The Republican Right Wing Extremist Tea Party continues to hold the US Government hostage. Looking like this could go on a while with the House crazies looking to link raising the Debt Ceiling to Obamacare. First up today a little humor. Following that is a TV advertisement that ran yesterday and captures the essence of what is going on in the House of Representatives!
I think you will like this…….
So the latest from the Republican party, by way of Dennis Ross, is that the shutdown of the US Government, and dance with the devil threat to allow the US to default on its debt, is now all about Pride. Read all about it in this article from Huffington Post.
WASHINGTON — With the government shutdown in its fifth day, many Republicans have conceded the fight is no longer about Obamacare. Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) added his name to the list on Saturday, saying the matter now boils down to “pride.”
“Republicans have to realize how many significant gains we’ve made over the last three years, and we have, not only in cutting spending but in really turning the tide on other things,” Ross told The New York Times. “We can’t lose all that when there’s no connection now between the shutdown and the funding of Obamacare.”
“I think now it’s a lot about pride,” he added.
The fight over keeping the government open began with Republicans insisting that any funding bill include anti-Obamacare provisions, starting with a full-fledged campaign led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to defund the health care law. When that plan was rejected by the Senate, House Republicans offered a series of spending bills that continued to chip away at Obamacare; their final offer included a one-year delay of the law’s individual mandate and a ban on federal health care subsidies to members of Congress and their staffs.
Ross told Bloomberg that Republicans had “lost the [continuing resolution] battle.”
“We need to move on and take whatever we can find in the debt limit,” he said.
But many of his colleagues, particularly in the House GOP’s right flank, have refused to back down. Comments made by Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) last week underscore Ross’ suggestion that many Republicans believe what’s at stake is no longer a matter of policy but one of pride.
“We’re not going to be disrespected … We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is,” Stutzman said.
The Indiana Republican later apologized, saying he had “carelessly misrepresented” the budget debate.
House Republicans have pushed a series of targeted spending bills to fund parts of the government, notably those that have received the most attention, such as the National Institutes of Health, Veterans Affairs, and parks and museums. The White House and Senate Democrats have rejected the piecemeal approach, pointing out that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has the votes to reopen the entire government.
The Republican Right Wing Extremist Tea Party continues to hold the US Government hostage. Looking like this could go on a while.
Today I want to address why I am taking so much time addressing United States politics in a music blog. The bottom line is that in the United States we have small group of right wing extremist that are trying to fundamentally change our way of government. These people want to impose their political, and religious, beliefs on everyone in the United States and they are willing to ignore the rule of law to do so. I consider this to be a serious attack and feel that it is my duty as an involved US citizen to do whatever I can to fight it. This blog is my weapon.
I have always been very inspired by the poem, To Italy, by Giacomo Leopardi. My favorite section of the poem goes something like this and hopefully helps to explain what I was trying to express above:
How hast thou fallen from thy pride of place to this abyss of misery!
Are there none to combat for thee, to defend thy cause?
To arms!
Alone I’ll fight and fall for thee!
Content that if my best blood strike forth one spark
To fire the bosoms of my countrymen
If you aren’t familiar with the work of Giacomo I strongly suggest that you check him out, he is widely regarded as the greatest Italian poet of the 19th century!
The Republican Right Wing Extremist Tea Party continues to hold the US Government hostage. Looking like this could go on a while. The remainder of today’s posts is composed entirely of editorial cartoons at the focus. Let’s laugh for a while……
Rick Joyner, a noted right wing extremist minister, has called for a military takeover of the US. The video of this was removed from YouTube based on a demand from MorningStar Ministries, the “religious organization” that Mr. Joyner leads. This is scary shit……the details are provided in an article from Huffington Post below. Note: the article below originally included the video of Mr. Joyner’s call for military takeover but it was removed from YouTube as I noted above. I have substituted a related video where Mr. Joyner claims that the video was edited.
By: Bill Wilson
“We estimate that between 28 percent and 34 percent of officers and NCOs (non-commissioned officers) in the U.S. military would either back or be extremely sympathetic to Joyner” — Mikey Weinstein, founder and head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Amidst chaos in Washington, while Republicans in Congress are accused of holding the “full faith and credit” of the United States hostage through the current government shutdown, a leader of the newly emerging, reorganized religious right who has ties to prominent Tea Party Republicans has just called for a “military takeover.”
In a September 30, 2013 broadcast, as reported by Raw Story and Religious Right Watch, Morningstar Ministries head Rick Joyner — a leading prophet and apostle in the theocratic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation who has ties to former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin [see: 1, 2] and other leading Tea Party-aligned Republicans — publicly issued a call for a coup – a “military takeover” of the United States government and the imposition of martial law.
In an interview with former Reagan administration lawyer Michael “Mikey” Weinstein — who formed the civil rights watchdog organization the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) after discovering a pattern of coercive evangelizing at his former alma mater, the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs — Weinstein told me his organization estimated that between 28 percent and 34 percent of officers and NCOs in the United States military were adherents to a supremacist form of Christianity known as dominionism who might back or at least be sympathetic to evangelist Joyner’s call for a coup.
“It is a terrible mistake to dismiss Joyner as merely fringe. The opposite is true,” explained Weinstein, who emphasized that there are dozens of dominionist evangelical para-church organizations engaging in what MRFF views as predatory evangelizing in the military. “Complacency is complicity,” warned Weinstein, who called Rick Joyner’s call for a military takeover a “red line” and also a “wretched” form of “sedition.”
“We are most concerned about a fusion between dominionist Christianity and the military’s weapons of mass destruction,” warned Weinstein, who says his client base, members of the military who turn to MRFF for protection against coercive evangelizing, is approaching 35,000. Most of those MRFF clients, according to Weinstein, are Christians who are targeted for holding the wrong doctrine and theology.
Morningstar Ministries founder Joyner, who over the last decade has partially rebuilt the crashed real estate and media empire of disgraced TV evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who were caught up in a 1980s scandal which led to a flurry of media claims that the religious right was spent as a political force, has promoted the claim that President Obama’s health care reform legislation includes a provision to create a left-wing paramilitary force akin to Hitler’s Nazi “brownshirts.”
Despite his promotion of fringe right-wing conspiracy theory, Joyner — accorded the status of “prophet” within his movement — boasts ties to Republicans such as former Senator Jim DeMint, now head of the mammoth Heritage Foundation and to evangelists in the upper echelon of Christianity Today such as the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, and some surprising international connections as well — Joyner has frequented an internationalist conference co-hosted by a close confident of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
[Video, below: Morningstar Ministries head Rick Joyner calls for a “military takeover”]
(NOTE: I can’t show you the video included with the article…..MorningStar Ministries made YouTube take it down. I have substituted another video by RightWingWatch.org that features a interview with Rick Joyner.)
In his call for a “military takeover” and “martial law,” because the nation has been so allegedly “undermined,” Rick Joyner omitted several relevant aspects:
First, Morningstar Ministries head Joyner is a significant leader in one of the most militant streams of the religious right (the New Apostolic Reformation) which, in turn, has for three decades have been engaged in a slow-motion takeover of the Republican Party.
The religious right takeover of the GOP helped power the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress and by 2000, according to a survey released in 2002 by Campaigns & Elections magazine, the Christian right had “strong” or “moderate” influence in the majority of state Republican Party structures.
In its new guise, as the “Tea Party,” the religious right also drove the 2010 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives and of numerous state legislators and governor’s seats across the nation.
From those positions of power, after both the 1994 and 2010 takeovers, religious right affiliated Republicans have pursued an insurrectionary agenda, blocking significant national legislation and shutting down the federal government — in short, Rick Joyner’s own movement can be accused of working to undermine the Republic and American democracy.
Second, Joyner’s movement itself claims to have infiltrated the U.S. government and the United States military with its “apostles.” So Joyner’s appeal to the “Lord” to effect a military takeover can be taken at face value or, alternately, as a coded appeal to those apostles to carry out Joyner’s vision for divine national redemption via a coup.
While such a possibility may seem unlikely, over the last three decades the dominionist religious right has waged an aggressive, ongoing campaign to promote its supremacist political ideology within the United States military — often in violation of regulations concerning improper and coercive evangelizing in the military according to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which fights such predatory evangelism.
In the forefront of the campaign to impose a narrowly sectarian form of Christian dominionist ideology on the military has been the enormous 1/2-billion dollar a year international ministry Campus Crusade For Christ — whose Military Ministries division has advertised a goal [also see 1] of turning United States military personnel into “government paid missionaries” and of “transforming the nations of the world through the militaries of the world”.
In December 2006, Campus Crusade’s Washington D.C.-based Christian Embassy ministry came under fire after a MRFF Washington press conference exposed a video produced by the ministry, filmed inside the Pentagon and featuring Pentagon officials who declared that their primary loyalty is to their religious faith rather than to their appointed positions in the military.
Explaining his participation in the video, Major General John Catton said he thought Campus Crusade’s Christian Embassy was a “quasi-federal agency.” A subsequent investigation by the Department of Defense Inspector General vindicated Mikey Weinstein’s MRFF with a finding of misconduct on the part of Pentagon officials who participated in the Christian Embassy video.
Campus Crusade founder and longtime head William Rohl “Bill” Bright, a close colleague of mega-evangelist Billy Graham, called his ministry efforts a “conspiracy to overthrow the world,” blamed rising crime during the 1960s on lack of prayer in schools, claimed homosexuality helped cause the downfall of classical Greece and the Roman Empire.
Bright, a key founder of the modern religious right participated in the Coalition on Revival, an ecumenical Protestant organization whose members pledged a blood oath to impose their version of Christian theocracy, and Biblical law, on America and the world.
In May 2013 the LGBT rights nonprofit Truth Wins Out released a report exposing Campus Crusade’s support, in Africa, for legislation to make homosexuality a capital offense.
Third, while Joyner, in his new call for a military coup, bemoaned a “joyful disregard of the constitution,” Rick Joyner has himself called for a coercive, authoritarian religious state that would seem to have little room for the Bill of Rights and which would forcible re-educate American citizens:
In a 2007 prophecy published June 19, 2007 on the Elijahlist website, which Rick Joyner gave in tandem with apostle Dutch Sheets, Joyner explained, in a subsection titled “The Coming Kingdom,”
The kingdom of God will not be socialism, but a freedom even greater than anyone on earth knows at this time. At first it may seem like totalitarianism, as the Lord will destroy the antichrist spirit now dominating the world with “the sword of His mouth” and will shatter many nations like pottery. However, fundamental to His rule is II Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Instead of taking away liberties and becoming more domineering, the kingdom will move from a point of necessary control while people are learning truth, integrity, honor, and how to make decisions, to increasing liberty so that they can. [emphases in the original]
Joyner’s co-author in the 2007 prophetic communique was evangelist and NAR apostle Dutch Sheets, who according to a 2006 Charisma magazine article was one of several NAR leaders who helped ‘mentor’ former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris – who helped tip the disputed 2000 U.S. presidential election in favor of George W. Bush.
While Joyner’s charismatic New Apostolic Reformation is by any account a minority movement within Protestant Christianity, it has claimed influence over a number of prominent Republicans, from 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, to 2012 election Republican hopefuls Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, as well as former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former U.S. Senator-turned Kansas governor Sam Brownback.
Underlying the ideological and political extremity of the NAR, consider several data points:
1) The NAR has been tied [see 1, 2] to an effort, in the African country of Uganda, to legislate LGBTI citizens out of existence and one of the NAR’s prominent prophets, TheCall founder Lou Engle, through his ministry behind a 2008 GOTV campaign in favor of California’s anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8 ballot initiative.
2) C. Peter Wagner, perhaps the NAR’s leading theorist and political organizer, promotes a “theology of war,” traces his movement’s dominion theology to the writing of Christian Reconstructism founder R.J. Rushdoony, and calls upon believers to take over significant sectors of society, the so-called “Seven Mountains” and rule “like kings.”
3) Wagner and other top theorists in his movement, such as Ed Silvoso and Cindy Jacobs (each regarded as serving the dual roles as both “apostle” and “prophet”), advocate that believers burn or otherwise destroy art and religious scripture tied to every religious and philosophical belief system on Earth regarded as being in competition with Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation — a maximally supremacist doctrine reminiscent of the 2001 Taliban dynamiting of Afghanistan’s UNESCO-designated Buddhas of Bamiyan.
The identity of the NAR’s alleged “apostles in the military,” mentioned by apostle Dutch Sheets at a 2008 New Apostolic Reformation conference in Texas, is mostly speculative but one is known for certain — the late Jim Ammerman, who ran a chaplain endorsing agency that is responsible for credentialing a substantial percentage of active-duty chaplains in the United States military.
A long-time apostle in one of the main apostolic bodies in C. Peter Wagner’s emerging New Apostolic Reformation, the International Coalition of Apostles, during the 1990s Jim Ammerman toured the United States telling audiences that Jewish bankers, in league with the anti-Christ, were plotting to enslave Americans under a military dictatorship enforced by United Nations, German, and Chinese troops hidden in U.S. national parks. According to Ammerman, then-President Bill Clinton, an agent of the Illuminati, would sign over American sovereignty to UN control, after which foreign troops would intern American citizens in prepared FEMA concentration camps.
In 2008, the official newsletter of Jim Ammerman’s chaplain endorsing agency carried an op-ed calling for the execution of Democratic Party Senators Dodd, Biden, Clinton, and Obama, for the alleged crime of opposing legislation to make English the official language of the United States.
Ammerman’s conspiracy theories were echoed in a 2009 video from Morningstar Ministries’ Oak initiative, a Tea Party-aligned political organizing initiative which features the participation of Christianity Today board member Samuel Rodriguez, who at a 2009 Oak Initiative conference called for the creation of a Christian “Tea Party.”
In 2010, the Oak Initiative released a video statement from former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense William “Jerry” Boykin, who claimed that Barack Obama’s health care reform legislation contained a provision to create a private “constabulary force, a force that can control the population.” Warned Boykin,
Remember, Hitler had the Brownshirts… if you read the healthcare legislation, it’s actually in the healthcare legislation. There are paragraphs in the healthcare legislation that talk about the commissioning of officers, i time of a national crisis, to work directly for the president. It’s laying the groundwork for a constabulary force that will control the population in America.
But in his September 30, 2013 “Prophetic Perspectives” series broadcast, Morningstar Ministries head Rick Joyner called for a military coup that would do just that — ‘control the population’, and Joyner’s 2007 “prophecy” indicates that Joyner’s vision for such a military dictatorship would be as coercive as the “constabulary force” Boykin warned of. Declared Joyner,
I mean, there’s no way our Republic can last much longer. It may not last through Obama’s second term. There are a lot of people that feel, you know, it can’t. There are forces right now seeking to undermine and to destroy the Republic. There’s almost a glib and almost a joyful disregard of the constitution, and a belittling of the constitution. We can’t make it without that — that’s our foundation, our moorings. We’re heading for serious tyranny.
[…]
I think we’ve been used in some wonderful and powerful ways by God, we’ve been one of the most generous nations in history, we’ve done so much good — and that’s why I appeal to the Lord — don’t let us be totally destroyed. Please, raise up those who will save us. And as I start telling friends from a long time that no election’s going to get the right person in there that can restore us because the system is so broken, so undermined right now — the whole system.
I believe our only hope is a military takeover: martial law.
**********************
Both Morningstar Ministries head Rick Joyner, NAR guru C. Peter Wagner, NAR apostle Dutch Sheets, NAR prophet Lou Engle of TheCall, and the late Campus Crusade For Christ founder and head Bill Bright are among the endorsers of the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer, which is at the narrative center of the soon to be premiering video documentary God Loves Uganda, that examines the role of American charismatic evangelicals in a mounting crusade of anti-gay hatred in the Africa nation of Uganda — where legislation that would make active homosexuality a capital crime has loomed before Uganda’s parliament since 2009.
The Republican Right Wing Extremist Tea Party continues to hold the US Government hostage. Looking like this could go on a while. Editorial cartoon of the day is provided below. At this point you have to laugh…..
Now that we have laughed a little bit, on to more serious stuff. Here’s the a great article from Huffington Post with President Obama’s response to the quote from Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) that I posted about yesterday. Republicans continue to say the darndest things……..
President Barack Obama on Thursday capitalized on an earlier remark by Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) that Republicans had to “get something” out of negotiations to reopen the government, even if they didn’t know what they wanted in concessions.
“Just yesterday one House Republican said — I didn’t make this up,” Obama said while speaking at a small construction company in Rockville, Md., “‘We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this, and I don’t know what that even is.'” The quote drew laughs from the audience.
“That was a quote!” Obama said.
“If you’re being disrespected, it’s because of that attitude that you’ve got that you deserve to get something for doing your job! Everybody here just does their job, right?” the president continued. “If you’re working here and in the middle of the day, you just stopped and said, ‘You know what? I want to get something, but I don’t know exactly what I’m going get, but — I’m just going to stop working until I get something. I’m going to shut down the whole plant until I get something.'”
“You’d get fired!” he said to applause.
Stutzman said to the Washington Examiner Wednesday, “We’re not going to be disrespected … We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”
Today I bring you Rep. Randy Neugebauer who as you can see above is proud to be Texas’ Most Conservative. A man that feels like it’s Ok to berate a Park Ranger for doing her job by turning people away from National Monuments that are closed because of Randy and his Tea Party compatriots. The best part; however, is that he runs away like a big pussy when confronted by others about the real problem…..(Thanks to Huffington Post for the article below)……
Day two of Government Shutdown 2013 offered America plenty of surreal moments, from the brief and ridiculous re-emergence of the Grand Bargain, to the sight of multiple members of a universally reviled governing body offering to give up their paychecks as if they thought it was a move worthy of a medal. But nowhere did Salvador Dali’s clocks warp and melt under the heat of sustained stupidity as badly as they did down at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Yesterday, it became pretty obvious that if you wanted to catch the eye of any Beltway reporter to discuss what you were enduring during the shutdown, you had to go on down to this memorial to make your case. Unfortunately, that’s where many members of Congress decided to while away their day as well. As Ryan Reilly reported, heroic members of Congress turned out to boldly grandstand at the memorial, pretending just as hard as they could that its temporary closure was the most dire effect of the shutdown … for which … they voted. Yes, that was by far the most surreal thing about it. Gawker’s Tom Scocca turned the best phrase about the whole mess, describing those lawmakers as committing “an act of civil disobedience against themselves.”
But Mark Segraves, reporting for NBC News’ Washington affiliate, managed to capture the howler highlight of the Great World War II Memorial Bleat-n-Repeat — Rep. Randy Neugebauer’s (R-Tex.) Wednesday confrontation of a poor park ranger on the scene — who was doing nothing more than her job — blaming her for the closure he voted for and telling her that she should be ashamed of herself.
Seriously, this actually happened. Per Segraves:
“How do you look at them and … deny them access?” said Neugebauer. He, with most House Republicans, had voted early Sunday morning to pass a funding measure that would delay the Affordable Care Act, a vote that set up a showdown with the Senate and President Barack Obama. With the parties unable to agree on how to fund the federal government, non-essential government functions shut down Tuesday.”It’s difficult,” responded the Park Service employee.
“Well, it should be difficult,” replied the congressman, who was carrying a small American flag in his breast pocket.
“It is difficult,” responded the Park Service employee. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“The Park Service should be ashamed of themselves,” the congressman said.
“I’m not ashamed,” replied the ranger.
From there, Segraves reports, “a crowd of onlookers got involved,” and began loudly demanding that Neugebauer lay off the park ranger, pointing out again and again that the reason everyone was in the position they were in was due to the fact that Congress very specifically put them there. Neugebauer countered that it was all really Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) fault, but that failed to impress anyone.
What’s really ghastly about this is that the whole “Harry Reid shut down the government” line is a talking point. It’s “messaging” — the mostly disingenuous bilge that politicos spit in order to gain some phantom upper hand in a war of rhetoric that plays itself out in the press. It’s not intended to be sincere, it’s all posturing — throwing sub-standard witticisms at a wall in the hopes that something will stick and convince people.
This is all stuff intended for an audience of reporters — and in that setting, all is fair. But you’re not actually supposed to extend “messaging” out into the world of ordinary human Americans in this fashion, and victimize park rangers with it.
What’s also inane about this is that, as Segraves takes pains to point out, the park rangers deployed to the World War II Memorial, while enforcing the closure of the memorial to the general public, are also there to make sure that the Honor Flight veterans who come to the memorial get access to the site. So, by impeding her from doing her job, all Neugebauer was doing was impeding access for the Honor Flight veterans. And telling the ranger that she should be ashamed? Man, that’s not a good look, and the gathered crowd made sure Neugebauer learned that the hard way.
Got to give credit to the ranger for standing her ground and doing her job with professionalism, in the face of an idiot who really needs to learn his place.
I offer up this Raspberries classic and dedicate it to the Tea Party who truly doesn’t know what they want…..(reference my post from earlier today)…….but they want it NOW!
The Republican Right Wing Extremist Tea Party continues to hold the US Government hostage. Looking like this could go on a while. Editorial cartoon of the day is provided below. At this point you have to laugh…..
Now that we have laughed a little bit, on to more serious stuff. Here’s the Huffington Post headline from this morning and my personal pick of shutdown article of the day.
House Republicans are continuing to play hardball in negotiations over the spending bill that precipitated the government shutdown on Oct. 1, apparently out of fear that compromise would weaken their power.
“We’re not going to be disrespected,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told The Washington Examiner. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”
The GOP spent much of Wednesday blaming President Barack Obama and the Democrats for the effects of the shutdown, which led to the furlough of 800,000 workers and the closure of numerous government services. They failed to mention that the spending bill didn’t pass because they loaded the bill with restrictions on the Affordable Care Act, a law that passed in 2010 and was found constitutional by the Supreme Court in June 2012.
In an effort to end the shutdown, Democrats are seeking the passage of a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government while further negotiations on the budget take place. Most, if not all, Democrats would vote for it, and enough Republicans are publicly now on board to pass it.
At the time of this writing, however, such a vote is still being thwarted by the GOP leadership.
The Republican Right Wing Extremist Tea Party continues to hold the US Government hostage. Looking like this could go on a while. Best headline, by far, from yesterday was the following one from the New York Daily News. Couldn’t have said it better myself…….
Here is a great article from dish.andrewsullivan.com that pretty much sums up where we are and why we must continue to stand firm against Tea Party demands…….
I’ve been trying to think of something original to say about the absurdity now transpiring in Washington, DC. I’ve said roughly what I think in short; and I defer to Fallows for an important dose of reality against the predictably moronic coverage of the Washington Post.
But there is something more here. How does one party that has lost two presidential elections and a Supreme Court case – as well as two Senate elections – think it has the right to shut down the entire government and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury to get its way on universal healthcare now? I see no quid pro quo even. Just pure blackmail, resting on understandable and predictable public concern whenever a major reform is enacted. But what has to be resisted is any idea that this is government or politics as usual. It is an attack on the governance and the constitutional order of the United States.
When ideologies become as calcified, as cocooned and as extremist as those galvanizing the GOP, the American system of government cannot work. But I fear this nullification of the last two elections is a deliberate attempt to ensure that the American system of government as we have known it cannot work. It cannot, must not work, in the mindset of these radicals, because they simply do not accept the legitimacy of a President and Congress of the opposing party. The GOP does not regard the president as merely wrong – but as illegitimate. Not misguided – illegitimate. This is not about ending Obamacare as such (although that is a preliminary scalp); it is about nullifying this presidency, the way the GOP attempted to nullify the last Democratic presidency by impeachment.
Except this time, of course, we cannot deny that race too is an added factor to the fathomless sense of entitlement felt among the GOP far right. You saw it in birtherism; in the Southern GOP’s constant outrageous claims of Obama’s alleged treason and alliance with Islamist enemies; in providing zero votes for a stimulus that was the only thing that prevented a global depression of far worse proportions; in the endless race-baiting from Fox News and the talk radio right. And in this racially-charged atmosphere, providing access to private healthcare insurance to the working poor is obviously the point of no return.
The president must therefore hold absolutely firm. This time, there can be no compromise because the GOP isn’t offering any. They’re offering the kind of constitutional surrender that would effectively end any routine operation of the American government. If we cave to their madness, we may unravel our system of government, something one might have thought conservatives would have opposed. Except these people are not conservatives. They’re vandals.
This time, the elephant must go down. And if possible, it must be so wounded it does not get up for a long time to come.
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 