So many rants, so little time

Afghanistan. Immigration.  Arizona. The economy.  The BP oil spill.  American exceptionalism.  So many issues threatening to make my head explode, and so little time to vent in.  The levels of ignorance displayed by both policy makers and by the general public never cease to amaze me.  Every time I think I've heard the dumbest thing ever, someone manages to plunge to even lower depths.

I was all set to do a thoughtful little piece on connections between joblessness, the economy in general, and Afghanistan, when one of those typical tinfoil hat-types crawled out of the phone line on C-SPAN.  His pet project?  Getting the recipients of Social Security drug tested because there are, as he put it, a lot of deadbeats on Social Security and they need to get their lazy butts back to work.  My 88-year-old mother is going to be thrilled with that prospect.

It takes a special type of moron to confuse Social Security for the elderly with welfare, but given some of the other dumb stuff I heard this morning (example:  the United States is the only country on the planet that was settled by immigrants from Europe, which is what makes us so special)(apparently the caller has never heard of Canada, to name the most obvious example), it shouldn't surprise me.  What I don't understand is why these people bother to call in to argue with whoever happens to be the guest expert. 

Then again, maybe the better question would be why do I bother to listen?