The Tea Party Takes Paper-Bagging to a Whole 'Nother Level

What's at issue is a Radical Left ideology.  And it is proven by this fact:

Liberals are rational people.  The Liberal candidates refuse to even be on the same stage as the President.  His policies are radically to the left of virtually all Democrats up for election.

What is also at stake is a do-nothing Congress.  Reid will be removed and suddenly the President is going to see this deliberative body presenting choice after choice, and the American people will then get what they asked for, which is legislation presented to the President for signature or debate.  

And the press will not have the idiotic retort that the House Republicans are holding up the Congress.

This "my way or the highway" is just about over.

Back to the center we go.

The President will have a choice - Be like Clinton in his second term to get things done or stand impeached for opening the flood gates.  Let us see just how Left this guy demands to be.

It has been a long time coming, but now the Undead rise, hello TEA Partiers.

@holmantx "Back to the center we go." 

You couldn't find the center with both hands and a mirror, holman. But that figures. You think Obama is a "radical leftist."

Have you read any history at all, say, a history of the Russian Revolution? (I recommend Pipes.) A radical leftist seizes all private property and nationalizes it. A radical leftist represses and imprisons the opposition. Or executes them. If Obama is a radical leftist, what the hell were Lenin? Trotsky? Mao? 

Again, I am reminded that partisan politics is a kind of anti-lantern. Instead of casting light to illuminate the path, it  sheds darkness. Come out of the darkness, holman. Read! Learn! 

@holmantx 

Back to the center we go....... hello TEA Partiers.

this makes zero sense. it is so contradictory one must assume that you were making some sort of joke.

but you weren't, were you?

@riconnel8 How do Mitch McConnell's father in law's activities make an interesting news story?  Why should anyone listen to the public voice of radical Islam, even mainstream Muslims take Al Jazeera with a healthy grain of salt.  Did you find any credible source for the Jazeera story?

I'm a staunchly middle of the road, moderate independent politically.  Not a big McConnell fan, not one to cry voter fraud or vote suppression at every tactic employed by political parties at election time.  The US is bigger than such shenanigans.  They've been going on, in some way shape or form since the beginning.  Our system isn't so fragile that a slight disruption to the left or right will topple it.  Far Far more voters are disenfranchised by apathy, egocentrism and ignorance than will ever be by voter ID's or double registration or cleaning up the voter rolls.  Calm yourself, daniel-san, it's all good.  the 'absolute core' of US citizenship is safe.

@riconnel8

Item one will be a blow to Joey Biden's son, item two will decimate democrats.

@wcvemail I think the problem the Revolutionaries had was taxation without representation, the luxury tax on tea just happened to provide an incredible opportunity for mischief.

That being said, we're being taxed, but we're also being represented, so we should fire our representatives if we're unhappy with the taxation.  Which is the whole point of our elections, hiring and firing reps.

@bmarvel @holmantx Not to dispute your argument, but if I recall history correctly, the first step Lenin, Mao, Hitler and other radicals (left or right leaning) had to take before rising to tyranny was to disarm the population, which is problematic in the US, and the reason we have a Second Amendment.

They also had to have a 'fellow-traveler' press in their pocket, something that has also been problematic in the US, even more so now that the internet has given every voice a platform.  The reason we have a First Amendment.

Obama could  be a radical leftist, Bush could  have been a radical Fascist, the Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights, herds everything closer to center.

@bmarvel @holmantx

You're such an idiot.  He is using Positive Law as the vehicle to transform to a social democracy concept.

Go wash your face.

@mavdog @holmantx

You assume everyone knows and agrees with some implication continuously chanted but never proved.

Race-baiting has certainly worked for you, hasn't it?

It's not like you and Mr. Schutze weren't warned.  

Taxed

Enough

Already

Why       EVERYBODY knows TEA Partiers are just a bunch of racists, right? (ha!)

Hello Mr. Wave election.

I do not think the Democrat rank and file will vote Republican . . . 

they just won't vote.

But you certainly lost the independents.

you shouldn't have used the racism invective.  It makes people angry.

@RTGolden1 @bmarvel @holmantx Golden --true, but the Bolsheviks did those things before they had complete power. They did them, in fact, in order to gain power. After they had control, they seized the means of production.

Ordinary Germans kept their hunting rifles and shotguns (with permits). Hitler, in  fact, relaxed gun control law. Except for Jews.

The Chinese citizenry, as a rule, did not have guns in the first place.The Chinese state had enjoyed a virtual monopoly of power for thousands of years. (see McNeil's "The Rise of the West.")

I am, skeptical, to say the least, about gun-rights claims that a well-armed citizenry is our best guarantee of keeping government power in check. The Constitution, the courts and the ballot box are the best guarantees of keeping our government in check. A well armed citizenry can use its arms as easily for ill as for good. A mob, a lynch gang, a neighborhood inflamed is all the more a menace to civil rights and good order if armed.

Finally, Golden, Obama could  be a radical. He could be a native of Kenya, a Martian, or the Holy Spirit. He could be anything you imagine him to be.The only relevant question is, what IS he. (Likewise Bush father and son, Clinton, Regan, Carter, Ford. But possibly not Nixon.)

@RTGolden1

Not to dispute your argument, but if I recall history correctly, the first step Lenin, Mao, Hitler and other radicals (left or right leaning) had to take before rising to tyranny was to disarm the population, which is problematic in the US, and the reason we have a Second Amendment.

Lenin did not confiscate guns, in fact he advocated more gun ownership- "a universal arming of the people".

Hitler only confiscated guns from those people he would persecute, namely Jewish people who had their right to guns taken away.

Mao didn't have to worry about guns for there were few people with guns in China when he fought the KMG.

The first thing Lenin did however was to shut down all the newspapers other than Pravda and Izvestia.

@holmantx @bmarvel 

"Positive Law".

like the US Constitution? like every State Consitution?

and every other law enacted by the Federal Government and State in the Union?

that "Positive Law"?

while you're answering, could you outline what you mean by "using Positive Law"? in that every elected person in office is "using Positive Law"....

@holmantx @bmarvel Would you explain further, holman.I'm just such an idiot that all this has escaped me. Those private businesses and private homes swallowed up into the government. (That wasn't the banks' doing. was t? That was Obama's.) Those churches and private schools shut down and padlocked, ministers and teachers imprisoned. Those knocks on the door at night from the thought police. Those show trials (or secret trials) and executions. (Unless, of course, you're referring  to the Patriot Act and Guantanamo.) I'm such an idiot, holman, I missed all that.

I''m such an idiot I imagined that failing banks and other enterprises were being propped up by government bailouts and are now more profitable than ever nt in order to seize them for the state.. What an idiot I've been! 

And that thought-control. In my idiocy I imaged what you were saying here was said freely without one of Obama's thought-thugs putting a gun to your head. Silly me!

But that's the nature of the radical left, isn't it? To ensure private enterprise thrives so that profits so far outstrip wages that the middle class begins to slide into oblivion.That's the whole purpose of this (admittedly sluggish) recovery from the Bush Recession, isn't it? To promote radical socialism and herd us all into a radical police state.

Well, thank you holman. When it comes to idiocy I can see I'm being educated by an expert.

@holmantx 

"taxed...enough...already"

so you're upset that Obama reduced taxes?

Race-baiting has certainly worked for you, hasn't it?

EVERYBODY knows TEA Partiers are just a bunch of racists

you shouldn't have used the racism invective.  It makes people angry.

odd. I'm looking at my response to your post, and there's zero, nothing about "race". not even a hint.

but you go to town about "race".

and you failed to address what I said on my post.

go figure....

@riconnel8 @RTGolden1 Interesting reading, but again, how is it news?  Innuendo and conjecture make for some high drama, but what specific charges can you, The Nation, or  Daily Kos  make that will stick to McConnell?  (Actually apparently nothing, as he won, no doubt thanks to being able to outspend just about anyone who wished to oppose him)

McConnell is not a partner, owner or client of his father-in-law's shipping company.  He is not responsible for their actions.

By the way, from your article, the father in law's company hasn't been charged, nor is it specifically being investigated in the incident.  As for all the other fluff, only a moron would operate merchant ships under a US flag, taxes, duties and tariffs would kill the company.  Not even cruise ships operate under the US flag.

@riconnel8

Try crossing back into the U.S. without proper ID, you'll see what the core of citizenship really is (and not by jumping the border).

I'm not sure what the objection is to purging double-registered voters.

@bmarvel @RTGolden1 @holmantx Dangerously close to asking the immortal Clinton question aren't you?  depends on what the definition of IS is.  A wink and a nod to you Marvel.

@mavdog @RTGolden1 Ah, there's just nothing like facts, is there, mavdog?  I'm amazed more people on this blog don't make use of them. It's not as though they're hidden away someplace. You just have to know how to ask a question and to type. But, then,facts have an inconvenient way of spoiling cherished beliefs, don't they?

@mavdog @RTGolden1 You may have me on Lenin, as his revolution was supposedly a rising of the serfs against the aristocracy.

Hitler did not limit his confiscation of firearms to Jews.  Anyone who didn't openly support his National Socialist platform was a target for persecution.  It was also their favorite tactic in conquest, head to the local constabulary in every town, where Europeans kept local gun registries, then go track down the guns.

Access to credible information and the means to act on it are paramount to resisting tyranny.  The first and second amendments guarantee our right to both.  We've let both rights be fettered as time has gone by, sometimes in the name of the common good, sometimes not.  Sometimes sensibly, other times not so much.  I don't think America is in danger of falling to tyranny, certainly not due to President Obama or his policies.  Our safety from that fate, however is not due to political parties or ideologies, but rather to our clinging to what is left of our rights.

@mavdog @holmantx @bmarvel

No, the Constitution has always been interpreted based upon Negative, or Natural, Law.

@bmarvel

That's okay, yer just a dumbass.

see: social democracy concept where government controls the means of production, it does not seize industry itself.

@mavdog This particular EVERYBODY does not "know" that the Tea Pots are racist, Mavdog. Unquestionably some are. But an irresponsible charge from the left (or even the center) is not in any way more rational or responsible than an irresponsible charge from the right (Obama is a "radical leftist"). 

You are right in reacting to holman's wacky charge of racism. But in over-reacting, you allowed yourself to become a kind of mirror-image of his partisan nuttiness.

That way lies madness.

@mavdog

That is because you didn't say anything in your post.

So is the President treated differently - why is that?

@TheRuddSki So -- I'm a citizen because I carry a certain kind of card? And not because I was born here, son of two American citizens? Not because I have voted in every election since the 1950S?

The card may be proof of citizenship under certain limited circumstances. (Then, again, it may not.) It is not, ion itself, citizenship. 

Reminds me of those scenes in 1940s movies where Nazi officers prowl the corridors of trains, demanding of the passengers "show me your papers." I would have assumed, Ruddski, that liberty-loving "conservatives" would be against such bureaucratic folderol. I have come to learn that, like their counterparts to the left, doctrinaire conservatives will accept any outrage providing it comes from the appropriate party.

Being a staunch partisan, Ruddski, means responding automatically without thought to every official prompting that, right or wrong, comes from your party.  We saw it operating among lefties in the 1960s and 1970s. We see it now operating among righties.

@RTGolden1 @bmarvel @holmantx Just because I used the word "is" in a sentence, Golden, does not indicate any confusion on my part as to it's meaning. But since you seem baffled, let me rephrase the point I was making. To assert that somebody "could" be this or that means nothing at all. It means that you are desperate for an argument, any argument and not picky over whether your argument makes an actual point. If you wish to make an assertion about Obama, then make it clearly in a declarative sentence, like a grown-up. Then we'll deal with it. It "could," after all, be correct.

If it "could" be any comfort, I share your apparent contempt or Clinton's  moral waffling.

@holmantx @mavdog @bmarvel 

Natural Law may be the philosophy behind a law, but codified laws are inherently and by definition Positive Law.

The US Consitution is codified law hence it is Positive Law.

@holmantx @bmarvel Oh, you don't mean he's a radical leftist, holmantx.  You mean he's a national socialist -- something like a Nazi? In Soviet Russia, the government owned the means of production. In Germany, government merely controlled the means of production. Actual ownership, in most cases, remained in private hands.

So you're not saying Obama is a Marxist or Communist or anything like that, right? You're just saying he's like...Denmark or Sweden or one of those countries. Doesn't sound very radical.

Of course you have yet to prove he's a national socialist within the usual meaning of that term. Come to think of it, holman, what ARE you saying about Obama, really? Instead of just slinging terms around, what do you take to be his agenda? The rap on the political left, among the real Leftists, is that Obama is just another capitalist-enabling free-market president. (Else, why didn't he seize the banks when he had the chance?) Me? As usual I'm on the fence.

@holmantx 

That is because you didn't say anything in your post.

oh, you must have missed it, so I'll repost it: 

Back to the center we go....... hello TEA Partiers.

this makes zero sense. it is so contradictory one must assume that you were making some sort of joke.

but you weren't, were you?

So is the President treated differently - why is that?

IDK, why don't you tell me? I'm trying to find out. He clearly is being treated differently in how the criticism is thrown at him, so it is a good question. do you have an answer?

@riconnel8

If it's voter suppression, it's not working very well. Check around.

The majority seems to support it, including democrats. It's a feature of modern western democracies, and even Obama says it's not suppression, but apathy that keeps blacks from the polls.

If you are victimized by the requirement, simply cast provisional ballot.

Dems should be moving away from the Jim Crow schtick, it's not working all that well, and they should concentrate more on the War on Women - Hillary or the Squaw need that dodge, since they're girls and all, and it's the girls' turn in the WH.

Maybe float the idea tha repubs want to repeal the 19th amendment, or stone adulteresses or something the low-info, high-emotion voter can cling to.

@bmarvel Nevermind, I was making a joke.  Carry on with your self aggrandizement.

@mavdog @holmantx @bmarvel

The Constitution is a Limiter of Rights, not a Grantor of Rights.

When the Executive Branch usurps the Legislative Process by granting residency to those illegally in the country it is a Positive Law interpretation.  He is a grantor of rights.

@bmarvel @holmantx

No, I mean he's so far left the Liberals deserted him, why?  Because the primary difference between a Leftist and a Liberal is the former won't lie to get elected.  You can blather all you like but the reality is, reality caught up with him - voters of all stripes.  

And Dallas County is a harbinger - Democrats won't vote for non-Democrats but they just won't vote because they are not motivated to vote and why is that?  Because he's too far Left to deliver on what they want.  I think the rank and file is tired of fighting and gridlock and He's not, so the politicians who helped elect him are toast.  And that willingness in him to sacrifice those who put him there is the mark of a zealot.

A liberal is a socialist with a wife and two children. - Anonymous (1930s). Quoted in: Alistair Cooke, “Letter from America,” 8 April 1990, BBC Radio 4.

But the President is a trained professional.  It is all he knows.

This is why I believe he will not go the way of President Clinton when a Republican Congress presented him with compromise.  

President Obama is an unrepentant collectivist and he will go with that base.  If you notice, Biden is ready to cut a deal.

It will be an interesting two years.

@mavdog

You remind me of The Church Lady (ha!)

could it be . . . RACISM?

@TheRuddSki If it's not voter suppression, Ruddski, what the hell is it for?

We were told that all sorts of illegals were lining up to vote, some of them five or six times, and that such dishonest folks swayed elections in Michigan and some other places and that in order to deal with this menace and keep our country for ourselves we need good voters to carry their identity papers with them. In order to suppress the bad voters,that is.

So if none of this is true, what's the point?

@RTGolden1 @bmarvel Golden --

1. A joke is supposed to be funny.

2. All comments on a blogsite are self-aggrandizements. That's what we're doing here, wagging our opinions in each other's faces. You want self-effacement, enter a monastery and take a vow of silence.

@holmantx

The Constitution is a Limiter of Rights, not a Grantor of Rights

The Constitution acknowledges the rights of the people and limits the rights of the state.

When the Executive Branch usurps the Legislative Process by granting residency to those illegally in the country it is a Positive Law interpretation. He is a grantor of rights.

"granting residency"? odd characterization to say the least.

a better statement is, if he did as you claim, his action is limiting the reach/ability of the State. after all the statutes that prohibit an illegal resident from staying in this country do so by denying a right of the individual.

@holmantx " Because the primary difference between a Leftist and a Liberal is the former won't lie to get elected."

You are unable to think clearly about politics, holman, because you are unable to think outside narrow partisan boundaries.You have no idea how crippling this is to your ideas.

If you bothered to inform yourself you would know that "liberal" objections to Obama are not at all what you imagine them to be. Everything that follows in your comment is either plucked, naked and squalling, from your imagination, or is just the standard right-wimg boilerplate.

To enlighten you just a little: the left's boilerplate on Obama is that he is insufficiently left-leaning, a compromiser, a time-server and therefore (they imagine) part pf the problem, and not its necessary and radical solution.

I would like to believe, holman, that you are simply blinkered by ideology. But I'm beginning to wonder if you're not being dishonest. All that hysteria in your other comments about Obama being a "radical leftist," just waiting to turn the country over to the dark lords of socialism and worse. And yet, in your latest communication, not one word of evidence of any of this.

You wouldn't necessarily have to give up your views, holman, if you did a little deep reading outside your usual sources, enlarged your political world a little. You might even put your views on a sounder basis. As it is, you're just spouting the same mindless right-wing crap, the exact counterpart of left-wing crap.

You're not worth listening to, because you really have no ideas, nothing original to say.

@holmantx 

oh, I see, you assume the answer is racism. you're ready to go to that as the only reason.

hmm...interesting.

I'm not sure it is racism, although there's plenty of that around. surely you will agree that there's a lot of people who harbor negative attitudes towards minorities...could be a lot of it.

I've never taken the position that TEA party types are all a gaggle of racists. cretins maybe...intellectually dishonest for sure. yet their platform is not inherently racist.

If one looks at the accusations, that he is a muslim (religious bigotry/ignorant about the facts), that he is a Socialist (just political stupidity there), that he "destroys American exceptionalism" (nationalist ignorance), those have no basis in racism. those are pretty much examples of stupidity. and we have no shortage of stupidity here in America.

where do these false accusations come from? that's the real question.

There's the question I've asked of your comedic buddy Ruddski, why is it Obama is being held to a different standard then his predecessors?

I'd say it is due to the accusers being dishonest with themselves, not recognizing the conduct of Obama is similar to his predecessors. ideology has a way of blinding people to reality...

@riconnel8

No, the majority doesn't seem to support voter suppression.

But the majority does support voter ID. Too clever by half, amigo. Fail.

Next I'd like to see an article regarding Harry Reid's son doing 88 pounds of cocaine like Mitch McConnell's father-in-law.

They wouldn't be articles, they'd be obituaries.

And you know what even makes it worse Ruddski? His father-in-law sails his boat under a Lebanese flag. Now how patriotic is that? Birds of a feather and all that?

McConnel isn't a shipping-magnate-of-a-feather.

I find it harder and harder to converse with Libertarians and Tea Party folks.

I'm not surprised, your evasions and strawmen aren't very effective.

Do you know why that is Ruddski? It's because at the core of every single one of them, that I've ever met in person or communicated with online, is a dishonest soul

The opening sentence of your response is a gauge of your idea of "honesty", but you did manage to dodge the salient and actual with bullshit, you've got that going for you.

But, maybe you got yo,keep your doctor and insurance, Gitmo is closed, Al-qaida is on the run..... Have a great Fourth of November!

@mavdog It is the United States Constitution, not a universal Constitution.  It does not extend citizenship except as defined within it.

.....prohibit an illegal resident from staying in this country do so by denying the right of an individual....

Prohibiting someone from breaking the law does not deny them their rights.

@mavdog

All six of them?

So it's messaging that did him in.  Not his ideology.  And the Press had to have helped those Gang of 6 above.  As Mark Twain once famously quipped, "It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you."  

So it is not his transformative social democracy pen, his whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order that made the Liberal cowards flee the stage but a combination of (religious bigotry/ignorant about the facts),  (stupidity), (nationalist ignorance), and the accusers being dishonest with themselves.  That about cover it?

My, my!  Quite the weaponized slur you just unleashed on the majority.  On the one side we have his deeds, on the other is another non-specified and generalized slander of a broad spectrum of the voting public lead by evil-doers.  You merely doubled down on your bigotry.  Spread the wealth, so to speak.  By all means, why don't you flesh out some of those branding accusations.  You are certainly on a roll now.

So do you think the citizenry suddenly turned medieval or do you think the pollsters had to put up the true numbers at the last moment in order to be on the reality side of what's coming?

@RTGolden1 

yet isn't the classification of "an illegal resident" denying the individual the right of Liberty? to move about freely? isn't Liberty an inalienable right? (no pun intended btw)

"Messaging" and then ou go into the litany of false characterzations such as "whimpering isolationism in foreign policy" which btw is Rand Paul's plank; "mulish obstructionism in domestic policy" which is ironic as the righ is attempting to use his progressive domestic policy (ACA) against him;

@mavdog @RTGolden1 The Constitution guarantees the Rights of United States Citizens.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

It makes no mention of securing the blessings of liberty for citizens or subjects of other nations.  I know you're aware of this, and your argument with Holman is mostly for arguments' sake.  Our laws define citizenship (as do the laws of just about every nation and society dating back to at least Hammurabi), and our Constitution secures the rights of US Citizens, not illegal immigrants.

I find it odd that so many people, on every side of the political spectrum, are so eager to secure the rights ensconced in the BOR to everyone except legal US citizens.  I also find it odd that those on the left would like to extend Constitutional rights and democratic process to foreigners who come here illegally, but cry foul when we attempt to bring the same to their home countries.  (Personally, I think it a vain attempt to bring democracy to people who clearly don't want it and aren't willing to fight for it, and I question the motives of those who claim we go to war for that cause, but that's just me.)

It cut me off ...

"Messaging" and then ou go into the litany of false characterizations such as "whimpering isolationism in foreign policy" which btw is Rand Paul's plank; "mulish obstructionism in domestic policy" which is ironic as the right is attempting to use his progressive domestic policy (ACA) against him; "pussyfooting on the issue of law and order" which is an incredible remark just by itself.

Is ignorantly following what is fed to you a slur? Interesting question. Is pointing out people's ignorance "bigotry"? Odd, but the definition of bigotry don't mention the ignorant.

Most interesting is there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in your response that contradicts what I said. Just claims that it is I who is at fault...yes, the emperor has no clothes Holman, and it is not a pretty picture of you I must say.

@RTGolden1 @mavdog 

the "that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that.....are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" statement is in the Declaration of Independence, not the US Consitution.

@mavdog "..That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.."

Immediately following that most famous sentence, indeed throughout the Declaration, it is clear that the document, the principles therein, and the intent of writing it at all, was the deliverance of the citizens from the tyranny of the crown.  We did not invite any and all to come to our shores and flaunt our laws.  If you want to apply this document to the undocumented immigrants in question (no pun intended, hah!), then apply it fully; arm them and send them back home to throw off the chains that bind them in their own countries.