Other than their ability to destroy the Republican Party, I am just not sure why any of us should care about this.
The clash in Congress over efforts to derail President Obama’s health-care law has lit up tea party groups across the country, reenergizing activists who had drifted away from the movement while intensifying the divisions tearing at the Republican Party.
The standoff, which threatens to plunge the federal government into a financial crisis, has served as a rallying cry for a cadre of conservatives, who are bombarding lawmakers with phone calls, e-mails and social media messages backing a last-ditch effort to hobble the health-care law.
I don’t think these people can be told to “go fuck themselves” with enough emphasis.
Rallying right before state and local election days. Interesting timing. Watch the entire political landscape. Wonder which school board elections have Koch money placed on them this year.
Are folks clued in enough to local and state elections to oppose them?
Trying to gain as much ground as possible and keep people wound up as much as possible during their last stand. Looking for future electoral dividends. And mailing lists to exploit. (The grift that Richard Weyrich contributed to the Republican Party)
Hispanics Agree: The Tea Party Can Get Bent
A white supremacist/nationalist part would have nothing to offer anyone who isn’t a white supremacist/nationalist. Aside from violent rhetoric (mostly rhetoric, for now), and for the time being some metaphorical hostage taking, what does the GOP really offer?
Voter discrimination means…. doesn’t matter.
Totally legal to disenfranchise someone because you hate their politics.
Hey, if they don’t want health care, fine. If we can have a “do not fly” list, certainly we can have a “do not treat” list for practitioners across the country. They get what they want, and, sooner or later – probably sooner, given their demographics – so do we.
You should post that on the front page.
I need cheering up; this made me laugh:
“Ed Morrissey of Hot Air brought up several implementation delays the White House had itself called for, and asked, “If [Obamacare] is such a disaster that the White House has to keep issuing delays piecemeal, why not put the whole thing off a year in order to fix all the problems before forcing Americans into the exchanges?” Which is a little like saying, “If doctors keep sticking needles in that baby, why should anyone complain if I stab it in the heart with this knife?”
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/09/republicans_cru.php?page=2
It’s like a calling of the clans. On the internet.
“You a Tea Party stalwart?”
“Damn straight I am! Repeal Obamacare! Down with the tyrant!”
“Cool. Now, get off the Hoverround, please.”
“What? It’s mine! I need it!”
“Sorry, but unless you pay out of your own pocket for it, we’ll have to repossess it as government property.”
Even in the reddest red Congressional District, the full menu of issues that animate wingnut Tea Partiers hurts the interests of the majority of the citizens in that District. Unfortunately, many of those citizens have been lied to so thoroughly about the ACA and other issues that they’re not animated to get out and oppose the Tea Partiers. That day will come, though. In the case of the ACA, more people will experience the full benefits of the law and tell their fellow citizens that the horror stories are not true.
This insane ideology cannot hold. To succeed in implementing their full vision, they have to get enough Americans to HATE HATE HATE each other. They’ve gotten enough Americans to do that to make a lot of noise, but they can’t continue to grow their numbers with their offensive vision. Tea Partiers and racists die every day, and our culture is not growing them like they used to.
The ACA won’t be like Social Security or Medicare. Even if it’s successful. 80% of Americans won’t be affected by it. If successful, 15%-17% will be happy about. 3%-5% that see premium increases(younger people) will not like it. I doubt it’s going to be any great game-changing law.
In the long term we’re all affected by it, but the problem is most people will never know.
Social Security and Medicare began as programs which only benefited small groups of Americans. It was slightly less common for an American to live to the age of 65 when Medicare began, and Social Security was also a much more limited program than the SS we have now.
17% of the American population would be about 50 million Americans. A million here, a million there…Then there’s the people they are related to, or are friendly with. Even those whose insurance doesn’t change will benefit from the many new regulations (no lifetime cap, no rescission, etc.) Very soon, the majority of Americans will experience the program in some way.
Finally, large amounts of young people (18-26) will be on their parent’s plan. Many people over 26 haven’t been able to afford insurance at all, so they’ll benefit for the relatively large subsidies for those with lower incomes; poor young adults will gain low- to no-cost insurance through the Medicaid expansion. There will be some young adults paying more out of pocket, but most of them will have much better insurance than they had before because of the “no junk insurance” regulation.
There’s plenty of reason for optimism, particularly by the time the next Presidential election takes place.
That, and the removal of lifetime caps on coverage and such are ones that affect a good number of people. That bit immediately benefited my family, as does the coverage for adult children up to 26 – that bit is already impacting our household as well. I’d rather have something a bit more European, but compared to what we had in this country prior, this is a good first step.
Watching all this transpire I am wondering if the strange post-Civil War split of Democrats (Southern Racist Conservatives + Northern Labor) and Republicans (Northern business + some progressive elements) was actually a good thing because it divided those with fascist tendencies into two parties, where they couldn’t build enough critical mass to do any real harm (except in some localities of course).
Now the fascists – and I am not exaggerating for effect but describing beliefs and behaviors – are all in one party and have driven everyone else out of that party. Scary.
Except the true fascists, the Wall Street Republicans want a CR and wish the Frankenstein they created would go away. Remember what Fascism is, the joining of state and business to jointly control a country. Bush was a Fascist. Emanuel is a Fascist.
What you mean a Nazis, who were not true fascists but actually Socialists! As was Stalin. Remember the second ‘S’ in USSR.
Lets keep our despots straight.
Hogwash. The Nazis were a far-right party that had populist elements. They had plenty of capitalists willing to support them during their rise to power in Germany. They continued to have support of American capitalists throughout the 1930s. A good place to start to truly understand what Nazism was ideologically, etc., would be The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It’s a book I read when I was finishing up junior high the first time around. Turned out to be useful, as I’d spend much of the next several years of my life dealing with the potential of getting stomped by neo-Nazi skinheads. That swastika told me everything I needed to know.
Or if one wants to just cut to the chase, there is always Wikipedia, which describes the Nazi pre-WWII economy as a form of “command capitalism”. Hitler was often deliberately vague about economic matters during the party’s early days, but it is readily apparent from the outset that Hitler and his minions had a distinct hostility toward Marxian socialism, and that Hitler preferred to preserve private property, and of course large corporations had no problem doing business within the boundaries of the Nazi regime.
Socialists don’t prohibit labor unions.
Don’t buy into the Republican talking point about NAZIs being “socialists”.
Fascism is about POWER. The easiest way to gain power is through economic and military power. Unfortunately, it’s really easy to see who needs to be disappeared to solve that problem.
That’s why the US is actually in a state of inverted totalitarianism.
Silent, invisible oligarchs with more money than is reasonable, along with the corporations they control and the balance sheets of those corporations have purchased the government wholesale and use it do make themselves richer while making everyone else poorer.
We are certainly a fascist Empire. To argue against that is naive. No, we aren’t fascist Germany, that was German fascism. We aren’t the USSR, that was Soviet fascism.
We have US Fascism here, brought to you by Exxon Mobile, a grant from the David H. Koch charitable Foundation, and viewers like you.
Without a corporate sector, I find it a stretch to refer to the Stalin era in the USSR as fascist. Horrible, and filled with atrocities? Without a doubt. Guilty of ethnic cleansing and purges? Yep. Some sort of nationalist? Perhaps. COMINTERN went to seed under Stalin’s watch, and comrades who could have really used Soviet assistance in places like Greece were left on their own post war. Stalin was a dictator, and one whom plenty of other Marxists denounced as counter-revolutionary, and a case could be made for that. However, the USSR under his watch did completely nationalize and communalize, as I understand it. There were not the corporate interests that one would find in genuine fascist regimes. And in fact, actual fascists generally refused to consider the USSR’s government their ideological counterpart. The Soviet or “Red” Fascist label is largely an American invention.
Correct.
Fasces = Power.
The correct moniker for Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s USSR, Franco’s Spain, etc, would be totalitarianism. I briefly touched on the American version we’re currently running here.
Sure, the USSR nationalized everything. In name. Sure, they communalized. In name.
But who still had the power, wealth, and ability to do as they pleased? The top of the party.
I’d argue that Stalin was more of a typical strong dictator operating under the auspices of “Communism”, but look at what came before and after. A one-party system that had the money and power, and who handed out favors to their friends while the general population had to deal with whatever crumbs they could get.
Fascism is about power. It’s right there in the Roman Empire, and the symbol for fasces is right there on our current dime and in the seat of our Federal government, plastered all over the place.
You can tweak this and that and call it whatever you like, but POWER is what I’m speaking of.
Again, the NAZIs weren’t Socialists. Socialists don’t outlaw labor unions. Which is where I originally began my rant.
That the NAZIs were socialists is shit I hear from libertarians and Republicans who don’t quite comprehend history or socialism – which puts you in a bad place when discussing politics.
I will admit some discomfort at using such a broad definition of fascism, as it may well dilute the term of its meaning. I won’t belabor the point as I will risk being pedantic and I would really rather not, especially at this late hour.
I am with you though regarding the equation of Nazism with socialism, and largely for similar reasons. Those who do so are either unclear on the terms and history, or are willfully ignorant. The former there is some hope for – provide them the materials, and maybe they’ll pick up on the distinctions eventually. The latter, well, you can show them evidence that is as plain as the nose on their faces, and they’ll just smirk at you while repeating the same bullshit over and over again.
The idea that the Nazis were actually socialists is an extreme right meme popularized in this country by the likes of Cleon Skousen and Glenn Beck.
And of course doughy pantload
Right, I almost forgot. In fact I did forget.
Natzionale (National) Socialistiche (Socialist) Deutche (German) ArbeitsPartei (Workers Party).
I
mayprobably have spelled the German incorrectly. It’s been a long time since school.National Socialists as opposed to International Socialists (Marxists).
Germany had lots of socialist parties. And as for names reflecting reality are Republicans really republican? Republic is based on the Latin “Res Publica” meaning “Thing of the People”
I don’t get your point. Are you saying that because the Nazis called themselves “National Socialists” as opposed to “International Socialists”, that proves they were socialiets? Nazis, I would remind you, are not well known for their veracity.
Some working-class Germans were attracted to fascism, so there were fascist workers groups, but that didn’t mean they were socialist.
Nationalism was an awkward issue for internationalist Marxism, and they took a negative view of it. But that became a liability in the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire before WW I. There, socialists developed a serious and positive view of national aspirations, largely because the various ethnic socialist parties needed each other’s political support, and thus mutual respect for their national ideals. A key figure here was Otto Bauer (1881-1938), architect of what is today called Austro-socialism.
This is an actual kind of socialism. The Nazis were not even close.
http://books.google.com/books?id=YYUhH5JRDL0C&dq=%22austrian+socialism%22+karl+kautsky++national
ities&source=gbs_navlinks_s