare or education programs. They only want certain parts to be "small.")

  That "nanny state" crap is a mere Rush Limbaugh creation at this point thrown out when nothing else seems available. The funniest expression of it I have heard lately came in an interesting place - the Yahoo! sports page. The story reported that the Seattle Mariners, a private corporation, decided to have two sections of seats at, I believe, two games where peanuts would be banned. This was to allow fans with serious peanut allergies to enjoy the game. So, a private entity engaged in a marketing ploy to sell tickets in response to a particular public demand. In other words, it was the conservatives' sacred free market at work. What did half the comments to the story say? "It's all those liberal, commie hippies up in Seattle forcing the nanny state down our throats" or some variation thereof. (I'm not going to even sure why people would be so pissed off about two sections of seats lacking peanut sales - any excuse to slam [perceived] liberals, I suppose.) So ironic, but that's what you get when you give those who lack any sort of intellectual curiosity their AT&T tote bag full of talking points (h/t Kitt).

  —UsedtobeKristin Read UsedtobeKristin's other letters
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