I hardly ever write about the Tea Party, the Republican party, and the assorted loonies that make up their membership, including the racist, homophobic, ultra-nationalist, gun-nuts, and wild-eyed end-of-days religious fundamentalists right wing that like a disease, tend to infect many a body politic.
I've written before that the reason I have little interest in writing about the scourge on the country that is the Republican party is because I basically consider them to be collectively crazy, and therefore focusing on what they do would be like trying to describe the actions of an insane person spreading feces on a wall. What is there to say!
But tonight, I'm going to make an exception for a number of reasons I'm going to explain below. Tonight I take great pleasure in witnessing the total and unequivocal humiliation of the miscreants of the Republican party; something that I have to admit, I wasn't expecting at all.
Before I continue, someone please tell Bob Johnson that I'm ready for at least a slice of humble pie. There, I said it! I never in a million years imagined that president Obama and the Democrats would close ranks and stand fast against the Republican nut-jobs extortion. As days went by in this latest manufactured crisis, I was just counting the days until the president and the Democrats would cave. After the third day, when I saw they were holding firm, I was actually astonished by it.
And so, evidently I was wrong. And I'm very glad about it. Obviously, the experience is also a lesson about the need to be more open-minded when it comes to these issues and my expectations about how people are going to behave.
Now, here's why I'm relishing this moment... You see, my understanding of the situation when it comes to the spreading-feces-on-the-wall right wing, including the Tea Party, is that they are being propped up by what I consider to be fascist billionaires, like the Koch brothers, and a number of think tanks and groups who are working behind the scenes to usurp, to undermine, to take down the last remnants of democracy in this country.
As these forces work to undermine democracy, to create havoc and chaos, to defund the proper function of government, they expect their handy-work to cause social dysfunction, and in many ways it has...
As this happens, the billionaires and their corporatist cartels manipulate the pea-brained right wingers, exploiting their innate and vitriolic racism, hate, jingoism, and wild-eyed religious fundamentalism, validating their sick worldview, basically using them as pawn, as useful idiots.
And you see all these fascist legislation spreading voter suppression, stand-your-ground, open-carry, conceal-carry; and you see them funding anti-science and anti-intellectualism efforts, all of which seems to lead to one thing: helping them take down the barriers that prevent them from looting and pillaging the nation's coffers, and resources.
NYT: A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning
The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.
The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight. Included was $5 million to Generation Opportunity, which created a buzz last month with an Internet advertisement showing a menacing Uncle Sam figure popping up between a woman’s legs during a gynecological exam.
The emphasis is mine
That New York Times articles prompted the great Senator Bernie Sanders to decry these odious characters:
Taking advantage of the Citizens United ruling, the billionaires Charles and David Koch and other wealthy individuals have provided financial backing for the movement that forced a now week-old government shutdown, according to The New York Times. Some House Republicans, Sanders said, have gone along with their party’s right-wing Tea Party wing to fend off well-funded primary challenges.
“We are living in a society where a handful of people with incredible sums of money like the Koch brothers and others, are undermining what this democracy is supposed to be about,” Sanders said. “Right now, as we speak, in the House of Representatives there are people who are being threatened that if they vote for a clean CR [continuing resolution to reopen the government] that huge sums of money will be spent against them in the next election,” Sanders said.
The emphasis is mine
And as it usually happens with these type of cretins, these enemies of democracy, who are used to working behind the scenes using the obscene amount of wealth this country has allowed them to accumulate to buy off dishonest money-grabbing politicians, once exposed, they scurry around like cockroaches...
The Atlantic: Koch Industries Wary of Being Tainted by the Obamacare-Prompted Shutdown
Koch Industries, umbrella corporate behemoth for the conservative Koch brothers, sent a letter to members of the Senate on Wednesday disavowing any rumored positions on shutting down the government over the president's health care law. Even for the controversial and unloved Kochs, it seems, the Republican plan to force a shutdown over Obamacare went too far.
"A great deal of what you read and hear about Koch Industries is erroneous or misleading," the letter begins, predicated specifically on critiques from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The carefully worded clarification continues:
Koch believes that Obamacare will increase deficits, lead to an overall lowering of the standard of health care in America, and raise taxes. However, Koch has not taken a position on the legislative tactic of tying the continuing resolution to defunding Obamacare nor have we lobbied on legislative provisions defunding Obamacare.
What a profile in courage!
And so, yes, knowing that these Birchers played a big role in this blatant attempt at destabilizing our entire system of government, and seeing how the whole thing back-fired right in their faces, gives me great satisfaction.
Of course, would I love to see them charged with a crime and hauled off to jail like common criminals? Yes. But I know that's not possible in today's environment... But I'll leave that topic for another time.
Finally, and again, I take great pleasure in seeing the Republican party totally humiliated and demoralized, because they deserve it...
AEI:Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
Now, we have many serious problems to attend to, including the influence-peddling corruption that results from the too-cozy relationship between the moneyed elite and politicians of both parties, but tonight, I'm going to bypass the criticism I usually heap on my own political party, and acknowledge the obvious: The Republican party and the assorted miscreants to make up most of its membership is singularly toxic to this country...
We've gotten a taste of what these hate-filled wild-eyed extremists are capable of doing, and because of it, I will take a little bit of time to celebrate, to relish this totally humiliating defeat in front of the nation and the world.
And I greatly commend the president and the Democratic party for standing by their offer in these negotiations: NOTHING.
Now, let's not let our guards down and make sure they are totally crushed so we can then focus on electing more and BETTER Democrats in our quest to reform the government.
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