Aww, you guys had Mormons? Lucky. All we had were lower-middle class Republicans. The real Republicans in the area were all in their giant, beautiful, multi-million dollar homes or in their giant, beautiful, multi-million dollar offices (yes, yes, no true Scotsman...blah, blah).

Just so we're clear the level people are working at out there:

10 Most Offensive Tea Party Signs (PHOTOS)

I don't find this offensive...

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gad...0095_large.jpg

I do find this offensive...

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gad...0072_large.jpg

Wow those are offensive? I don't understand why the left wouldn't be mad about this insane tax and spend policy. They are basically stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. If they are going to be bailing people out at least give it to the little guy.

You do realize our children are going to be paying for this debt right? I don't see any gross fabrications or anything offensive besides maybe the white slavery one.

These idiots always ruin it for everyone. Even though I don't really agree with the protests, I do feel some sympathy for those who were there with an earnest message but got drowned out in the white noise of idiot extremists and cable news sound bites

I don't understand why it's been ok for W to spend without taxing, driving the country into debt (and mandatory bankruptcy were it anything BUT the federal government), and yet now that everything has been broken almost beyond repair by W and his predecessors, it's wrong to try to fix it.

It's not ok, and that's my biggest complaint about the majority of the people who go to these tea parties. However, the government isn't issueing a fix they are solving the debt problem with more debt. They are taking people's hard earned money and handing it out to huge corporations and bankers with no oversight.

The notion of spending money that wasn't taxed is rather absurd. We are taxed for whatever the government spends regardless if it's directly or indiretly. We pay the inflation tax everytime the government runs up the debt and the value of the dollar drops. That hurts a lot and people don't mention that.

So whether or not its on the books as a tax isn't really an issue. We pay anyway. This inflation tax hits the middle and lower class the hardest who are the very people the government claims to be helping by spending all this money.

It wasn't okay. It still isn't okay.

Thomas Jefferson said it best (Sept 6, 1789):

"Then I say the earth belongs to each generation during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and encumbrances, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence."

Inflation tax? I'm not understanding what that means. Are you referring to the increased costs of goods and services?

About the offensive signs
 

I take it you guys missed the ones about "Jews and ovens," "sucking Saudi jewels," and "What you talkin' about, Willis!"....

Am I right?

All government spending represents a tax. We owe the money whether or not we were directly taxed for it. It effects us directly by the decreased value of the dollars we have. This in turn hurts the people who are barely getting by when the cost of food and consumables goes up due to inflation. Here is a better explanation:

Quick note: The first image is from a slideshow of pictures from a professional photographer, not the "10 most offensive" slideshow. The "10 most offensive" signs were:

The above sign contained a photoshopped image of Obama as Hitler
Another sign contains the image of Obama slitting the throat of Uncle Sam.
This one is borderline, but I'm pretty sure this sign is not expressing support for gun ownership, but rather is expressing support for the taking up of arms "tomorrow."

well, this is basically a philosophical problem--whether (a) you accept that there is in fact a global economic crisis
then (b) whether you connect that crisis to various elements of neoliberal/american conservative economic thinking
then (c) if you do make that connection, it follows that there is a PROBLEM with appealing to that economic thinking for remedies to the situation that thinking was instrumental in creating.

then there's a second matter: neoliberalism/american conservative economic thought is a PARTICULAR IDEOLOGY--so it's a particular theory about the economy, what the important relations are, how they interact.
if you see the obama administration as moving into a keynesian mode--which in many ways it is---what that means is there is a frame switch--so the state spending is NOT understood in the same way as it is for neoliberals. you could say that in a keynesian-type system the state acts to support and increase the amount of economic activity and uses tax resources (amongst others) to effect that--the idea then would be that the system in its aggregate movement would generate more revenues over time so that the debt acquired at one point would be resolved through the effects of state action.

this means that the entire conservative way of thinking about taxation, state spending, effects---and the relation of state spending at one point to any future point--is worthless for trying to parse what the obama administration is doing.

it seems to me that this is *the* problem that the right cannot get it's head around--and it explains to a significant extent why it cannot articulate anything like a coherent oppositional position that goes beyond "this freaks me out"

which is all the tea parties were saying.

another way--events have outstripped conservative economic thinking. one of the features shared across conservative positions is an unwillingness to relativize their own positions---that's why you get all these appeals to timeless values, the machinery of the economy blah blah blah.
they now confront a situation that by its own workings relativizes their position.
the right can't handle it.

you see it here.

but this is, at bottom, a philosophical question--that is political at its deeper sense---not a matter of actions following a sequence, but of the logic that shapes sequence. how do we debate this kind of dissonance if one crew is unwilling to accept the situation that the other assumes they're already in?

Sorry sam, that's what I thought you meant. It isn't a tax. It's a devaluation of the dollar. It doesn't equal in any dictionary or definition of tax. It is why the word tax is in quotes.

You can try to pawn it off as a tax, but it isn't in any way shape or form. This is again, why companies and now government institutions can get away with calling things FEES because the word tax is and has a very specific meaning.

The devaluing of the dollar on the other hand, is very different. It means something in the globalized marketplace. It means something when buying, selling, or contracting services/goods abroad.

The CPI tables don't hold up to what you are talking about for your "tax". Double digit inflation was back in the 79-81, but has been around 3% with spikes upward of 1%-2% on occassion.

It's a financial burden on the American people directly due to government policy. I call that a tax and regardless of what it's called the effect is undeniable. The more the government spends the more we pay.

I agree that government spending is paid for by the citizens. The more the government spends, the more we pay. That's undeniable. BUT your claim that it is an INFLATION tax is a misnomer at best and poorly linked logically. You're premise is incorrect in saying it is tied to inflation or the devaluing of the dollar. You'll need to better explain it than some Ron Paul quotation.

I think he makes it perfectly clear. Saying "inflation tax' is just the easiest way to talk about it without a paragraph explanation.

So are you really saying government borrowing and spending does not cause inflation and dollar devaluation, or am I confusing your post?

no, that's what W did in the first "bailout." I find it fascinating that we can accuse Obama of meddling with business by "firing" GM's CEO, yet claim there's no oversight with the bailout money. Obama never fired the CEO. He said "if you want this bailout money you're going to do something different with it, including firing the idiot CEO that got you where you are today." In other words, oversight.


Hence one of the reasons I'm anti-Republican.

Because it wasn't germane to my point. Yes I know we all suffer when the government borrows money from China. But that's not a tax. If it were a tax, the government would be getting money from it, but they aren't. They're only getting debt.

It is an issue, because for 30 years we've been sold the lie that we can have whatever government programs we want without having to pay for them in the form of taxes. It is /because/ of the "don't ever tax anyone for anything especially if they're rich" attitude that we have to borrow from China, and it is because of that attitude that we are in the mess we're in now, with an impoverished government, an impoverished populace, and and impoverished infrastructure. Yes, at this point, we have to spend money to fix things. That's going to hurt, true, but it won't hurt as much as if we slide into a depression and stay there forever because no money moves anywhere.


Ya know, I'm willing to bet you that the estimated 30 million Americans who will end up in the unemployment line by the time this thing is over would be willing to pay this "inflation" tax if it meant that they were working and earning the money with which to pay it.

I'm saying it isn't as alarmist as Mr. Ron Paul or you are claiming in your "inflation tax" argument.

I'd even agree with you that the 1990s saw marked less inflation because of globalization and getting cheaper products into markets thus delaying inflation a few points.

But the increased government spending hasn't created the same increases in the inflation index, and/or a decrease in the valuation of the dollar. In other words, the mechanical tie you are manufacturing with your words, I do not see in any correlation of statistics, graphs, or historical data. If this was the case, then the Bush II years would have been extreme inflation but it was not. I could continue to show other administrations and their spending correlated to inflation.

I'm asking you to show me in some manner rather than a paragraph statement.

I just clapped to myself. Now I will go back to reading the rest of your post.

lets think about this, k? The US government, and at least 3/5ths of the states at that time, ratified both of those constitutional amendments. That should have been enough, right? Yet 100 years later, the federal government needed to make new laws to enforce parts of those amendments? in order to enforce the laws more vigorously? If we're only paying lip service to the supreme law of the land and need to actually create new laws just to enforce the constitution of the united states on it's own governments, what are we doing wrong?

---------- Post added at 10:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:40 AM ----------

I'm the sole bread winner in my household. I couldn't afford to lose hours at work so I couldn't go. :grumpy:

---------- Post added at 10:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:41 AM ----------

First, not everyone thought it was ok,

Second, those of us that didn't like it or approve of it when W was doing it are of the same mindset now that O is doing it. If fixing something requires doing the same thing that broke it, then some engineering school is in serious order.

Misunderstanding what a Constitution is, perhaps?

A Constitution isn't a body of law. In a general sense it can be said to be "the law of the land", but what it really is is an articulation of principles that GUIDE the law. You can't enforce the Constitution because there's nothing to enforce. What's the punishment for infringing on someone's right to peaceable assembly? The Constitution doesn't say. What exactly constitutes "infringement" or "peaceable" or "assembly"? The Constitution doesn't say. It's up to lawmakers and judges to INTERPRET the Constitution, and to create (and continually challenge and inquire into) laws that implement the principles of the Constitution.

That was what our founding fathers wanted. They could have just written a bunch of laws and said, "Ok, THERE. Those are the laws." But they didn't do that--they did something much MUCH wiser. They didn't give us a corpus of laws, instead they gave us a place to THINK FROM as we create the laws for ourselves. They didn't want a locked-in system--they wanted a structure that could adapt with the times. Because they had the foresight to know that the one thing that times do is CHANGE.

In this case, it took a long time to interpret the new Amendment into law. But it was a necessary step.

I'll also note that Amendment 14, Article 4 says, in part "The validity of the public debt of the United States... shall not be questioned." So it turns out that Tea Parties are unconstitutional!!!

dksuddeth: maybe you're less of a strict constructionist than I thought. I fail to see how the 14th Amendment does anything to prevent a private employer from discriminating based on race. Nor do I see it taking a stance on separate but equal social policies, such as separate water fountains. It's easy to make an argument that separating races in education violates equal protection, but I can't see any such argument for two different water fountains which provide equal quality water. The Civil Rights Act, however, outlawed such practices.

Bullshit. It appears i'm not the one misunderstanding what the constitution is.
The constitution is not a set of 'guidelines', though it has been taken to mean that ever since the civil war. The constitution enumerates very specific and limited powers to the federal government with instructions on how to maintain the bodies of that new government. The laws that come after it prescribed punishments for violations of those powers.

This is why all lawyers and politicians should be drawn and quartered. We had a very simple, but elegant, framework of government that protected the freedom and liberties of the people. It took a bunch of politicians, judges, and lawyers for screw all of that up by claiming it should be 'interpreted' according to the times we live in.

Are the tea party protests an actual lawsuit against the Obama administration for the bailouts and taxes? Hardly, but what they are is a protest of them protected under the First Amendment.

You're smarter than this to try and play semantics with me.

---------- Post added at 11:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:45 AM ----------

As far as protection against Employment discrimination, the civil rights act would be dead on and exactly what it should do. voting rights, public education, and anything else under the jurisdiction of a government body should have been handled by the Amendments and not the CR act.

My point is, how could you possibly enforce it without the laws that came to flesh it out? The Constitution and the body of law are different creatures. I agree that in some places the constitution is quite specific (the 14th is a good example of specificity, the 13th is a good example of a general principle that explicitly calls for a fleshing-out by the Congress). You can't just say, "We've got a Constitution--so who needs laws? Giddy up!"

There's nothing preventing the Congress from enacting unconstitutional laws, by the way. It's the job of the Supreme Court to weed those out when a case that applies that law is brought before them.

Listening to right-leaning Libertarian rhetoric is no replacement for having stayed awake in Civics class, my friend.

Discrimination in voting rights or education can be shown to tangibly abridge the privileges of US citizens. It is much more difficult to make that argument for separate public drinking fountains that provide the same water. One could argue that having separate public drinking fountains abridges the rights of black citizens by disallowing use of white drinking fountains that are otherwise public, but the same argument could then be made for public restrooms, and I don't see anyone rushing to convert everything to unisex restrooms because gendered restrooms keep the sexes "separate but equal." Furthermore, to bring this discussion back to the context in which I brought it up, if separate drinking fountains are unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, than denying same-sex marriage, or even creating a separate mechanism for it, would be unconstitutional for the same reason. Personally, I'm happy to accept this interpretation, even with its demand for unisex bathrooms, but I don't think it's what was intended. I happily support the idea of a living constitution, but I've gotten a different impression from you. Maybe I was wrong.

Based on what I saw here in San Jose, I'm starting to think that this is what happens when you allow ignorance to go unchallenged. I was hoping that what happened here was a fluke, but apparently it was a pretty accurate cross section of the tea-baggers. It's not ideological, it's ignorance, and it has to be challenged in a big, big way.

The next Tea Party here will be met by me and 300 of my closest protester friends. I hope you'll do the same.

what i've noted in passing before about dk's strict construction viewpoint has now come back up again---what the position really is amounts to a radical reinterpretation of the status of the constitution and the rejection of the entire idea of the common law tradition. what dk is arguing for is a civil law approach. that's fundamentally different. that he makes his argument for an overthrowing of the entire american constitutional system in the name of protecting the consitution is, as it has been, surreal.

no rb, what i'm arguing for is a return to limited FEDERAL government, not a civil law approach. Unfortunately that's probably not going to happen because too many people are accustomed to a federal police system where there isn't an allowance for one. Just one more case of 'who cares, it's been that way for too long' attitude.

if you radically reduce federal government, what's to keep the individual state governments from becoming tyrannical?

I get to pick up and move to a less tyrannical state, just like I did when I left California and moved to New Jersey, then when I didn't like that I moved to New York.

I believe that part of the constitution requires the federal government to ensure that each state is a republic, right? or are you saying that we need a huge federal government because states can't be trusted to abide by their own state constitutions?

Given the stance you take on the issue, I'm downright alarmed that you have to ask this question. I'd think you'd be able to cite from the Constitution chapter and verse...

I'm just asking why the the transfer of power from the fed to the state wouldn't carry with it the problems of said power.

you've heard of the term 'rhetorical'?

---------- Post added at 03:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:19 PM ----------

I don't know if it would or not, but wouldn't the states be just as adept at handling the problems they encounter as well?

Being "adept" at it doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement. convince me that they can do it better.

i'm not really concerned about showing that the states can do better, just that it's their responsibility to do so and not the feds, except to ensure a republican form of government for each state.

California is too liberal, so you move to New York? Was France full?

No it's more conservative than California and less than New Jersey.

new york city and new york state are two separate animals like Chicago and Illinois.

NARA | The National Archives Experience

Article 1 Section 10

States cannot constitutionally go into deficit.


Article 4 Section 2

Could this include marriage, driver's privileges and so on? I think so.

Article 4 Section 4

Section. 4.

Ammendment 14 Section 1.

I think all those pretty much sums up the case.

---------- Post added at 03:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:10 AM ----------

I find none offensive. People have the right to speak out. They did so with Bush, Reagan, Clinton and so on. People compared Bush to Hitler, Hell, I did.

For those who criticized Bush and showed him tearing the head off the Statue of Liberty, comparing him to Hitler and so on.... to me have no right to claim ANY ONE of these signs obscene or offensive because when it was their turn they had done the EXACT SAME thing.

It's fucking hypocritical to say "the signs against Obama are offensive and bad" when you did it to Bush.

I feel the same way about those who were calling foul and saying how offensive signs and so on were aginst Bush, yet now they carry those signs against Obama.

Hypocrites are abundant on both sides.

Pan, two points.

1. By the terms of the federal constitution, states can go into debt. I don't see what in that quote says otherwise. However, many/most states have passed balanced budget amendments to their constitutions, so their own state constitutions (unwisely, IMHO) prohibit it.

2. You assume that all of us 'libruls' found all of the signs criticizing Bush to be non-offensive. This isn't true. But more importantly, it assumes some sort of moral equivalency between Bush's actions and Obama's. Bush (or people in his government) acted in violation of the law, the constitution, and international treaties on several occasions. Obama raised taxes a little, in a country with a lower tax burden than just about any other first world country. There's simply no reason, regardless of ideology, to think Obama's actions are nearly as bad as Bush's.

You also assume that criticizing signs as offensive means that we think those holding the signs have no right to speak. But it's possible to protest and still not be horribly offensive. I glanced over the website you link to, and personally I don't find any of those signs offensive. I've seen pictures of a few that I did find offensive on TV.

(Edit: I looked thru the slideshow, and I did see one of the signs I found offensive -- "The American taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's ovens." That's just wrong. Hyperbole is a regular feature of protest signs, and while I often find it humorous, I don't generally find, eg, Obama=Hitler to be offensive. But saying that raising taxes on the rich by 3% is like killing 8 million Jews shows that you simply lack any kind of moral compass whatsoever.)

so what you're saying is that political symbols and arguments are totally empty: any argument can be applied to anybody.

so if someone were to criticize the use of a particular symbol or argument in an inappropriate or stupid way, the problem really is that the person who does the criticism doesn't understand the rules, and the first rule is that political symbols and arguments are totally empty.

but you also assume that everyone knows the rules and that they only pretend not to.

so everyone is a hypocrite.

except you, of course.

powerful stuff there, pan.

I agree. Pan, you are saying this isn't offensive?

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gad...0093_large.jpg

I just liked that part. Yes, many states have passed balanced budget amendments... Ohio included. But some states are running on deficit spending.

No, I don't think "all" or even the vast majority on either side agrees with what is said on 99.9% of those signs. My point is there were some saying as bad of things about Bush and now those people are calling these signs and the criticisms on Obama offensive and wrong. Just as when W was being criticized and some of these people at the parties were all upset and crying foul when W was being raked over the coals and saying you can't or shouldn't say that about our president.

My point was that if you found them offensive for W, why then are those same signs ok now for a sitting president. And conversely, if they were ok then and you may have even found them funny or used them somehow.

Being offensive to me, means it is offensive on either side. So if you decry it when it is against your man but ok against the other... you are a hypocrite. If it's offensive/ok to you on both sides, then you are consistent and not just giving one side a pass while holding the other side up on a pedestal.

---------- Post added at 12:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:15 PM ----------

No, I am very much a hypocrite at times. we all are. I just like pointing it out.

---------- Post added at 12:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:16 PM ----------

Too me, no. because I don't believe it. It'sa not something I have to agree with or even really pay attention to it. I choose not to pay attention to that sign. He has the right to say it and hold it high, I have the right to ignore it.

i dunno, pan: i can't for the life of me figure out where the substance is to what you're saying at this point. you seem to have taken it into your head that by pursuing this line of argument--which i find to be absurd--that you're going to get a rise out of these folk who you imagine you oppose somehow. you have tow or three basic moves that you use repeatedly, and the only objective i can make out for doing it is the above.

one move is setting up a straw man "liberal"or öbama supporter (i meant to make scare quotes, but an umlaut came out instead. i like umlauts. mötörhead, for example)
the second is to imply that there is a rational basis for equating obama with facism because all fascism means to you is i don't like it---well that's just a stupid argument. there were perfectly legit and worrisome reasons to see in the bush administration between 9/13/2001 and sometimes in early 2005 a political/legal machine that was heading in a fascist direction--and this in a technical sense--because like it or not there is a technical sense to the term. the move foundered politically sometime in 2005 because the discourse lost traction. as a legal movement--that is as a radical authoritarian rightwing politics advanced through the means of law---what the bush people did is only being dismantled now by the obama administration. and if you think about what that legal framework was, pan, it's some scary shit.
but hey, why bother with that when you can reduce fascism to a meme used in what you reduce political debate to--playground stuff, the kind of thing that third graders indulge.
but it is that when participants make it that--and so in this case, you bear a pretty significant responsibility for reducing debate to the level you claim it already was on.

third is repetition. it's as if you think that repeating the same thing enough times erases the baselessness of what you repeat.
it's a very karlrove idea, except you don't have the institutional reach to actually do it, so it's just silly.

i'm not sure how much more life there is in the thread, but personally i'm starting to see it as a corpse already.

Carrying debt does not equal deficit.

Ok.... and I'm the only one? I don't believe I have but ok.


Facism is facism.... I screamed about it with Bush but I don't believe I have said anything like that about Obama, if I have feel free to remind me where. And how I am now being hypocritical.

And yes, it has been on that level because when people criticized Bush (myself included), it was taken to that level... and not just by me.

Maybe, just maybe, I'm repetitive because I'm consistent in my views. Right or wrong, I am consistent and firm in my beliefs so therefore maybe, just maybe that would make me as harsh on my side as on the other because I believe my side should stand more on their merits and beliefs because if those beliefs are the "best" way... then attacks and so on shouldn't phase them.

Then it's a corpse to you and you don't have to post or read any more of mine if you find them so boorish.

Just got back from my local one. Smaller turnout than I expected maybe 2000 people but that's just a guess. Similar demographic as in the other tea parties. The highlight was Alan Keyes's speech. I got some footage and might post it later although nothing too exciting happened.

The only counter-protest thing I saw was a communist activist handing out some literature.

This tea party group seems rather lethargic and unmotived compared to say a ron paul rally or other ones I've seen. It's a start though I suppose as most of this crowd seems like they've never done this sort of thing before.

The highlight was an Alan Keyes speech? And people are trying to say this is non-partisan?

It is what it is. If you were hoping the tea parties were about expanding the social welfare state or ending the wars in Iraq you'd be at the wrong demonstration. However, if you were a individual who was concerned about the increasing taxes and governmental spending there would be a place for you.

Increasing taxes happened under Bush, as did spending. Taxes are going down and the bailout isn't actually spending. The people I ran into at the SJ Tea Party didn't seem to comprehend any of this. They were more concerned with "USA! USA! USA!" or anti-Obama rhetoric.

Aren't taxes going down for all but the top 3% earners?

Income tax, yes. Some are protesting any tax increase (cigarettes, for example), but I'd be willing to guess that many at these parties still believe that Obama is raising everyone's taxes. It's amazing how easily misinformation spreads.

---------- Post added at 09:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:56 PM ----------

My favorite political cartoon from the past few days:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lm2JI7sGwY...an+concern.jpg

Pretty much. But when you look at the income tax of the top earners, as well as the capital gains tax, the net effect is that of the Bush cuts expiring on schedule (2011).

So far, these tea parties appear to be a movement to benefit the rich, using the not-so-rich as leverage.

Nice. Is this a typical Republican technique?

I wish it were just Republican. The Dems do it, too.

Yes, but I don't remember hearing about Dems getting people to fight for tax cuts that won't effect those who support the idea. What is the Democrat equivalent?

The Democrats are as much slaves to their corporate benefactors as the Republicans. They often get "the people" to support obvious ploys for business, such as retroactive immunity for telecoms, support for wasteful spending, and the like. Still, I'm not sure if there's an equivalent to the Tea Parties. Most major protests on the left are surprisingly grassroots.

Democrats ended AFDC...

it's all a huge pyramid scheme, where the rich convince the middle class that they too will be rich someday if they a) support the tax cuts on the wealthy, b) pull themselves up by their bootstraps and c) thumb their nose at the poor.

I think that was done by a deal with the GOP controlled Congress. They didn't end it as much as remake into another program. The new program focused on getting people to work and limited benefits to something like 5yrs. Don't ask me what the new program's called, I can't remember.

---------- Post added at 09:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:39 AM ----------

I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of the teabaggers are going to pay less taxes under Obama then they did with Bush Jr.

I also think many of them should look up the definition of fascist. I could understand them calling Obama a socialist, but his proposals don't fit what I understand to be fascism at all. I'd argue Bush Jr. was much closer to a fascist then Obama.

All the interviews I saw seemed to have people protesting all kinds of stuff but mainly just their dislike for Obama.

Here's the thing, folks.

Mr. Obama has proposed a HUGELY expensive budget. The deficits he wants to run outstrip those of every previous President COMBINED, to the tune of multiple trillions of dollars per year. Even Bush's deficits only grew by a trillion dollars every 18-24 months, but this is ridiculous!

Now, since the Chinese won't buy any more of our debt (ie our biggest and most powerful creditor has cut us off from further loans), with the Japanese and Saudis likely to follow suit, how does Mr. Obama propose to -pay- for his 1,001 social programmes, a new "light rail" system, payoffs to ACORN, expanded this, improved that, studies on X,Y, and Z, PLUS more bailouts, while giving 95% of taxpayers a cut?

Simple. Either he's lying (hardly new from a politician) and he -does- intend to raise taxes, or he's planning to simply print several trillion dollars. Given that we've already begun to monitize our debt, and have already printed several hundred billion dollars -just- to pay for these never-ending bailouts, my guess is that he just plans to print-n-spend his way through this.

Welcome to the Weimar States of America.

THAT is what a lot of these folks are pissed about. He is deliberately creating (or more correctly, worsening; he did inherit Bush's lunatic policies, after all) a situation where drastically higher taxes or an horriffically-devalued currency are absolutely unavoidable, a situation which our kids will have to live with and pay for. Maybe in 2-3 Quarters, when you can wipe your ass with a $100.00 bill, some of this will sink in. For now, keep taking comfort in your assurance that the whole thing's manufactured by, and for the benefit of, corporate interests who are -benefitting- from Obama's fiscal insanity, as opposed to working people who are pissed as Hell about this nincompoop flushing their children's financial and social futures down some Chicago sewer with giveaways to his Wall Street backers, leftist pressure groups, failed auto companies, ludicrously-mismanaged banks and anyone else with their hands out.

Dunedan, that wasn't what the folks were pissed about at my Tea Party or the Tea Party in SF or LA, according to my friends that went to the counter-protests there. I myself witnessed exactly what level of devotion these people have to what I understand are libertarian views; there was virtually none. I doubt 2 of the 400 or so people at the SJ protest could even understand what you're posting, let alone come to the same conclusion. They weren't there to disagree with the bailout because of the deficit growth. They were there because "don't tread on me" or "life begins at conception" or "NObama", and when you actually speak to them you find out how little they actually know. When you get your information from Fox News and Drudge, you end up disconnected from reality. At least 6 people I spoke to said they were being taxed without representation, as if when your candidate loses you somehow don't have a representative in the House or Senate.

Maybe you attended a different protest, the one with substance and legitimate concerns and well educated people, but I'm afraid that even if that was the case yours was the exception and not the rule. Your viewpoint is not the viewpoint of the majority of Tea Partiers. Your viewpoint is libertarian, theirs is just run-of-the-mill neoconservative.

like will said, if the tea parties were organized around something like your post, dunedan, it would not only have been probably better for the right (because agree or disagree, at least it's a clear and well-articulated position) and for the rest of us (because having a clear and well-articulated position means there can be a coherent debate, and not a kind of name-calling that turns and turns around nothing but itself)...

i have a friend who's an long time trader--he calls me his favorite communist, and i call him my favorite reactionary. we were talking a few days ago about what china had proposed concerning the creation of a new reference currency and/or altering the way currency values are pegged to the dollar. he said that one thing he learned playing basketball as a kid was you don't look at the shoulders, you look at the feet--china is still buying long-term treasury bonds. he told me how to track this, but beverages intervened and then other stuff and i forgot---i'll ask again when i see him--this because it wasn't a source i knew about so i don't see how i could bring it to mind...

it seems to me tho that the main variable which could trigger something like the disaster scenario you outline is a wholesale collapse of the american political position in the context of the global-capitalist system. personally, i think that had mc-cain been elected after 8 years of george w bush, we'd aleady be in such a place. but i think that whether you agree with his policies or not, there's no getting around the fact that obama generated a bounce and in so doing an opportunity to maintain american political status by rejecting what preceded and initiating new directions----but over time, the proof will be in the pudding. i just don't think we're quite in the dark scenario area quite yet.

there are other variables at play as well---for example: what do you make of the imf revamp that's somewhere between having been proposed and being-implemented?

See Will, if you or your friends go believing one way then you see the Tea Parties that way and refuse to see them for what they truly were.

Same as the people who went solely because Glenn Beck/Limbaugh/Faux News etc told them to go.

My experience was there were far more knowledgeable people there that were there to protest what the future holds, as Dunedin, eloquently explained. But that's what I went looking for.

What I saw as a whole were a bunch of people roughly my age on the average who never truly protested and have lived mostly comfortable lives knowing that that comfort level is about to take a drastic negative change and their children will never be able to live the lives they were able to, much like we have not been able to live to the comfort level of our parents, because taxes, inflation, greed, corruption and debt have taken away opportunities for us that they had. Those same elements have not been getting better, they are in fact worsening. It's easy to say, "income taxes will be lower" but when taxes on everything else goes up, when the middle class are being squeezed more and more and when the dollar is being printed at a rate that inflation will make those "lower income taxes" worthless, something has to be done.

Now, if Obama were investing in small businesses and the infrastructure instead of bailouts, he'd be creating a tax base and I could see a feasible solution. But, he isn't doing that. He is bailing out banks that continue to raise credit cards fees and interest rates, while tightening their credit belts and increasing foreclosures and showing more profit. That is not helping the population as whole.

When the auto industry, which is a HUGE tax base for the communities and Fed. is suffering, workers may have to take pay cuts just to keep jobs and plants close down, that tax base is being eroded. So, while you can tell a GM or Chrysler employee, "Yeah, but you'll be paying less in taxes"... what they lost in pay and benefits will still force them into a financial loss. They have less disposable income and the small business takes the hit because the bigger businesses can take a hit far longer than small business... thus that tax base is lost. Tell a mom and pop who owned a store by a factory that closed down.... "Yeah, but you'll pay lower income taxes" as their dreams go up in smoke.

As property values fall, the communities that rely on property taxes go bankrupt. So they start cutting services. Roads become worse, forcing more car repairs, crime increases, lowering property values further, and it spirals downward, tell the people affected "yeah, but you'll be paying lower taxes". Tell the city/county/state employees that will be or are getting laid off with no sight to being rehired, "yeah but your income taxes will be less."

The point is, Obama is not using his spending to build a tax base, he is continuing to destroy the tax base that has been eroding for the past 30 years. Only, he's destroying it at a much much faster rate and has done so in roughly 100 days worth of policies.

To have people sit there and talk about 95% will be paying lower income taxes and bragging how great Obama is.... is blind to the destruction of the tax base itself. And to blame all this on Obama is blind to the failed trickle down economic policies that have been in place and the greed, corruption and total lack of investments into maintaining and growing the tax base. That is complete financial suicide that we will pay for instead of retiring, our children and grandchildren will pay for with lower standards of living and freedoms. Because as Obama "bails out the states and dictates where that money goes.... our freedoms become lessened.... that will be part of the price we pay.

My view at the tea party was many got that idea. But I'm biased because those people were the ones I looked for.

Pan, what the people I spoke to said wasn't vague and up to interpretation. It was perfectly clear. When a 45 year old, slightly overweight man in a blue polo says, out loud, "No taxation without representation!", he's not speaking in secret libertarian code. He's not speaking to his concerns about TARP or waxing rhetoric about the nature of government regulation, he's communicating for all to hear that he's stupid. I need you to understand that I didn't go there with my liberal blinders on. I went there specifically to find out why other people were there, and I spoke to everyone I could. I spent about an hour and a half just talking to people. I refuse to believe that the libertarians amongst the GOPers were the quietest.

I saw them, I know what the Tea Party here was. It had nothing to do with libertarianism and everything to do with people willing to follow whatever they think conservatism or Republicanism is asking of them.
Most of the people that attended wouldn't have even known of their existence had it not been for the Republican part of the media. Had it not been for Fox News, Rush, etc. they would not have known that protesting was okay for non-commies.

I don't want to alarm you, but the right in this country doesn't really have an active, grassroots underground just waiting to spring into action. They take their clues from the party representatives in media.

The libertarians do have a growing grassroots strength, but the Tea Party movement simply isn't libertarian, though I'm sure more than a few libertarians showed up not realizing that the Bush Republicans were in charge and were creating the messages.

See you will only see what your bias allows you. That is all I am saying. My bias allowed me to focus on what I was there for and the people I had something in common with. I wasn't looking for the "protesters", the "liberarians" The "GOPhers"... I saw them and was cordial to them but what they had to say did not truly interest me.

I could if I wanted say "yeah there sure were a lot of protesters/librarians/GOPhers" if I had been looking for that. The people I was with seemed to outnumber the fringe extremists (although I'm sure people could say we were fringe). And while yes, some got the news of the party through the "Right", the majority, I saw, got it through the web, friends, co workers and so on.

It's all up to bias and what you want to believe... I was there, and the 2 I went to (Canton at noon Mansfield at 4)... I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.

Well, let me just correct something here.

When you say that the deficits he wants to run are larger than that of every previous president combined, that is technically true, but that in itself doesn't mean much. It was also true for Bush, and for Reagan before him.

Deficits only matter in relation to the size of the economy. And as a percentage of GDP, Obama's deficits are not even close to being the largest in US' history, and after the first couple of year of this recession, will go down to about Reagan's levels, which are high but not in any measure unprecedented.

US Federal Deficit As Percent Of GDP in United States 1900-2014 - Federal State Local

Of course, if the Dollar ever stopped being the global reserve currency, things would be worrisome. But the fact is that as of right now, most nations including China are desperately buying US treasury bills, which shows a strong willingness to keep financing the US.


And while Obama's stimulus bill is a significant part of the deficit this year and the next, the real troublesome part for the deficit is actually unfunded liabilities for medicare, which really is not discretionary spending and depends on congressional efforts to change.

You're incorrect. There is only one way to interpret "no taxation without representation", pan, and that's the right way. When it was used multiple times by multiple individuals at the local Tea Party, it was said from ignorance. My bias or opinion doesn't enter into the equation.

Shame on you for defending ignorance.
It's libertarians, GOPers, and protestors. Your snarky bullshit just weakens your position.
The bias argument doesn't hold water. Worse still, you're unable to admit that there were crazies and idiots there. I have photographic evidence. I have a picture of a sign that says, I shit you not, "where's the birth certificate?" alluding to the insane conspiracy theory about President Obama's country of birth. Another says "No ACORN". Many more spoke about "Socialism" as if the people understood what it meant. "CHANGE to rig the government to own everything!" was one of my favorites.

Ok.

Didn't really see any, just saw people expressing their opinions. May not have agreed with them... but, ok how dare they say things you don't like or the way you think they should.

Sorry was trying to add humor... gess I is just eegg nor ant, how dare I add some political sarcasm. Why that was just juvenile.

I admitted there were people there whose messages I din't agree with. But they had the right to show their opinion. I had the right to ignore it. I just believe you had your mind made up, went looking for whatever it is your bias wanted you to find and you ignored whatever your bias didn't want you to see.

It's human. I freely admit, I went not knowing what to truly expect but wanted to see and meet people who shared a common view as me... I did. I walked away with a positive experience.

I think it shows your elitism and bias calling people who showed their opinions and took advantage of their right to assemble and have free speech as idiots and crazies and ignorant. I see that more as a problem than anything that was said or from my own experience done at these parties. But like them, you are entitled to your opinion and I am entitled to mine.

---------- Post added at 02:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:13 AM ----------

A parody/ serious note.... taken from the late. great, Ricky Nelson - Garden Party

I went to a tea party to demonstrate with my old friends
A chance to share ideas and talk of making the country great again
When I got to the tea party, they all had reason to be there
May not have agreed with what they all had to say, but glad I was that they were there

CHORUS
But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't agree with everyone, so ya just got to be yourself

People came from miles around, everyone was there
The Left brought signs of hate, there was anger in the air
'n' over in the corner, much to my surprise
The Right told me Obama was Satan in disguise

CHORUS

lott-in-dah-dah-dah, lot-in-dah-dah-dah

Freedom to demonstrate and speak their minds, thought that's why they came
No one heard the other side, we didn't see the future as the same
I said hello to freedom, she belongs to me and you
When I speak of freedom, everyone has the same as me and you

CHORUS

lot-dah-dah-dah (lot-dah-dah-dah)
lot-in-dah-dah-dah

Someone Held a sign up and disagreed with the President
Speakin his mind and sayin what he could his freedom he did spend
If you go to a tea party, I wish you a lotta luck
But if they criticize your freedoms, I'd tell them to go fuck

CHORUS

lot-dah-dah-dah (lot-dah-dah-dah)
lot-in-dah-dah-dah

CHORUS
But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't agree with everyone, so ya just got to be yourself

CHORUS

lot-dah-dah-dah (lot-dah-dah-dah)
lot-in-dah-dah-dah

CHORUS
But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't agree with everyone, so ya just got to be yourself

Thank ya...... for your time. Gettin off my soapbox and singin a song Thank ya, again Rick....RIP.....

The thing about freedom, pan, is it means we have the same right to make fun of stupid people as they have to be stupid. No one is saying that the 'no taxation without representation' guy didn't have the right to speak. We're just saying he's ignorant. If you're going to speak in public, we get to criticize you. You, like so many right-wingers, forget that criticism is the essence of democracy, not it's opposite.

thanks for that, asaris---and it is this confusion of democracy and uniformity that explains why from time to time i find myself going off about the basically anti-democratic-to-authoritarian character of right politics. and it's why i see something kinda alarming in the tea parties--a sort of default poujadisme. what makes it doubly alarming is that there's no sense anywhere that the folk who enter that political world see that. i don't doubt that as individuals, these folk are well-meaning---but the way the politics is expressed, what the Enemy of the moment is...it's alarming when you think about it.

right back at ya

Pan isn't a right-winger. He's a socially liberal, economically right-centrist-libertarian-leaning, relatively independent thinker. He may have a tendency to get his back up and be inflexible in his positions, but he's hardly the only one here guilty of that (he says with his own hand raised).

It's not that I disagree with your point, but a) ad-hominem will get us nowhere, and b) at least know who you're talking to.

See, I disagree. I don't believe calling someone stupid, an idiot or ignorant for their beliefs and opinions is making your point any better. In fact it cheapens it. I was just as guilty, for a long time, but then I realized my opinion and belief is just that. I went with what the press told me to go with, what the far Left espoused I ate up and spewed out almost verbatim. But the reality is, I didn't have to think for myself then. I was the elitist because I felt that the press backed my opinion so I was automatically right. Once I sat back looked at what I was saying realized that I just spewed what the press told me to and that I wasn't truly thinking for myself..... I realized I was the stupid one.

You can criticize and argue all you want others opinions and beliefs, in fact that can be very healthy and bring about true compromise and change. But when you start calling the other side "stupid, ignorant, idiots" there is no compromise, no even trying to understand the other side. You in essence have stated your beliefs and opinions are better than theirs and that's all there is to it. Once you do that, you begin or continue to keep the partisanship hatred alive because those you called names and refused to listen to take solace in digging deeper down into their beliefs..... and then they call you names and you do the same. Hence you end up with a very divided country where nothing will get done except the extremes because only the extremes get listened to because no one wanted to meet in the middle because both sides saw the other as idiots, ignorant and stupid. See it's easier to personalize that which we disagree with as stupid, idiocy and ignorance so we don't have to debate it or listen to it and we don't have to talk out our differences.... because well.....our beliefs are so much more informed and better. Hell, we don't even have to prove ours besides saying the media says.

So continue down that path that your beliefs are so much better. And I'll continue down mine.

No you can't agree with everyone, so ya just gotta be yourself.



It's done on both sides, the self righteous "my beliefs are right because NBC/CBS/CNN/ABC/FOX/LIMBAUGH/BECK/HANNITY all agree with me.... or is it I agree with them ..... well the polls show....... the people that watch and agree with what they say agree with me..... I don't have to think for myself at least.

[/COLOR]I even admitted I did, in numerous posts.... don't think you came across the great secret.

Ya know, I somewhat resent the implication that those of us on the left are stupid because someone else happens to say what we're saying.

OK, then you explain how lowering taxes on 95% of the country is a tax increase.


They think a tax cut is a tax increase, they think Obama is a Muslim, they think Obama is not a legal citizen, they think Sarah Palin is intelligent, and they think Rush Limbaugh has all the answers. Yeah, based on that, sure, I'll gladly say my beliefs and opinions are better than theirs.

I'm all for reasoned debate, but there are some things for which there is no grey area, and no compromise. Obama is not a muslim. Anyone who says so is either stupid, or stupidly parroting Fox News. I'm not gonna play the "well let's reach across the aisle and see if we can come to agreement on this" game in situations like that. They're wrong. I'm right, Period.

Issue-wise, the republicans believe that cutting taxes while increasing government spending, and funneling as much money as possible to the upper-class elite leads to a prosperous economy. Again, they're wrong, I'm right, Period. Don't believe me? How's the economy workin' for ya? As with the Obama-is-a-Muslim issue, anyone who seriously believes that reducing income while increasing expenditures is the way to decrease your debt is either crazy, or listening to Fox News too much. But, hey, if anyone here chooses to believe that, feel free to quit your job, take on part time work at Walmart, and buy a Porsche. See how long that lasts for your bank account.


Well the real answer is to have instant runoff elections, and that way people don't feel like they're wasting a vote if they don't cast it for a democrat or a republican. But, the idiots on both sides of the aisle will never go for that because it would only increase competition for them.

Wow, you have me pegged pretty good there man. I like being flexible... it helps in bed.

Ahhh. but it's ok for you to imply those on the right are just parroting their news sources. I see. "I'm right... fuck you." Fair enough. Doesn't help the country but ok.

Gee, it must be nice not having to read ALL my posts, just what you want.


You're entitled to your beliefs. But I don't think you leave room for middle ground and any type of compromise. With freedom comes compromise. With tyranny comes "My side is right and you're an ignorant, stupid, moronic, idiot." All hail Obama and the main stream media.


No you're not. You are prepared to pull out parts of what people say and make implications at your leisure to get what you want so you can say, "see idiot, you just are a right winger listening to Fox/Limbaugh/Beck etc and parroting them."

Well, if you'd read my post above, Obama's "tax cut" won't mean shit when there is no tax base. READ WHAT I WROTE, QUOTE THAT, THEN LET"S DEBATE.... he who calls the other idiot, states they are parroting, or insults the other's intelligence first loses. What I'll win I have no idea because with self righteous "I'm right and everyone else is an idiot" attitudes there is no compromise.

We'll start with you quoting ALL of post #364 and debating those points.... OK?????? Until then, please don't put words or meaning behind ANYTHING you just want to pull out and not back up with full quote from me.

I see no one here even coming close to espousing the views you are accusing me of.... but that's what one does when they don't want to truly debate what truly is said and just wants to make themselves feel all warm and fuzzy that they are right and the other side has no clue.

If it works for ya, who am I to take away your warm fuzzies.



Gee, that would be too much like true freedom wouldn't it?

Opinions can be stupid, but it's not an opinion to say that one is being taxed without representation when the individual is, in fact, represented. That can be verified as being factually incorrect very easily, and it's the ease by which one can verify how incorrect that statement is that I use to judge the ignorance of the individual. I see no fault in my conclusion.
It came off like you were trying to make fun of me as a red herring. If it was intended simply as jest, then I apologize for misreading it.
I take no issue with disagreement, pan, which is why I was hoping that this movement was libertarian. I'm not libertarian and am fundamentally opposed to most of the ideologies of the modern American libertarian movement, but I oppose those ideologies respectfully because at least there is an attempt at contributing positively to society. Libertarians believe that they're doing what's best and they have a consistent set of ideologies and principles. The neoconservatives are contrarians with no tangible set of principles and ideologies other than what they're told to have by their leadership. It's that leadership that seeks to exploit and does so often by fostering or reinforcing ignorance. Without that leadership, as I said before, these Tea Parties would not have been anywhere near as big or stupid as they were.

I honestly didn't ignore anything because I went purposefully looking for libertarians. I went looking for people that knew about Ayn Rand or Ron Paul or Ludwig von Mises. I went looking for people like you and Dunedan and dk; principled libertarians. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that I found none. Not one in the 60 or so people I spoke to. The closest thing to a libertarian I found was a man in his 60s with a "Don't tread on me" sign, but he didn't feel like talking.

Let me ask you this: have you ever met a libertarian that was unwilling to share his or her political philosophy? And if so, do you think this is the kind of person who will spend 4 hours on a weekday protesting?
"Elitism" used to mean something to me, as a negative. It doesn't anymore. I reserve the right as an educated and intelligent individual to use my intellect and education as a tool to judge whether a person is or isn't correct and even is or isn't stupid. When an individual uses some of the language from the Boston Tea Party in a modern Tea Party that has nothing to do with taxation without representation, it's not unreasonable for me to conclude this person has actively refused to learn about American history or current evens, not to mention the English language and basic government. Making that statement lacked intelligence and common sense, fitting the very definition of stupid.

My question is, why are you unwilling to admit that someone saying "no taxation without representation" while clearly having representatives is stupid or at the very least incorrect?

What isn't true, isn't true. There is no possibility of it becoming true. Why, then, should I have to compromise?


Oh cut the bullshit. it's not a "belief" that Obama isn't a Muslim. It is a fact. an undeniable, unassailable fact.

About facts there can be no compromise. They either are, or they are not.




I'm not calling you a right winger. I'm calling you out for acting as though we all have to compromise on everything. That's bunk. We don't. We shouldn't. I'm fine with talking about opinions, and talking about ideas, but when someone's facts are completely wrong, then they are completely wrong, and no amount of capitulating and wishywashy "gee maybe we can compromise" out of me is going to change facts.

Again, I wasn't debating you on your issues (though I'm happy to do so) - I was debating you on your idea that facts can be a matter for compromise. The sky is blue. You cannot compromise it into being red.

Again, I wasn't debating you on that issue, but I'll do so at the end of this reply.



I wasn't accusing you of them.

Yeah. Shame I wasn't doing that.

And that something probably shouldn't be a bunch of tea party attendees running around parroting Rush Limbaugh. We have a fundamentally broken economy. For 30 years the Republicans (and Clinton, who was a Republican in disguise) have eagerly set things up so that the vast majority of the money in this country is now in the pockets of the very few. Additionally they (with the exception of Clinton) busily increased governmental debt, and they did so by spending the money on things that will not help us, like the B2 at $2billion a plane, or the F22 development contract, which was real useful now that they're about to cancel the program almost before it got started. It would have been far better to spend that money upgrading and improving the infrastructure of the country, because that could create a foundation for solid economic growth, but they didn't, and so we are where we are right now, which is a broke populace and a broke country that has decimated its industry in favor of moving computer records of bits of colored paper around, that has decimated its infrastructure through three decades of severe neglect, and that has decimated the segment of the population that keeps the economy moving - namely the middle class. We are in a very, very deep financial hole. Sure, Obama could sit back and do nothing in order to save money, and it would save money short term, but long term we wouldn't be making very much money either. If Obama's plan works, we will reinvest in jobs here at home rather than in India, and we will reinvest in the infrastructure and industry of this country so that we can actually make things again, and then we'll be able to make money off of those things that we make. Yes, that takes money at first, and it's money that we have to borrow in order to do this plan. You're right about that. But it's very short-term thinking to be worried about spending money right now to pull us out of this mess (especially considering no one gave a shit when we spent money on getting us into this mess like it was going out of style for the previous 30 years), and we've had enough short-term thinking in this country I think. Don't you?



Hold on. The bailouts are investing in industry. GM and Chrysler and Ford do indeed suck, but, they're among the last remaining large industrials we have. If we kill them off, then we're just continuing the 3 decade backslide.

Oh and by the way, you seem to be forgetting that Obama is also injecting 15 billion dollars into the loan market for small businesses. The ones you say he isn't investing in.

Mahan's bank primarily lends money to small veterinary practices. (Forbes (yes, that Forbes), 3/27/09 Small Business Loves Obama's Plan - Forbes.com )

Obama is also waiving all 2-3.7% SBA loan fees through the end of this year. And, the SBA will be raising its guarantee-of-loan percentage from 75% to 90%, which will encourage banks to give out more loans.

So yes, he is investing in small busnisses.

As for infrastructure, a large part of the "shovel ready" stimulus programs involve transportation, be it road, or rail. That's infrastructure. There's more, but this post is getting long as it is.


See above. As to the banks, the banks got their big bailout from Bush, not Obama. Obama even wants to get some of that money back, since the banks are spending it on parties and bonuses, but he can't, because Bush didn't put any provisions in /his/ bailout to get the money back if the banks abused the privilege.


Hey, GM can get a government bailout. They just have to show that they're gonna do something useful with it. And Obama's right about that. What's the point of throwing several billion at a company if the company's going to do the exact same thing they've been doing for years? GM's already lost over 80 billion dollars since '05. Losing 12 more wouldn't take them very long if they didn't change their ways before they got the money.

How about tell them one of two things: "We saved GM by giving them money and making them change their business practices so that now people actually want to buy their cars and so you're still in your store, oh and by the way you're paying lower taxes to boot," or "We tried to save GM by having them change their business practices so that people would actually want to buy their cars, and we'd have given them money to help them get out of their hole, but the dumbasses wouldn't change and so they went under."

(from their artificially inflated prices which were caused by a scam the Republicans and the banking/mortgage industry cooked up)

Yep.

But of course, spending any money to fix this problem is bad because the guys at the tea parties said so.

I'd rather tell them "Next time, pay the fuck attention to who you elect and what they're doing, because we got to this point through the actions of our elected officials, and they stayed in office because you and millions like you let them."


The tax base being the middle class. How exactly is he destroying that? It was already destroyed before he got there. You're blaming him for what the 2 Bush's, Clinton, and Reagan did.

If Obama's plan helps to create jobs, it's not destroying the tax base, it's shoring it up. Giving 12 billion to GM only to watch them lose that and THEN fail isn't going to help the tax base either.

Yeah, but as you finally point out here, it's not his fault.

So what would you propose? Just throw money at everyone randomly? How's that gonna work?

And my view is that perhaps there were some people that you found because you were looking for them who had a somewhat less fundamentally flawed (though still wrong) viewpoint. But, the tea parties were heralded by Fox and Limbaugh, people who listen to Fox and Limbaugh were whipped into a frenzy and told to get out there and go to the tea parties, by Fox and Limbaugh, and then Fox artificially inflated the number of people at the tea parties by 300% to make them seem even bigger than they were.

Oh, Im most definitely an elitist when it comes to ideas (let me stress this: ideas, not people or sources).

I think better ideas should have more space than worse ideas, and I think that we know what ideas are good and what ideas are bad by looking at their internal consistency and their evidence.

As such, more consistent ideas with better support are more valid than incoherent ideas with less support.

Democracy doesn't mean all opinions should be equally valid and valued.

Your experience was somewhat different than mine. It's easy to see all the negatives and can be hard to focus and find what you consider the positives.

You seem to want to focus on "taxation without representation" I tend to agree with that statement. I feel we are being taxed without representation, in that our elected officials are by majority partisan, corrupted by power, who do not represent the people that elected them but the vocal extreme minorities that raise campaign funds for them to get re elected.

Just saying "taxation without representation" in and of itself is not wrong, it's the person who says it's perspective. The other side of the coin could be, "well you elected them". But the truth there is many people are so disenfranchised with the system they don't vote because there truly is no choice or they don't see anyone to truly vote "for" so they take the lesser of 2 evils.

If people feel they are taxed and their voices are not being heard, that by virtue of their thought processes is taxation without representation. Now, if you ask them what they want and they say fiscal responsibility to the people and investments into building a long term working tax base where the standard of living doesn't regress.... then they have done more than just parrot Beck/Fox/Limbaugh etc. There was a lot of parroting on both sides.

As for the Librarian/GOPher speak.... it honestly was meant as humor, sometimes my humor is very dry and only I get it. Sorry about that.

---------- Post added at 02:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:04 PM ----------

We are all elitist (to differing degrees) in aspects of our ideas and beliefs.

Better ideas should have more space, as they inspire true debate and solutions.

Not all opinions and ideas are equally valid or feasible.... but if the person espousing such a view is listened to with respect valid ideas may come from them. If you just say, "that's stupid/ignorant/uninformed etc.. people tend to hold beliefs very close to them and those ideas/beliefs become part of their identity. So when you put those ideas and beliefs down they take personal offense and take a defensive stance and hunker down for a long battle where there is absolutely no chance for the compromise needed to advance. By looking at it this way we should at least value that belief/opinion for no other reason than respect for the person giving it. In doing so they may become more flexible and open minded to changing their views.

That's not what "taxation without representation" means, though, and it disrespects the sacrifices of our forefathers to use the statement for ignorant, partisan reasons. We have elected representatives that serve in the government. We have congresspeople and senators. We have a representative government. We have neither autocracy (as it was under English rule) nor direct democracy.

The only conclusions I can draw from this are either the people don't understand the statement, or, as you seem to be suggesting, they want direct democracy. Direct democracy is, of course, stupid. In many ways it's even worse than autocracy. So, again, I'm left with only one conclusion.

Now that we've returned to pan's apparent interested in direct democracy, I'd like to note than he has yet to clearly answer the rather direct questions I asked almost 100 posts ago, in an attempt to explore his political philosophy and what he believes these tea parties should be working toward.

I don't think direct democracy, but more truth and open debate from government. I believe it's a direct response and way of thought from people who feel they no longer are being heard from a corrupt government run by extremists and power hunger, greed driven people who don't give a damn in what's best for the country but what's in it for them and the power they wield.

People, IMHO, are feeling hopeless and unheard by the elected officials on all levels. Some of that is certainly justifiable and rational. To blanket statement it with "well you have representation"..... when they feel that representation doesn't listen no matter who they vote for is not truly listening and trying to understand what they are saying.

It's not about feelings of disconnect, though, in the way you're interpreting it, it's a threat. "Do what I say or I'll break the law and stop paying my taxes" is far disconnected from the sentiment of the Boston Tea Party, and represents a selfishness. Still, you're assuming that "no taxation without representation" is somehow a cry for accountability or easier access of the people to their representatives when that's not necessarily the case.

And that's where we strongly disagree. I think there is a vocal minority that may be yelling "Do what I say or I'll break the law and stop paying my taxes"... but as a whole, I believe it's a cry to be heard for accountability, easier access and to be heard from the government.

The problem is the vocal extreme minorities on both sides scream so loudly and get far more media attention, thus the feeling of being unheard that IMHO, the majority feels gets stronger and theirs gets weaker.

The Tea Parties, I believe gave these people a chance to be heard.... and I think they were, not by the press or government but by people not attending that may attend if in fact there are others. I hear July 4th is a big day being mentioned.

They are still representing us. Just because they aren't doing what you, Pan, want them to do, does not mean they are not representing us. If you don't like what they are doing, then get enough people to agree with you and vote them out. Nowhere in the Constitution does it define representation as "doing exactly what each individual wants." If that were the case, then the government owes me about 30 years of back taxes.

So because as you hint the American people are by and large lazy dumbasses who don't know what they're doing at the polls, on the rare occasion that they actually bother going there in the first place, we shouldn't have to pay taxes?

Right.




Then their thought process is wrong. Yes. I said it. Wrong. It's high time American adults stopped acting like five year olds, screaming "it's not faaaiiiir" every time something happens that they don't like. This is not a case of "do exactly what I want when I want it or I will take my tax-paying ball and go home."


That's what they will long-term get under this plan. No, it's not going to happen tomorrow, but the "instant gratification" syndrome is another example of mental five-year-olds masquerading as American adults. It took 30 years to break it. If they seriously think they aren't going to feel the impact of the problem, then they are (yes, I'm saying it again,) stupid.


And if you are faced with an idea such as "Obama is a Muslim" or "if you cut your income by 70% and then increase your expenditures by orders of magnitude, everyone will prosper" and you roll over and say some pissant pablum like "well I can see the merits of your idea, now let's get together and see if we can reach a compromise on that" then you are being a typical Democrat. Some ideas are stupid. There is no redeeming value to some ideas. To even consider compromising with such ideas is to hold us back from what we can achieve.

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I reserve and am now using the right to refuse to ever answer you again Shakran. How dare you tell me I hinted "the American people are by and large lazy dumbasses who don't know what they're doing at the polls". Nowhere was I even close to saying that.

You want to piss me off, tell me I said/implied/ or hinted something I never came close to nor believe in.

For the record I stated:

Nowhere is that even close to what you are saying I hinted at and how you can even imply such is bullshit. But it's your right and it is my right to just ignore you.

What you say I hinted at is so far from reality that there is truly no sense in debating you because you show you read into things that are not even there. YOU WANT TO JUST MAKE THINGS UP. Cool, but I'm not going to participate in your fantasy world.

I find it very interesting that you challenged me to respond to your entire post 364, which I did, and then you didn't bother to reply to any of it. And then you only took one part of my later post, and pitched a fit about that. Don't you have anything substantive to answer my points with?

You said they don't see anyone to truly vote for. Guess what. There would be someone to truly vote for if the American public would get off their butts and demand qualified candidates. Instead the People have allowed themselves to be led around by the nose by jackasses who labor ceaselessly to convince them that issues don't matter, but who the candidate is screwing does. That policy is unimportant, but the importance of a candidate's religion is utmost. That ability is meaningless while looks and the all important "fun to have a beer with" test is all that matters in an election.

You don't have to answer me if you don't want to. My life is not going to be negatively impacted because you're taking your ball and running home. Hell you've already been playing the "don't answer shakran" game for most of this thread, except where you think you might win ( you haven't) and to do exactly what you accuse me of doing - putting words in my mouth and reading into things that aren't there.

I have answered all your posts except #378 which you admit was long and I was already running late for work.

I came home and there you were telling me what I was saying in your next post. I would have gladly accepted the debate. But again, you stated I hinted something very negative and extremely wrong and there was no indication at all that was even close to what I said.

I decided, from that that you would read into anything I said to mean what you want it to and totally make the debate not even close to enjoyable. I enjoy Will's debate most of the time except when he gets upset over my dry humor that is only funny to me, he shows a deep respect and doesn't read into anything or put hidden meanings into my words that only exist in a fantasy world.

I have never once in this thread worked to put anyone down in anyway, I will not be told I hinted something I didn't that does call people names.

See, the past few months believe it or not I have worked very hard within myself. I'm not going to stoop to others levels anymore calling people names and belittling their feelings to make myself feel better. I did that. That's not me anymore.... or at least I am working very hard at it. I will not have someone try to destroy that which I have and am working on.

You can take that however you want. If you believe I am evading or running from you.... you are entitled to your opinion but I can safely say 100% you are wrong in that assumption.

I'm not destroying anything. You did hint at that, whether you realize it or not. This idea that the voters suddenly became disenfranchised from the government through no fault of their own is BS. They're disenfranchised because they /chose/ to become disenfranchised. Once the hippies won and we brought the troops home from Viet Nam, the people were done. Carter got into office and with the exception of making fun of Beer Billy, the country busily disconnected itself from politics. Reagan took office, told us that we would all prosper if we gave all our money to the rich guys, and that the government would make more money by lowering taxes and spending like crazy on the military. Three seconds of thought would make almost anyone, even the kid that got a 5 on his SATs sit up and say "hey wait a minute, bullshit!" but no one bothered to think.

So when you say the voters are disenfranchised, you are in fact hinting that they're stupid even if you don't mean to, and IMO you're right. They were stupid to get themselves disenfranchised, and they're stupid to let it continue. Hell look at the last election. I don't care who you voted for, I'm sure you'll agree that a pivotal issue in the election until the economy nosedived should not have been whether or not Obama was a Muslim, especially in light of the fact that he went to a Christian church who's pastor caused him so much trouble earlier. But it was, because people stupidly let it be. The country finally woke up, just a little, when they figured out their wallet was about to get hit with a cruise missile, and even then, what did they do about it? Not a hell of a lot. I didn't see any tea parties when Bush threw BILLIONS at the banks with no oversight, no requirements, and no controls. Oh but now that Obama is talking about structured bailouts that have conditions attached, suddenly here come all the Limbaugh fans to protest their tax cuts.

You think the voters are disenfranchised. Hell yes they are, and it's their own damn fault.

I don't know if there is much the average voter can do to correct this problem. Humans seem to have evolved with the natural inclination to first take care of ourselves, our families and those who support us. Our polititians and those in power are just doing what comes natural because that is the way humans evolved. No matter how much they get they cannot help themselves from gaming the system for more even if it kills the very system from which they benefit. Those in power will continue to take and take no matter which political party they are affiliated with. I believe this is one reason for revolutions and why almost every government eventually fails.

taxation without representation is meaningless in this context if it is supposed to refer to the actually existing state of affairs in the actually existing united states.

if taxation without representation is taken to refer to the fact that the american right cannot face it's own political situation, then it makes some sense. what it means is that conservatives who were inclined to mobilize around the tea party astroturf phenomenon feel "disenfranchised"---the reason they feel this way is that the world shaped by their having power has unfolded such that their ideology, which shaped what they did while they had power, has been pulverized.
the right cannot face anything about the reality *they have made for themselves*...


i don't care if there are people who find this nonsense compelling. i don't care about the projections they confuse with arguments that legitimate it: there are compelling arguments, and there are stupid arguments and there are types of statements that are just so ridiculous that they're not arguments at all. the last is the category i see from pan6467 in this thread.
at least dunedan (and a few others) have had the courtesy to presented actual arguments that could be debated rationally.

and this has fuck all to do with "diversity" or "acceptance of difference"--this has to do with the fact that democratic process--PARTICULARLY direct democratic process--is found upon argument and upon the idea that arguments could be deliberated on and debated---a result of this debate would be the rejection of unsound arguments, rejection of absurd arguments---the integrity of argument (along with access to information) is the center of democratic operations.

if you corrupt the integrity of argument, you undermine the process itself. you gut it. there's nothing left.

if these "conservatives" were interested in democracy, really, they'd be interested in being coherent.
that doesn't seem a priority.

You present a good argument, but that would mean that the grab for power is based more on self preservation than that of controlling others.

I argue that, as our government grew and gave back, people wanted more. At first, it was a great deal, the government gave, the people grew and gave back. There was always a group though that wanted more, but government listened and those extremists were fringe and pretty much just by and large ignored.

But then the parties started being very similar. they needed to be separate. The 60's and the Baby Boomers changed the way things were done. You had a whole generation that had grown up with a standard of living never known and by and large that generation was never told no. Even the draft to Vietnam the ones that truly wanted out found ways to dodge the draft.

The parties needing to separate themselves, took sides. In the 70's the GOP took the Religious Right, used gun control to get the NRA, big business and so on.

The Dems just promised more and told everyone that we were all equal and we should all share the power... more social programs, more liberties, more to the unions.... Well, everyone wants more, unless the church says it's immoral and sinful or the NRA scares you into believing that your guns were at stake. Enough people became 1 issue voters that the extremes made a slight difference.

This worked..... but then the cost of Vietnam, allowing cheaper imports and giving caught up and Carter was just the worst possible guy to have in there. And "more" took the big hit.

Reagan came in, but the Dems were able to keep the Congress so even though power struggles were there compromises had to be made and it was still ok. But those extremes who wanted more weren't happy, they still wanted more. They went to extremes to get it. Abortion clinics everywhere, take my gun from my cold dead hand, we're killing the Earth, quotas.... etc. During Reagan the extremes had to go further to their extreme to separate themselves and the parties. The parties had to go to the extremes to keep voters and try to grab voters who got tired of the extreme running their party and the other side looked better, more rational.... until they were in it.

And here we are. The parties sold themselves to the extremists, who sold themselves to the lobbyists, who sold themselves to the ultra rich, who want ultimate power and now just pull the puppet strings.

Meanwhile, the average person, IMHO..... just wanted a chance at the American dream but the extremists on both sides took that one thing that unified everyone, the chance for your children to have a better life, and destroyed it.

Hence, IMHO, you have the ordinary citizen scared to speak out believing they just don't get it, because all the media does is show the extremes so they can cater to their target markets.... But the people have gotten wise and pissed and while maybe the puppet masters on the Right thought these "Tea parties" would get people to go back the extreme Right.... it has somewhat backfired because IMHO people are seeing there is a center and they want that. They see both sides are extreme and they want the power back from the extremists and returned to the center.

Bill Maher gets my perspective of the Tea Parties perfectly.
The GOP: divorced from reality - Los Angeles Times

Denounce your radicals. Do it or be them.

very well said on Mahr's part. He's right on the money.

Spot on in my opinion.

Thanks for the post, I don't get Bill anymore. Get 700+ channels and none carry Bill's show. I can get bowling out of the Philippines but no Bill Mahr.

Great read, Thanks Will. And I, too, think Mr. Maher has hit that vacuum of discontent which has been wallpapered with makeshift 'issues' spot on. He nailed it.
I sent it to my Mom and my kids. They will love it. :)

Hm...Republicans have a lot of work to do. Well.conservatives, generally.

that kind of rhetoric was the same kind and tone used when Al Gore lost the election to GWB. I don't put much stock in it, because as a conservative, I don't care what the GOP has to mouth. It's a matter of principles and actions. IF the dems happen to be touting a more conservative plan, then that's where conservatives will go. This was apparent in the SHIFT of conservatives voting for Mr. Obama.

Trouble is, that logic is kinda turned on its head by the tea parties. Obama lowers taxes, and the GOP blasts him for raising taxes. Lately, it seems that the GOP is out to oppose the democrats even when the democrats do what the GOP says it wants.