1. If you say so.

2. I don't think a sidebar joke in a half-hour comedy is enough effort to be considered pandering. And I don't think 30 Rock is interested in pandering; they're interested in being funny.

3. The purpose? To make an absurd joke for laughs. They're mocking the notion that Republicans are mean.

4. I don't seriously think that the writers of 30 Rock were trying to teach a moral lesson. If anything, I'd say JasonC was on target: the show likes to characterize Republicans as mean. So let's make fun of that by showing a bill that's so over the top mean as to not be believed. 

You've already lost face with your histrionics. Now we have to tailor our political humor to the understanding of immigrants? This from the side of the ideological spectrum that says immigrants should irrevocably assimilate to our culture?

Yeah, that's it, GE is out to slander your beliefs and dupe immigrants into being leftists. That's the kind of long-shot hail-Mary theory that usually gets written up with derision on this site.

"He was, and is yet, most likely, the wearisomest, self-righteous
pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself
and fling the curses on his neighbors." -Emily Bronte

Jer, that's a really long story, but I'll try to sum up. . .

1. I live in the state of Washington and at the time, I used to do a lot of restaurant work.  I noticed that it seemed like every time I earned a raise, the state would raise the minimun wage and then all the businesses would raise their prices accordingly.

2. I was naive enough to think if you only raised taxes just this one time, you could fix your budget problems and then go back to efficiently running a non-wasteful economy.

3. I noticed a lot of liberals in general were hostile towards Christians.  I had recently converted and noticed conservatives were overall more accepting.

4. Even up to the 2000 election, I was a swing voter who was really impressed by Al Gore's kiss.  Don't write off Hillary's tears.  PR stunts like that work on the unwary.  I was one of them.  The only reason I didn't vote for Al Gore, was at the last minute, I read one article about possible cabinet choices.  I chose Bush for the experience of his advisors.  That was it.

5. After 9/11, I noticed a lot of liberals saying it was the U.S.'s fault because we wouldn't appease others.  That didn't make a ton of sense to me either.

6. I've been a huge GIJoe fan since I was a kid.  Can't wait for the movie.  To me, terrorists are indeed the worst threat imaginable and no I'm not imagining it. 

7. I had also just married a former member of Army Intel who was a conservative.  Her's was the first Rush bumpersticker I ever scraped off with a putty knife.  When I started actually listening to Rush (and ignored his ego-tripping), I would often say to myself, "That makes sense, can't argue w/that."

8. I'm the type of person that if you can cite objective sources or footnotes, I'll tend to believe you.   I don't believe "just so" statements.  I used to believe in man-made global warming until Michael Crichton came along.

There's more, but I'm getting tired.  So I guess it was gradual.  But 9/11 made the conversion go faster.  Right now, I like to consider myself a Dennis Miller conservative. . .with a strong fundie religious bent toward Augustinian Monergism.

-PJ 

"Trake: Your lofty convictions are another blemish on the rump of congregational sectarianism." -Tumbler 5/15/07