Yes, Spot, the Republicans are totally soft on terror. I know it's a little confusing. These are the same people who go around stomping their feet and shouting about how the government should be tougher on terrorism. They sound so tough, so John Wayne-ly, but it's really just the sound of their own disorganized thinking and paranoia. If you ignore the noise and watch what what they actually do you will see something rather different. Whenever they hear the word 'terrorist' they tend to pee their pants and run blubbering for the protection of an all-knowing, all-powerful, Daddy-state. That's not about being tough on terror. Blowing pathetic little snot bubbles while you exchange basic civil liberties for the promise of security is just being your basic gutless, spineless, yellow-bellied cry-baby. OTOH, when confronted with a political assasination, which is legally defined as Domestic Terrorism, Republicans just avoid the "T-word". They wander around aimlessly, issuing platitudes, and speculating about the mental status of the terrorist. Being tough on terror would mean going after not only the terrorist himself, but those who incited the terrorism with violent rhetoric or extreme ideology. As a matter of fact, the President has the unrestricted authority to have those suspected of aiding or inciting the terrorism kidnapped and killed or imprisoned indefinitely. If the Republicans had the cojones to live up to their own speechifying they would be demanding that the President do so immediately. But they won't - because they are just gutless opportunistic paranoids who are soft on terror.

Now that I'm done teaching my summer course, some days I find myself at loose ends. I'm at home this week with Lady C., our hound, and we spend our days reading and playing Boggle™. The problem is, of course, she has trouble using words of more than one syllable, let alone spelling them. So it gets boring, and when things get boring the conversation inevitably turns to politics.

Even my hound is disgusted by the Tea Party farce. And that's because although she cannot spell, she has an instinctive quantitative sense. And she realizes that anyone who takes the Tea Party movement seriously is just not understanding the math.

When "grassroots" organizers such as Russo, Marsh, and Associates (founders of Tea Party Express™), Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform™, and the notoriously insipid Family Research Council™ (among the co-founders of the National Tea Party Federation™) set this thing up, I'll bet they never dreamed it would succeed like it has.

That's because most if us have yet to adjust to how complicit the media has become in treating astroturf as "news." Despite the fact that the commercial news outlets by and large wouldn't mention torture, and have conveniently forgotten that we were lied into starting a devastating war, they fawn over the Tea Partiers, follow every move of their Pageanteer-in-Chief, and lavish attention on any illogical argument that is offered. Network news broadcasts and NPR have been all over the FoxNews™-orchestrated rallies and their re-warmed anti-tax slogans. Eight years ago, I remember I would come home and watch in vain for coverage of huge anti-war marches -- and admit to having naïvely expected something like the coverage the tiny Tea Party has routinely received.

Of course, Lady C. now lives in California, which is where the anti-tax contagion started, back in those days of Governor Reagan and Howard Jarvis. She doesn't remember them, but occasionally when we are walking in the park, she will sniff the wind, make a face and put her tail between her legs as she tries to turn around and go home. Could it be?

In any case, the dog understands that since the budgetary cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is around $1.05 trillion, what the Tea Party is screaming about is chump change. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities chart above shows, war costs dwarf the things that they are complaining about like TARP ($151 billion in 2009), or even Medicare and Medicaid ($676 billion in 2009). To say nothing of the Minerals Management Service at the Department of the Interior ($0.348 billion in 2010) or the National Endowment for the Arts ($0.155 billion in 2009). Which all, of course, are smaller than regular Defense spending ($782 billion in 2009).

So what these people should really be doing is protesting is the size of the Defense budget and the additional spending on two wars through annual "Emergency Supplementals" and "Emergency Budget Amendments." And yet...

It would be silly to say that my dog was smarter than those Tea Party members, the equivalent of saying an actor is stupid for speaking like an Elizabethan nobleman. Still, in this case, I prefer my dog's inarticulacy to their theatrical protests, and those of the "deficit hawks" who have forgotten that their troubles came from being such "hawks" eight years ago.

She smelled something bad this morning, and I barely got her to cross the street into the park. I don't know what it was, but when we got home she clobbered me at Boggle™. She got 29 points alone for the words "economic" "muscle" "masquerading" and "protest."

A law firm acting on on behalf of the citizens of the United States filed suit earlier today seeking to recover nearly 10 trillion dollars that was lost during a single presidential administration. The suit cites criminal negligence, gross incompetence, and "acts deliberately contrary to the oath of office," among other things and includes a 937 page list of specific events ranging from the 1999 election irregularities to the 2008 transference of public funds to Wall Street.

A spokesperson for the defendants told reporters that the suit was clearly politically motivated and, further, that United States citizens had not taken advantage of opportunities to research the facts for themselves and thereby acquire an informed opinion.

The suit alleges that citizens unable to think clearly because they were enticed by Nationalistic Glory and driven by blatant fear mongering.

Well, Spot, the magnitude of the real terrorist threat has finally been revealed. Turns out it was the Great White Peril all along. Seems the sea ice has just been pretending to be all innocent and inanimate. It all makes sense now. I guess the Titanic was sank by an anarchist suicide ice berg, an unacknowledged victim of Ice Terror. And those semiliterate sons a the south with their Iced Tea. Yeah, now I get it, Ice T - obviously a recognition code for the Klans of Ice Terror. An the 'Tee Shirts' Hah. Tee for Terrorist, you mean. An' the sweaty hordes of global warming deniers? Oh yeah, all clapping they hands together an chantin "I do believe, I do, I do" to bring back Tinkerbelle the Ice Fairy to freeze the Arctic Ocean solid, just so swarthy hordes a Afghani Mongols can ride they camels right across the Pole, stoppin only for free medical care in Canada, to rape pillage and burn these United States of America. Why? Oh, why do conservatives want to be raped and pillaged so bad?