"Who are those guys"? Those are the words that were said by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in that long ago film classic of the same name (referring to a posse chasing them in the aftermath of a train robbery they'd just committed).
Today that quote would be appropriate for Republican Congressional House leaders for withholding disaster relief funds to victims of Hurricane Irene.
It seems before they'll give their consent to appropriate and release the relief funds they're demanding equal cuts in other federal programs to offset the disaster expenditure.
To this writer's knowledge that's a first and an ignoble one at that. If their position doesn't show where their priorities are, nothing will. It's like saying to a hit and run accident victim, "We'll help but first we have to get the money to pay for an ambulance before we can help you." Incredible!
Apparently they're advised by an ancestor resembling Dickens' fictional Ebenezer Scrooge to somehow appear fiscally responsible.
Maybe they feel the victims were responsible for their own plight i.e. "Well you knew the hurricane was coming, why didn't you get out of the way"?
Maybe their stance isn't so incongruous after all. What they really want is to kill all government, have complete laissez-faire economics with no regulations and a society with a survival of the fittest mentality.
Hmm, that means no police, fire departments, water treatment plants, public education, libraries, roads, bridges and parks; not to mention social security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment insurance.
These grinches may breath the same air, walk the same streets and inhabit the same country as yours truly, but we have no human connection.
Empathy for others suffering is an alien concept to them. They are the mean spirited face of America. Let's call it as it is.
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