Is it really though? Yes they are both stead fast in their opposing views, but the Republican view is ######ed and is not representitive of the general population. They are fighting to keep their rich contributors richer while expanding the economic disparity gap. How anyone can argue that the Republican are arguing for anything but self-serving, and potnetially harmful ideals is beyond me. It just makes no sense. I applaud the Dems for finally showing some backbone and telling the GOP to eff themselves here.
Is it really though? Yes they are both stead fast in their opposing views, but the Republican view is ######ed and is not representitive of the general population. They are fighting to keep their rich contributors richer while expanding the economic disparity gap. How anyone can argue that the Republican are arguing for anything but self-serving, and potnetially harmful ideals is beyond me. It just makes no sense. I applaud the Dems for finally showing some backbone and telling the GOP to eff themselves here.
Pretty sure Flash was being facetious.
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I think most of the Tea Party really believes that the ACA will be bad for America and that they want it stopped at all costs. Freedom to choose, it's socialist/commmunist etc. These are points that fit within their world view, and that view is really understandable (even if I disagree with it).
They are doing it because they either really don't know, or don't care that poor people are not getting appropriate or affordable health care insurance. They think these people only deserve it if they can pay for it.
It's not about keeping people rich.
__________________
"Wake up, Luigi! The only time plumbers sleep on the job is when we're working by the hour."
The bottom line is that the Republicans cannot, in their mind, let Obamacare be implemented and successful. If that happens their whole narrative of "socialist" style healthcare being bad for the US will be destroyed. They are doing everything they can to derail it for exactly this reason.
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Assymetrical polarization: The Republicans have gone crazy while the Democrats are mostly the same ideologically over the last 30 years. Both sides?
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Indeed, we find that contemporary polarization is not only real — the ideological distance between the parties has grown dramatically since the 1970s — but also that it is asymmetric — congressional Republicans have moved farther away from the center than Democrats during this period. In two figures below, we plot the mean first dimension DW-NOMINATE scores of the two parties in the House and Senate from 1879 to the present. Since the mid-1970s, Republicans have moved further to the right than Democrats have moved to the left. This rightward shift is especially dramatic among House Republicans, from a mean of 0.22 in 1975 to 0.67 in 2012.
The biggest fear for families such as mine is that we will lose our health insurance and be rendered uninsurable because one of us has been sick. The Affordable Care Act does away with dreaded clauses barring preexisting conditions. It also enables us to keep Mason on our insurance until he is 26; then, he will be able to purchase his own coverage on an insurance exchange. At least, that was the plan until last Tuesday, when the government was shut down in protest of such excesses.
I'm sure some people in the Tea Party have the belief that some people just shouldn't have health care if they can't afford it, that it will cost too much etc etc etc.
But what it is really about in that circle is that this is the first step to a single payer system. It takes the current "acceptable" market based system and forces everyone to participate either by getting insurance or paying a fine. Once you have everyone participating in the system, directly paying for healthcare and, well, enjoying the healthcare they are receiving it is a much easier argument to say "you can have the same thing but it'll be cheaper if we go single payer". This is about the big insurance companies and health care conglomerates. They are the ones desperate to stop this walk towards a single payer system.
Of course, by behaving the way they are they might just give the Democrats the legislative power to move things further down the path to a single payer system.
Barton, a right-wing state lawmaker who thinks she knows how to spell Hitler references, is angry about the government shutdown affecting national parks. From there, she somehow convinced herself that the president is "dictating beyond his authority." How? No one knows.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
American business leaders, typically staunch supporters of (and donors to) the GOP, are turning against the Tea Party idiots and openly telling Republicans to stop playing Russian roulette with the global economy. They've even gone so far as to say they'll provide financial support to moderate Republicans in primary battles to oust the Tea Party extremists.
“We are looking at ways to counter the rise of an ideological brand of conservatism that, for lack of a better word, is more anti-establishment than it has been in the past,” said David French, the top lobbyist at the National Retail Federation. “We have come to the conclusion that sitting on the sidelines is not good enough.”
Some warned that a default could spur a shift in the relationship between the corporate world and the Republican Party. Long intertwined by mutual self-interest on deregulation and lower taxes, the business lobby and Republicans are diverging not only over the fiscal crisis, but on other major issues like immigration reform, which was favored by business groups and party leaders but stymied in the House by many of the same lawmakers now leading the debt fight.
Joe Echevarria, the chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, said, “I’m a Republican by definition and by registration, but the party seems to have split into two factions.”
While both parties have extreme elements, he suggested, only in the G.O.P. did the extreme element exercise real power. “The extreme right has 90 seats in the House,” Mr. Echevarria said. “Occupy Wall Street has no seats.”
[...]
In the two previous battles over the debt limit, many chief executives were reluctant to take sides, banding together in groups like Fix the Debt, which spent millions of dollars on a campaign urging Democrats and Republicans to work toward a “grand bargain” on the budget. But with shutdown a reality, and the clock ticking toward default, some of those same executives now place the blame squarely on conservative Republicans in the House.
“It’s clearly this faction within the Republican Party that’s causing the issue right now,” said David M. Cote, the chief executive of Honeywell and a steering board member of Fix the Debt.
[...]
Michael J. Driscoll, a former managing director of Bear, Stearns & Co. and lifelong Republican from New York, said he would not be surprised if Wall Street executives began to shift some of the giving away from House lawmakers.
“One thing about Wall Street, it is very aware of who is working in their best interest,” he said.
Emphasis added. Anyone who still thinks both sides are to blame for this mess would be well-advised to take note.
I think most of the Tea Party really believes that the ACA will be bad for America and that they want it stopped at all costs. Freedom to choose, it's socialist/commmunist etc. These are points that fit within their world view, and that view is really understandable (even if I disagree with it).
They are doing it because they either really don't know, or don't care that poor people are not getting appropriate or affordable health care insurance. They think these people only deserve it if they can pay for it.
It's not about keeping people rich.
They also view poor people as having played a role in their own poverty and thus not being able to pay for health care means they don't deserve health care.
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'They' (financial backers of extremist candidates) also seek out those with ardent, hardened belief systems that are unchanging in the face of contrary evidence. This appeal to specific hardened ideology (kick out mexicans, healthcare is communism) are not rational, evidentiary ideologies, they are knee jerk obstinates and often outright bigotry, xenophobia and repugnant contemptuousness is THE desired and groomed trait.
The more obstructionist, the better. The more unintelligent, the better. The more ardent and resolute in their own misguided ideology the better. Once you've got a few of them picked out, you stick them in a room together where all they hear is the crazy echoes of their own disgusting and overly dramatic narratives about debt, climate, gay marriage, abortion, the war against christmas etc and before you know it, these potential candidates have to out-do the crazy of their peers to reach the top of the heap.
In many localities and strong republican districts in America, this is the primary system for election to public office.
To the dismay of the american public, that's how the last GOP Presidential Primary went as well.
Bob Dole: "Reagan wouldn't have made it. Nixon wouldn't have made it; he had ideas."
Last edited by Flash Walken; 10-10-2013 at 05:00 PM.
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One thing that stands out to me watching the Americans plunge to the right is that Barry Goldwater now sounds reasonable whereas when he ran for president in 64, he was considered a far right wingnut.
One thing that stands out to me watching the Americans plunge to the right is that Barry Goldwater now sounds reasonable whereas when he ran for president in 64, he was considered a far right wingnut.
Goldwater also blatantly race baited, so lets not go too far.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterJoji
Johnny eats garbage and isn’t 100% committed.
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One thing that stands out to me watching the Americans plunge to the right is that Barry Goldwater now sounds reasonable whereas when he ran for president in 64, he was considered a far right wingnut.
Can you imagine any Republican saying the following today?
Quote:
On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.
I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."
-Barry Goldwater, 1981
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