In the news (US)

thought this was interesting, but hardly deserving of it's own thread so if it's ok with the mods I'll just ape the politics forum news thread and leave this in here

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Mindless-partisanship-gets-in-the-way-of-fighting-big-government-1329573-105719078.html

Since 2003, Gallup has periodically asked Americans whether the federal government "poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens." The latest results are in, and in just four years Republicans' and Democrats' answers "have shifted dramatically."

In September 2006, 57 percent of Democrats said yes, while only 21 percent of Republicans agreed. Since then, Congress and the White House have gone from red to blue, and the two camps have switched places. "What, me worry?" say all but 21 percent of the Ds today, while 66 percent of the Rs are ready to start provisioning their concrete bunkers.

If voters' threat perceptions are based "not on how much [government] is doing but rather on what it is doing," then maybe both Rs and Ds had good reason to change their answers.

Nice try, but during the relevant period government was doing all of the above. In 2003, President George W. Bush pushed through a massive expansion of socialized medicine with Medicare Part D, whose price tag -- $1.1 trillion over the next decade -- dwarfs most estimates of Obamacare's projected costs.

not really surprising to anybody, people were screaming blue murder about Bush the nazi fascist war-for-oil'er whenever he did anything but when Obama assumes the power to murder US citizens it didn't really register (I know it did, but not to the level it probably should have.. certainly not to the level it would have if it had been Bush). Same thing with the republicans and bush's medicare, although the tea partiers do tend to be weirdly in favour of medicare even though they're supposedly all about small government.

all in all it's pretty funny, tragic and ridiculous.