I'm still confused. I mean, I understand that Obama could give you a million dollars and you'd still hate him, but what exactly is he supposed to do. His party passed a law he supported (by a super-majority). This law has survived a presidential election, senate elections, a supreme court challenge, and more. So why do paying our bills and running our government have to be dependent on reversing said law. This whole thing was such a non-starter, what should he do. He ignored it for the most point because it was so bafflingly stupid. Now people are losing money because 30 tea party guys think they have a mandate to repeal ACA or shut the entire country down.

I mean, if he had said things sternly or deadpanned instead of "whining" would it make you feel better? I mean, just say, "I hate Obama, nothing he does will ever make me happy until he's a republican and agrees with my stances," rather than spew some silliness about his message being whiny.

To be honest, I'm actually happy that Obama and the Senate Democrats are actually standing up for their beliefs instead of caving to the House Republicans. For once, Obama is showing some leadership by saying, no, we won't cave to a bunch of rabble rousers who want to re-legislate bills that already passed in a budget process.

I'd counter with frustration over a huge and complicated bill that has thousands of pages that no one aside from the lobbyists read before it was passed because the Democrats had to pass it through the Senate quickly after they lost the special election in Massachusetts. And the House, then controlled by the Democrats, passed it, but couldn't make any changes because the Senate would have declined.

That's not how something so massive it reinvents government control over our daily lives should be addressed.

I'm not saying the Republicans have the answers here. I'm saying this was forced through our system in the most unpleasant, ridiculous, inane and harmful partisan manner humanly possible. Obama wanted this legislation so badly that he sacrificed House Democratic control in 2010 (red-district Democrats were forced to support it, at great cost). It's basically the only thing he's done in five years, and it's truly terrible legislation.

Now could he and the Republicans sit down tomorrow and craft well-thought-out fixes that actually address problems in the health-care system? Real reform rather than a massive tax increase with very little benefit? Hell no. The Republicans are incapable, just as the Democrats are incapable these days.

But the way this bill was forced through, mistakes and all, greatly added to the partisan mess we have today. And now we have this horrible bill that doesn't address real health care reform and a two-party system where the two parties really hate each other and are willing to shut everything down because the president is banking everything on Obamacare somehow working despite every indication that it will cause chaos starting in January and knows that modification is impossible in this climate.

A real leader would step back and lead. This is more the audacity of hope - hope that this legislation isn't as bad as it appears.

I don't think the bill matters much in the partisan divide. I think political strategy these days is to just oppose everything the other person does. I mean for as horrible as this legislation supposedly is, Republicans were the one's proposing it 20 years ago and they ran a candidate for President last year who actually implemented it into law. So they may say they hate it, but their actions have said otherwise.

Same can be said for Democrats and Guantanamo, Afghanistan, or the NSA spying. Partisans don't care about the actual issue, they just want to position themselves on the other side of it. It's debate club for man-children.

Yes, I'm sure he could just talk them into negotiating by some kind words. How out of touch with this world are you?

This. I consider the Tea Party to be one of the worst developments in American political history. They're a group of narrow-minded zealots with a simpleton's view of politics and all the emotional control of a toddler in the throes of their terrible twos.

And I say that as a pragmatism-oriented moderate (slightly left-leaning overall, in all fairness, but with views on both sides of the aisle, depending on the issue in question) who identifies with neither party.

How does this not describe the entire Republican agenda since Obama took office? Everything has been done to sabotage his Presidency from the start. No attempts to actually help our country. Let's focus on proving he is illegitimate and destroying Obamacare! For the party that is so opposed to abortion, all they've done is try to abort this law by any means possible. I hope they are punished accordingly in the next election.

Do you really think it's a good idea to enshrine a system where the minority party gets to overturn passed legislation if they only threaten enough harm to the country?

Obama has already agreed to GOP funding levels in the CR.

LOL. You mean the supposed tea party that the news outlets paint with a very narrow brush or the actual group of taxpayers that is worried about a 17 trillion dollar debt? Because I would love to hear the sophisticated reasoning behind why not one government program is worth cutting back on from the enlightened.

I hope this farce of reform is stopped by any means necessary...unfortunately I dont see that happening.

Its really a shame how far America has tumbled during our generation...

A lot of programs have been cut back on. The Tea Party isn't worried about the debt though which is why they never push to cut programs that can actually reduce the debt (like the military).

I see you're playing on your Jumping to Conclusions mat.

I've never said that "not one government program is worth cutting back on". Personally, I think there's programs that could be cut back on, first and foremost defense. While it's important to have a strong military, when a single country has over 40% of the world's expenditure on defense, that's a pretty clear indication of an area that could stand to have considerable cuts without losing its position of military dominance.

This nonsensical bit alone discredits the rest of your post. Serious hyperbole going on here.

In one of the CR stunts the GOP sent to the Senate the medical device tax was eliminated, thereby adding to the deficit.

Again which tea party? The one I am familiar with (which existed before Fox News tried to put their face on it) is very anti-policing the world. I also know a lot of people that feel the same way. Of course the Fox News type people are only against intervention because it's Obama's presidency but there is a core group of people who feel the military spending is outragously out of control.

The jumping to conclusions mat huh?


My response was there are two different groups. The tea party you refer to is the one Fox News and CNN jumped on as (depending on which station) either small government heroes or racist religious fanatics. There is also a group of people (who called themselves the tea party well before '08) who want to cut the 17 trillion dollar budget. They are very fiscally conservative including military spending. It's hard to respond to your post when you group the two together. (And from your jump to conclusions comment I assume you would be irratated if one would do that)

No one is talking about the Tea Party you're talking about because it doesn't matter and has no political sway.

Which one of those groups do the majority of the "Tea Party" members of Congress belong to?

SI

That's right. Rand Paul and Mike Lee get zero airtime and have no influence at all on the GOP. Though you are right the GOP was able to ignore Ron Paul for a long time but now the message seems to get a lot of mainstream airtime. Feel free to ignore a significant portion of GOP voters but its pretty dumb to imply they don't have any political sway.

I never said majority at any point. I was talking about the broad brush Izulde was using to address how awful tHE tea party movement is. Ignoring that the original tea party actually had proposals to avoid the government shuting down. (Now whether you agree or not with them is a whole other discussion but they definitely included cutting the military)

Don't tie your political movement to a guy who doesn't understand the basics of the economy and wrote newsletters about how to kill minorities and get away with it. Then it might get taken more seriously.

Is Michelle Bachmann part of your Tea Party?

I don't think Rand Paul is the kind of guy you want to hook your horses to.

LOL. These current members of Congress are doing a fantastic job with the economy. And the newletter that his father was tied to now talked about killing minorities and getting away with it? That's a shocking twist. Untrue but sure sounds good.

No.

EDIT for clarity: She tried to adopt a lot of Ron Paul's positions. But still kept the religious nonsense and war mongering and was clueless on the real freedom message. The media decided she was an easier target though and starting calling her the tea party.

Why not?

Ok, well, she launched and chaired the Tea Party Caucus of which Mike Lee and Rand Paul are members.

It's hard to tell who is part of the panerd-approved-Tea Party and the panderd-disapproved-Tea Party. Is there a scorecard?

Answer the question panerd.

If you want to "hive off" certain people that you feel are "original Tea Party" versus "Fox News Tea Party" then at least define it so that we can have an actual discussion about which one is causing the dysfunction in government.

I think Rand Paul and Mike Lee are extremists, but two extremists are not the problem. Congress has always had an extremist or two on either side (Kucinich? Sanders? Ron Paul?). The problem is the faction that has decided that a government shutdown and continuing to fight a scorched-earth, sore-loser battle at every possible opportunity, even those wholly unrelated, over a LAW that was passed by both houses, signed by the President, and affirmed as constitutional by a right-leaning Supreme Court (of all things) is "governing."

So unless you're going to play some cutesy "well it's split right down the middle 50/50 between "original tea party" and "fox tea party" and therefore you can't assign them any blame at all" how about you join the conversation with the rest of us about the faction that's actually causing the problem and stop playing semantics about an "original tea party" of extremists that are not the real issue.

Yes. Sadly Rand Paul plays the game more than Ron Paul which means he does (foolish in panerd's mind) things like supporting Romney for president and joining that caucus. Though one could say he sure gets a lot more air time due to these choices. However his positions do not including warmongering or killing Muslims like Bachmann.

My point (described in the next post to Ronnie Dobbs) was that many citizens in the "tea party movement" and members of Congress like Rand Paul don't believe in the warmongering that Izlude alluded to in his rant about how dumb they all are.

Right. So I go back to saying the panerd-approved-Tea Party is not the one anyone is talking about because it doesn't matter and has no political sway. You can assume from now on that when people bash the Tea Party there is an implied "but not the ones panerd likes" and save us all this drama.

Just because one group doesn't do something well doesn't mean whatever group you support is automatically right.

It wasn't a newsletter Ron Paul was tied to, it was a newsletter he wrote. Here is just one of the many revelations in it.

This.

I've always heard about the newsletters but never actually read them. If the huge scorn of racism is talking about shooting carjackers I have have misled all these years to how terrible these newsletters were. I guess the PC police assume animal means all blacks and not carjackers who you know are committing a crime. Wow what a damning piece!

EDIT: And the newsletter certainly is fear mongering of the 1000th degree but racist? Black youths in gangs would commit most carjackings. I wouldn't think there would even be a debate on this.

DOUBLE EDIT: Before the PC police descend on this thread... Was the article (whatever it was) really out of line? Absolutely. Enough to be brought up 30 years later all the time? Not what you quoted. I thought the newsletters talked about lynching or something, not shooting carjackers.

FBI — Table 43

Doesn't break out carjacking vs. other types of vehicle theft, and I suppose it's not clear if carjacking is included in vehicle theft or violent crime (my guess is violent crime), but either way, significantly more whites than blacks arrested for both.

We all know that once upon a time there was a tea party group that was exclusively concerned with financial issues. We all also know that group was co-opted by the likes of Bachmann, Palin, and Beck. The latter group is far more numerous than the former group. It's painfully obvious who Izulde was talking about in his post, so I'm not sure why Panerd pretended not to know.

I often fly off the handle and spout off "facts" that don't end up being accurate or at least have giant holes in them. I think I will stick with carjackings being predominantly a black/gang/inner city crime. I am pretty sure I am not wrong on this.

I don't think you are either http://http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/c02.pdf

So despite seeing a table that spells out the percentages of white versus black carjackings, you're going to go with your gut?

Nice find Ronnie. My honest inclination was that panerd was actually right about that too, but I thought I'd do a quick google and see what i could find. Didn't see your link obviously.

Interesting that it's mostly a black-on-black crime though.

It wasn't carjackings but ok. Yes I will stick with my gut.

I think the bit about how you run away, wipe your gun clean, and make sure the gun isn't registered to you would suggest you are doing something illegal. It sure reads like someone teaching you how to kill black kids and getting away with it.

Some more tidbits from the newsletters:

1) Our government created AIDS

2) Israel and the Jews were responsible for the WTC bombing in 1993

3) IRS agents will start showing up at your door with AK-47s

4) 95% of blacks in DC are criminals

5) Employees forced to perform sexual acts on their bosses should just quit and have no legal rights to fight it.

6) Changes to our currency (mainly adding color to it) was a plot to track Americans.

He talks a lot about the impending race wars, says the government will be nuking it's citizens soon, and the new world order is on its way. Of course none of these things happened and they sound like the rantings of a lunatic, but keep hitching your horse to him.

Yeah - just to clarify: even if most carjackings are committed by African Americans that doesn't make what he wrote in the newsletter at all "right."

No doubt. I don't think the carjackers are coming out to the white communities in Texas and raping and killing their children. And there is no better way to describe it then fearmongering to an audience. I was only saying that these newsletters were always brought up as racism in its worst form so I had assumed there was the N word or lynching or something in them. These are quite tame and pretty dumb and silly. I feel sorry for the people who paid to recieve them.

Like I said in an earlier post to DT I won't debate the content as I have no reason to feel like the person is lying but two points...

1) I recall the same fearmongering back in 1995-96 that turned out to not be true most of the time.

2) The federal government is even more inept that I originally thought if they can't figure out a way to keep the essential life-saving services going with all of the money they have even with a "shutdown". It's not like there is $0 in the government right now. Once the shutdown ends I would fire the person in charge of the department that killed the cancer kids.

I think fearmongering that any African-American you see in your neighborhood is a carjacker who wants to rape and kill your kids is infinitely more damaging than the N-word or an off color joke about lynching, no? I think it's the exact opposite of tame, dumb and silly.

Well I don't read the Rainmaker quote the same as you do. I don't agree with Ron Paul but it is quite clear he is talking about carjackers and you want to make it into something more. Not much room for discussion if we both read the same thing and come to those exact opposite conclusions.

"It is the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos"

You are just playing dumb at this point.

Well this wouldn't be considered a life saving service, since it's a clinical trial. And they've taken the money they have for trials and continued to fund the existing trials since ending those would ruin all the data. They're just not able to start new trials and had to cancel some of the ones that were planned.