Matt Kibbe's Brilliant Tweet

Matt Kibbe, the President and CEO of Freedomworks posted this unintentionally hysterical tweet.

why the government shutdown and the debt ceiling crisis were brilliant Republican strategy shar.es/EO7lQ via ShareThis

The blog post by moderate libertarian economist Tyler Cowen. The blog post was written in jest. Cowen credits the post to his evil twin brother Tyrone.Kibbe's justification for turning the Republican Party into the Black Knight from The Holy Grail is a comedy post.

Cowen's gives Republicans more credit, in their strategic thinking, than they deserve. Cowen does make a good point about the exchanges.

Or the New Year’s resolution that after you have been billed three times for the same policy, you vow to pay for only one of them and live with the bad credit rating until it gets straightened out. How about extreme adverse selection into the exchanges, resulting in 50-100% premium hikes in the first year of operations? (The lower premia are now, the better! Bread, peace, land! Ach du grüne Neune!) That’s what will get further traction for the Tea Party on Obamacare, not a bunch of bad reviews on opening day, as if the policy were no more than a mid-tier Jennifer Aniston movie (I can no longer refer to Sandra Bullock in this context), to be swatted down by mild tut-tuts of disapproval and inconvenience.

It has been a neoliberal dream to increase health insurance profits and cut entitlements. President Barack Obama has mandated millions of Americans into private health insurance and has been trying to cut Medicare. It will be interesting to see what kind of cost controls are placed on health insurance premiums. The insurance industry will lobby to water down cost controls.

FreedomWorks Recommendations For Hipsters

This is not from The Onion. FreedomWorks recommends things hipsters can buy if they didn't have to pay for Obamacare. I seriously doubt hipsters want to buy jorts. Cases of PBR are another story. Hipsters love that awful beer. The funny (and unsurprising thing) is the writer of the article, Emily Zanotti, is a conservative hipster.

Emily (E. M.) Zanotti, the American Princess, is, as she is so oddly described, a 25-year-old overeducated, overopinionated, libertarian conservative, relapsed Catholic, technogeek, “crunchy con” and, apparently, nomadic service industry hipster.

More.

Emily is a Detroit (yes, that Detroit) native, but currently a Chicago resident, and has all of the necessarily pretension and apathy that that “address” requires (as well as the requisite love for film, art, ethnic food and indie music), only she has to hide it because she consistently votes Republican. In her spare time, she shops for shoes, reads non-fiction (particularly on philosophy, economics, religion and political science), plans cheesy vacations involving large fiberglass objects and obscure museums, and researches Disney history. No joke.

Poor Emily has to hide her Arcade Fire import record and PBR supply from her conservative friends .

Dick Army Brings Armed Man into FreedomWorks Office

America is still recovering from the Newtown shooting. We have often heard radical gun rhetoric from tea party activists. That is why the news of former FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey bringing in an armed man to help him stage a coup of FreedomWorks is so disturbing.

The partnership came to a crashing end when Armey marched into FreedomWorks’s office Sept. 4 with his wife, Susan, executive assistant Jean Campbell and the unidentified man with the gun at his waist —who promptly escorted Kibbe and Brandon out of the building.

“This was two weeks after there had been a shooting at the Family Research Council,” said one junior staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. “So when a man with a gun who didn’t identify himself to me or other people on staff, and a woman I’d never seen before said there was an announcement, my first gut was, ‘Is FreedomWorks in danger?’ It was bizarre.’ ”

I somehow doubt these FreedomWorks employees were supporters of Armey using his Second Amendment rights.

Armey was on his way out of FreedomWorks. He eventually left with an $8 million severance package. Armstrong was losing control of FreedomWorks. A gun was a quick way for him to temporarily regain his status.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into he group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

Armey couldn't resolve matters through office politics. So he brought an armed thug. To people like George Zimmerman and Dick Armey, the Second Amendment represents power and a legal right to bully people.