Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using almost any means available, from challenging the legitimacy of opponents to spreading lies and disinformation to sabotaging the economy.They really are the modern-day Confederates-- they are seeking to destroy America.
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The hard reality in the United States today is that the Republicans and the Right are now fully organized, armed with a potent propaganda machine and possessing an extraordinary political will. They are well-positioned to roll the U.S. economy off the cliff and blame the catastrophe on Obama.
Indeed, that may be their best hope for winning Election 2012.
Either that, or they are the biggest pack of undisciplined children that this world has ever seen, for if we don't want to let them be in charge, they will take their ball and go home, so there, nyahh!
They are all traitors. I don't have to name names, you know who they are. If there is a reason why a significant number of them should not be stood up against a wall and shot for treason, I'd like to know what it is.
(H/T)
Yeah... I can't help you there. Right wingnuts hate America to the point that they act against its interests for ideology and greed. Traitors is what they are.
ReplyDeleteFor $230,000, I'll put on a muzzle, bark, bite intruders in the groin, and have a litter of puppies.
ReplyDeleteWB, wrong post.
ReplyDeleteThe "corrective ballistics" should include the Oklahoma delegation in toto. Quick, before Dan Boren, the singular (and only titular) "(D)" in the lot, can escape his just desserts!
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I regard anything posted by Alternet as being just as biased to the left as anything on Fox News is likely to be biased to the right. Neither is a trustworthy source for the truth.
ReplyDeleteI no longer bother to point fingers at one party or the other. Both are equally guilty of political malfeasance and general assholishness (if that's a word). A plague on both their houses!
Peter, both sides are not equal.
ReplyDeleteComrade Misfit - sorry, I've reposted it under the correct post.
ReplyDelete@nangleator - Why not???
ReplyDeleteMilt Shook says it better than I can: http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/2011/01/message-to-the-right-wing-they-do-it-too-is-not-only-not-equivalent-its-not-true.html
ReplyDeleteBut, I'll summarize: Both sides have crazy fringes. The Left shuns theirs. The Right embraces and elevates theirs to leadership positions.
@Nangleator: Sorry, but I don't buy it. To claim that 'our moonbats are higher-class than your wingnuts', or 'ours do less damage than yours', is specious. Extremists of any and every ilk are fundamentally untrustworthy, because you can't debate, discuss or reason with them. They have a one-track mind, and it's stuck.
ReplyDeleteI'm not denying, of course, that the Republican 'establishment' is repugnant in the extreme. It is. So is the Democratic 'establishment', to just as great an extent. Both of the major parties have become self-serving institutions, seeking what's good for them rather than the country as a whole.
A plague on both their houses!
I do see a difference. When Republicans hold the White House and Democrats control the Senate, the business of the nation still gets done. Budgets are passed, wars are fought and most appointees are confirmed.
ReplyDeleteWhen it is the other way around, it doesn't seem to work. The Republicans are filibustering everything. They will not permit anyone to be appointed to chair the Consumer Financial Protection Board. With Republicans, if the dimwit Dems don't hold sixty seats, everything is pretty much frozen.
I really do believe that the Republicans would prefer to wreck this nation than take the chance that things might improve under a Democrat.
And for that, I call them what they are: Treasonous bastards, the lot of them.
@Comrade Misfit;
ReplyDeletePlease don't misunderstand this response. I'm not attacking you, or others who share your views. We may have different opinions (and we all hold them dear, I'm sure), but I do respect the vehemence with which you defend your positions. I have something to learn from you, and I hope you have something to learn from me.
Nevertheless, I have to disagree most profoundly with you. I submit that both major political parties in the USA are so corrupt, so bereft of any sense of decency or civil reality, that they're now impediments to democracy rather than its agents.
To take just one example, consider the quite incredibly anti-democratic provisions of Obamacare that I highlighted on my blog just a day or two back - provisions that were not disclosed until the bill had been forced through by a combination of arm-twisting, bribery and general chicanery. Those conditions are worthy of the Republicans at their worst - but they were imposed by a Democratic majority. It's enough to make one weep . . . not that that'd do any good! These and other aspects of politics today were discussed here:
http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2011/06/politics-system-experts-and-american.html
Another example is the Consumer Financial Protection Board, about which I've also written:
http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2011/03/more-big-brother-government-on-way.html
I agree with you that the Republicans are playing political games by not confirming its head; but the Democrats played equal games (if not worse) by authorizing an agency that has (effectively) zero Congressional oversight, can set its own budget without legislative approval, and is virtually above the law. A less democratic agency (big or small D!) would be hard to imagine in our worst nightmares . . . but a Democratic Congress and Senate passed it.
As I've said many times before, I'm neither Republican nor Democrat - I'm a constitutionalist, who believes that the US will be best served by a return to the vision of her founding fathers, with limited central government, most powers devolved to the various States, and - in both cases - the smallest government necessary to deal with the essential functions of the State. Anything more than that risks growing into the bureaucratic behemoth that we have today.
You're free to disagree, of course. Even though I don't agree with many of your positions, I do enjoy reading them; I do my best to think about them seriously, and let them challenge my own assumptions; and I do my best to respond in sincerity and genuine goodwill. If we all try to do that, I think there may be hope yet for this country. If we descend into "he said, she said" polemics, we're doomed.
The Constitution is little protection, though. Increasingly, the courts are viewing the Constitution through a partisan lens (blame for this can be laid at the feet of the Federalist Society). And even though the current Supreme Court is supposedly "conservative", they are among the most statist of any of them.
ReplyDeleteTrying to block the CFPB by refusing to appoint a boss is a childish maneuver. It's what I'd expect of the GOP.
Yes, there are nutty Dems. But they don't have much influence (contrast Dennis Kucinich with Taul Ryan or Michele Bachmann).