Forum Post: #ShutdownTheGOP
Posted 10 years ago on Oct. 1, 2013, 10:28 p.m. EST by ZenDogTroll
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The Reign Of Morons Is Here
By Charles P. Pierce | Oct. 1, 2013 at 9:10AM
Only the truly naive can be truly surprised.
Only the truly child-like can have expected anything else.
In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic [ YES, NOT SHOWING UP, POUTING, CASTS A VOTE!!! ]. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.
We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show.
We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.
We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn't seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation's insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up to the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson's account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.
We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.
This is what they came to Washington to do -- to break the government of the United States. It doesn't matter any more whether they're doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party's mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately. The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address in which government "was" the problem, through Bill Clinton's ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being "over," through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find "common ground" and a "Third Way." Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.
What is there to be done? The first and most important thing is to recognize how we came to this pass. Both sides did not do this. Both sides are not to blame. There is no compromise to be had here that will leave the current structure of the government intact. There can be no reward for this behavior. I am less sanguine than are many people that this whole thing will redound to the credit of the Democratic party. For that to happen, the country would have to make a nuanced judgment over who is to blame that, I believe, will be discouraged by the courtier press of the Beltway and that, in any case, the country has not shown itself capable of making. For that to happen, the Democratic party would have to be demonstrably ruthless enough to risk its own political standing to make the point, which the Democratic party never has shown itself capable of doing. With the vandals tucked away in safe, gerrymandered districts, and their control over state governments probably unshaken by events in Washington, there will be no great wave election that sweeps them out of power. I do not see profound political consequences for enough of them to change the character of a Congress gone delusional. The only real consequences will be felt by the millions of people affected by what this Congress has forced upon the nation, which was the whole point all along.
Among other things, the Library Of Congress is closed as a result of what the vandals have done. Padlock study and intellect. Wander aimlessly down the mall among the shuttered monuments to self-government. Find yourself a food truck that serves monkey brains. Eat your fucking fill.
Read more: Government Shutdown - The Reign Of Morons Is Here - Esquire Follow us: @Esquiremag on Twitter | Esquire on Facebook Visit us at Esquire.com | http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Shutdown_Blues
Gingrich: Obama To Blame For Shutdown Because He 'Refuses To Behave Like An American President'
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 10/1/2013 5:00 pm
Newt Gingrich simply loves suggesting that President Obama isn’t a real American. He took that message today to the 700 Club, where he said that Obama’s lack of American-ness — not House Republicans — is what’s to blame for the government shutdown. In an interview with Pat Robertson, Gingrich alleged that by rebuffing the House’s ridiculous list of demands, Obama is undermining “the core things that protects us from dictatorship.”
“The big problem is that President Obama refuses to behave like an American president,” Gingrich said. “This President puts himself above the Constitution and that’s very dangerous for our freedoms.”
Watch:
Christian TV Host Asks God for 'Military Takeover' of Obama's Presidency
By David | October 01, 2013 01:45 PM
A Christian TV host this week called on God to consider a "military takeover" of President Barack Obama's government because it could be the only way to save the country from tyranny.
On his Monday Internet broadcast, Morning Star TV's Rick Joyner predicted that democracy was "doomed" unless the Lord imposed martial law.
[This is real, people!]
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/christian-tv-host-asks-god-military-takeover
Where the G.O.P.'s Suicide Caucus Lives
Posted by Ryan Lizza | September 26, 2013
On August 21st, Congressman Mark Meadows sent a letter to John Boehner. Meadows is a former restaurant owner and Sunday-school Bible teacher from North Carolina. He’s been in Congress for eight months. Boehner, who has served in Congress for twenty-two years, is the Speaker of the House and second in the line of succession if anything happened to the President.
Meadows was not pleased with how Boehner and his fellow Republican leaders in the House were approaching the September fight over spending. The annual appropriations to fund the government were scheduled to run out on October 1st, and much of it would stop operating unless Congress passed a new law. Meadows wanted Boehner to use the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare, a course Boehner had publicly ruled out.
Back home in Meadows’s congressional district, the idea was quite popular. North Carolina’s Eleventh District had been gerrymandered after the 2010 census to become the most Republican district in his state. Meadows won his election last November by fifteen points. The Presidential contest there was an even bigger blowout. Romney won the district by twenty-three points, sixty-one per cent to thirty-eight per cent. While the big story of the 2012 election was about demographics and a growing non-white population that is increasingly Democratic, that was not the story in the Meadows race. His district is eighty-seven per cent white, five per cent Latino, and three per cent black.
Before Meadows sent off his letter to Boehner, he circulated it among his colleagues, and with the help of the conservative group FreedomWorks, as well as some heavy campaigning by Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Mike Lee, seventy-nine like-minded House Republicans from districts very similar to Meadows’s added their signatures.
CONTINUED: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/09/meadows-boehner-defund-obamacare-suicide-caucus-geography.html
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80 is the number of Teabag invaders ~ from the asinine 2010 Voter Pout-Fest ~ who have suicide bombed our government. What's the phrase? "Waste 'em all, count the bodies later!" Yes, I believe that's the one.
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/53160894/#53160894
people blame the folks in Washington we never want to look at our own part, almost everyone knows someone that has voted for a Republican but have you let them know how you feel about what Republicans do? everyone who votes for the GOP and everyone who does not vote at all are all to blame not just the people in Washington.
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It also takes more than voting, to create an accountable government. If we do not ride our politicians constantly than they will do whatever is in their interest. The Zapatistas say "The People command and the government obeys." But the people have to do the hard work of governing.
It also takes holding your neighbor and co-worker and family member accountable when they vote for a Republican we can no longer pretend it's OK to be Republican. It is always easy to look far away and say it's their job we don't have to make our friends uncomfortable we don't have to give up anything it's "their" job we just have to blame them, it is the fault of all who vote and all who don't vote if we can't bothered to pay attention and make sure we vote to keep the GOP from office, then complaining about the outcome is just that, complaining.
A year ago I was saying that the correct way to refer to the sequester was "next year's budget" when so many thought it couldn't be so, now it is time to think about going through the next election with the government shutdown.
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I think the thing about the dates may have been about the debt ceiling, if the GOP is successful in their piece meal approach then the "shutdown" could become something we get used to.
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Republicans Aren’t Hostage Takers, They’re Political Terrorists
by Michael Tomasky Sep 30, 2013 5:45 AM EDT
Today’s Republicans will never release the hostage—instead they’re intent on taking down Obama, and they don’t care if they go down with him, says Michael Tomasky as we head toward a shutdown.
Back in the late 1970s, Richard Pryor had a routine where he gave a rundown on the various factions he’d encountered inside prison. There were the black Muslims, he said. They were fairly rough customers. Then there were the Double Muslims. The Double Muslims, he said, “can’t wait to get to Allah, and they wanna take a bunch of muthafukkas with them.”
Pryor obviously wasn’t talking about today’s Republicans, but he was describing them better than they’ve been described anywhere. They know they’re going to bear the brunt of the blame if the government shuts down—at least some of them do, the ones who have the ability to think beyond the boundaries of their districts. And the thing is, they don’t care. As long as they can drag Obama and the Democrats down with them, dropping in the polls is fine by them. And that’s why we’re in this situation. We have here people who are participating in the democratic process, and who respect certain of its rules and practices because they know they must to attain legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the media, but who at the end of the day—and the end of the day means now—operate and act with the mentality of Pryor’s Double Muslims; which is to say, the mentality of terrorists.
It’s naive to call them anything else. What they’re doing here is not hostage taking, the most commonly used metaphor in the media. It’s political terrorism. When hostage takers see that their demands are met, they release the hostage. But what makes anyone think today’s Republicans will ever release the hostage? No—if the Democrats agree to negotiate, the demands will never stop. Every pivot point on the legislative calendar will be an opportunity to make demands without precedent in our system.
And they won’t care how much they sink in the polls, as long as Obama sinks too. And he will. Not as much as they will. In a recent CNBC poll, 59 percent of those surveyed said they opposed defunding Obamacare if such a move was attached to a government shutdown. Sub in delaying, as defunding is evidently off the table now; I don’t know what that number would be, but probably not very different. So they’re going to take a hit nationally. Of course, the majority of them are probably going to see their personal numbers go up within their own districts if there’s a shutdown, because they stood up to the Kenyan, and in their districts, that’s all that matters. But nationally, the GOP brand is going to take a big hit in the event of a shutdown.
And they don’t care. As long as they can drag Obama down with them, they’ll take the hit. This is exactly the mentality of the suicide bomber. I will die, but I’m taking some infidels with me. And to them and to their base, Obama is the biggest infidel of all and Obamacare the greatest impiety. Whatever they can do to traduce him is worth doing.
It's a battle that's been raging for years: John Boehner vs. President Obama in the fiscal face-off.
There’s no surer way to get away with criminality than to accuse your political opponents of exactly the criminality that you are committing. [ Recrimination, GOP MO 101 ]
It doesn’t stop there. The complete psychological profile of this GOP also must reference the totalitarian mind. Here I refer to the common totalitarian tactic of accusing the enemy of doing exactly what the totalitarian himself is doing. Every totalitarian dictator from Stalin on down has employed this tactic regularly. There’s no surer way to get away with criminality than to accuse your political opponents of exactly the criminality that you are committing, to get the people looking the other way.
And so of course John Boehner said over the weekend that the Senate, if it fails to accept the House’s terms, “will be deliberately bringing the nation to the brink of a government shutdown for the sake of raising taxes on seniors’ pacemakers and children’s hearing aids.” And of course whip Kevin McCarthy said, “We will not shut the government down.” And of course Sen. Rand Paul said: “We are the party that’s willing to compromise. They are the party that says, no way, we’re not touching Obamacare.”
You don’t even need to have read Orwell to know these are quasi-totalitarian statements that depend on obfuscation, rely on the gullibility of the listening public. The obfuscators all know very well that most Americans won’t stop to realize that their position is a scandal to begin with. They’re trying to undo a law that was duly passed and then upheld by the Supreme Court, as if that were normal in American politics, as if it should be considered an acceptable tactic on its face. And they know that ... some Americans (I don’t think most, in this case) will stupidly and dismissively assign equal blame to both sides. [ Ahem... samers, unicorns... ]
That’s what we’re dealing with. These people are not small-d democrats. The giveaway is how excessively they claim the language of democracy, how fully they wrap themselves in the flag, the Founders, the Gadsden motto, and the fife and drum. If you know you’re a democrat, you don’t have to go around trying to prove it. Whereas if you know deep down you’re not, that’s exactly when you start invoking the Founders all the time. It’s the same reason child molesters join the priesthood or the Boy Scouts. It’s cover. (Or, in the case of the priesthood, it used to be.)
Boehner can change this dynamic. He can accept a “clean” continuing resolution on Monday and let it pass with mostly Democratic votes. That’s the only way to avert a shutdown. The Democrats won’t budge, and they shouldn’t. You don’t renegotiate existing laws while one party has dynamite strapped to its chest. But there’s nothing in Boehner’s past to suggest that he’ll do the reasonable thing. He caves to the extremists all the time. He did it this weekend, and he’ll probably do it again on Monday night. And the government will be shut down. And the GOP will take most of the blame, but for now at least, they won’t care. Double Muslims never do.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/30/republicans-aren-t-hostage-takers-they-re-political-terrorists.html
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lot's of disappointed democrats in san diego
what with the mayor abusing women
must be a lot of really happy Republicans though,
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"dispense with parties altogether"
10 Twinkles to that.