I see that in reaction to the “Tea Party” movement, the Coffee Party movement is attracting people.
I like the irony of that; it’s said that Americans started drinking coffee in part to protest British oppression and to avoid drinking British-taxed tea. So the name is about as clever as the “Tea Party” name itself, although it’s clearly a reaction.
I do find it interesting that both “parties” share common ground on a lot of issues. In my experience, that’s very often true. I think both are misguided when it comes to campaign finance “reform” since every reform has made the last one worse, and what’s really needed is not more limits on who can give how much, but rather, to simply limit contributions to American citizens, and only people not corporations, and, most importantly of all, to increase transparency. The disastrous McCain/Feingold bill accomplished the opposite of transparency, which is why the left was foolish to support it in the first place.
Anyway, I with the Tea Partiers luck. My sympathies are with them but only a little; whining that you’re being demonized after 8 years of the most vicious demonization of any President of my lifetime (and yes, I do mean the demonization of George W. Bush) doesn’t ring very true. But on the whole I’m with them that the constant refrain that government is the enemy and that the country was founded on the principle that “The Market Is Freedom” is wearisome to say the least. As founder Thomas Paine would have said, in a democratic form of government, government is scarcely government at all so much as the common wheel around which all our interests turn. Government is not the enemy. Obama is not the enemy. Government can do great good, and should.
But people being mean to each other in politics? It really never ends. Better to concentrate on issues I’d say.
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I have yet to see anything telling me though that the tea party folks aren’t truly grass roots type. They’re just a bunch of PO’d people.
But judging from how many days CNN has been front paging the coffee party story, and based on who is starting it, it’s obviously just a front for Move On or the Dem party.
The Coffee Party is a deliberate, cynical attempt by the Left to marginalize the Tea Party movement. It’s a purely astroturfed effort led by big money Leftists and tied directly into the Obama White House strategy.
To compare the Tea Party and Coffee Party as if they are remotely the same thing is either an act of supreme ignorance or supreme disingenuousness. However, it does play right into the hands of the Democrats, so congratulations for doing your bit to “legitimize” them Dean.
Keep an eye on the Coffee Party demonstrations. I can pretty much guarantee you that you’ll see all the typical trappings of a Leftist run demonstration.
Meh. I’ve been watching the Tea Party movement fairly carefully and it’s pretty obvious they’ve got their own astroturf help, with every other rightist group jumping in with both feet to lend a hand and promote and show up. Certainly it’s about as “grass roots” as any national movement can be these days, but to deny that it’s getting a substantial boost from all sorts of right-wing organizations and interests is to deny reality.
There’s nothing wrong with any of this, by the way. I don’t think there’s anything illegitimate about the tea partiers. At all. And the shot at them as being racist is cheap and low. Nevertheless, I’m sorry, but all sorts of monied interests have jumped on that bandwagon. It’s about where the “Move On” people were 11 or 12 years ago. Big deal.
Dean, I have to wonder how carefully you’ve been watching either the Tea Party or the Coffee Party “movements.”
Here, I’ll boil both of them down to a nutshell for you.
The Tea Party is a movement that went looking for money.
The Coffee Party is money that went looking for a movement.
And that is pretty much the definition of the difference between “grass roots” and “astroturf.”
I’m unimpressed with a Coffee Party that attracts 30 people (15 of which are TEA infiltrators) on the same day that TEA attracts 2000+ to a rally.
Actually it ought to be called the instant coffee party. To date it is a huge yawning joke.
So in my insomnia moment last evening (AM), I’m listening to San Francisco ABC radio ( KGO) — all propraganda , all progressive, all
left wing radio which starts at 1 AM until 6 AM every day.
Subject: coffee party USA.
A caller calls argues with the fem. host who informs him that the coffee party USA already has 100,000 members in just one week.
Huh ?
Host clicks caller off — back to interview with coffeeUSA expert.
So:
Fem host:
” Mr. coffeeUSA expert, what does a person need to believe or to join the coffeepartyUSA ?”
Mr. coffeeUSA expert:
“fem host, you don’t need to believe in anything or do anything except show up at the next rally in front of the television cameras,
we’ll take it from there”.
At that point, I turned the radio off and went back to sleep.
If there is any doubt whatsoever about the true purpose of the Coffee Party is, all you have to do is compare the MSM coverage of the miniscule “events” the Coffee Party has staged vs. the total lack of coverage that Tea Party events numbering in the thousands received.
It’s not like it’s hard to see what’s going on here.
What I find interesting (and perhaps disturbing) is the extent to which MSM is an active participant in this bit of astroturfing.
I hadn’t realized it was that bad.
Dish, did you not realize that one of the main organizers of the Coffee Party was listed as a NY Times strategist? That tidbit of information was quickly removed from her profile page once it was realized what it revealed. Another organizer was a member of John Edwards campaign team.
There is no difference between the MSM and the Democrat party. They are the same thing.
As if that isn’t enough for you, a Fox News request for an interview with a Coffee Party spokesperson was turned down, supposedly on the basis that Fox wouldn’t be “fair” to them. Now, who is it that finds Fox “unfair?” What sort of actual “grass roots” movement would turn down free publicity? I mean to not realize what is going on here requires monumental ignorance or monumental self-deception.
“Money that went in search of a movement” vs. “a movement that went in search of money” quickly becomes a meaningless argument. The MoveOn people started the same way. Even though I detested much of what MoveOn stood for during the Bush years (they were supposed to be against Clinton’s impeachment and morphed into the Hate Bush Movement) but I don’t deny their grassroots heritage.
For allegations on astroturfing and the Tea Partiers, I think there are plenty of useful links in the Wikipedia article, which pretty much puts them all out there for you to decide what you want. But without even reading it, just in looking at the coverage they’ve gotten in the conservative press and mailing lists, it’s pretty clear that heavily monied interests have gotten involved and are involved.
I should note once again that in my view there’s not a single thing wrong with that, it’s normal and it’s to be expected. And I’m not even being cynical, I think it’s the nature of things that you can’t have a national movement without some people pretty soon being in charge of things, and without money, and that money has to come from somewhere. The only alternative is it becomes an incoherent mob–and I don’t think the Tea Partiers are that (there clearly is that element, but there always is in any large movement).
I even chuckle to note that there are already “original” Tea Partiers grousing and disassociating themselves from the mass movement. Which is also to be expected.
Anyway, grassroots movements start somewhere, and they usually involve someone with money and power eventually signing on sooner or later if they’re going to get anywhere at all.
I don’t like a lot of things about politics, but I do actually appreciate that this stuff is the system working the way it’s supposed to, and it’s way better than people shooting each other. We have nonviolent revolts in this country, or “violent revolts” that usually involve isolated incidents at most, and I’m very glad for that.
Dean, the fact that you still seem to be claiming that the Tea Party and the Coffee Party are remotely similar is really challenging my belief in your ability to recognize reality.
The differences are profound and meaningful. The Tea Party is at root a reaction to an out of control Government, trying to return control to the people.. The Coffee Party IS part of the out of control Government trying to reassert control.
You mention how our system leads to non-violent revolutions. I’d like to think that will continue, but what I’m seeing in this country today is an ideological war of the like we haven’t seen in generations. There are people truly terrified that the government is going to beggar their children.
If things don’t change soon, and I frankly see no signs of change, then if the Singularity doesn’t hit first, I fully expect violent confrontation in this country in the future.
I actually came to the same conclusions as CC when I was rereading The Running Man the other day. As a teenager, I identified with Ben Richards because of the anger. Now I find myself identifying for a completely different reason — because of the despair, and the longing to do something to strike back at the leviathan.
The funniest thing to me is that I know that King thought of himself as Richards when he wrote it, but he’s 100% Killian today. Whether he knows it or not.
CC,
I was aware of the connection between the Park and the NYT.
At the office, we have jokes about “perpetrating news”.
The “Coffee Party” is straight up manufactured content, masquerading as news. I don’t think it even qualifies as astroturf yet.
The Coffee Party is something far more sinister than just manufactured content. It is the Federal Government in deliberate collusion with the state run media to discredit and marginalize a legitimate political movement. All pretense has been shed in the last decade. The mainstream media is fully committed to the progressive agenda and is doing everything they can to bring it about.
The MSM first tried to ignore the Tea Party movement, but the sheer size and intensity of it forced them to acknowledge it. Then they tried to ridicule it with “teabagger” jokes in an effort to make people unwilling to be associated with it. Then they tried to tag it as racist, which is always the last resort of the “progressive” attack machine. When none of that worked, they set out to deliberately try to manufacture an opposing “movement” so that when they are forced to cover a Tea Party event, they can “balance” it with the wholly manufactured “Coffee Party” event in an effort to convince the ignorant masses that there’s nothing really going on here, just differing opinions expressed by two sides in a debate.
wow.
The “Taxed Enough Aready” movement forms to protest Federal spending & the inevitable resu;t (govenment doesn’t make money, it takes money) and
BECAUSE it’s getting traction, elements of the Democratic party respond not by grappling with the issue, but labeling it Republican astroturf, then emulating it.
How is that honorable or even newsworthy in a positive sense?
P Mike:
“Honorable” and “Newsworthy” stopped being goals of the MSM over a decade ago. They are now nothing but the propaganda arm of the progressive movement. Nothing more. Nothing less.
newsworthy, yea:
http://www.postonpolitics.com/2010/03/tea-party-alternative-obama-backer-launches-coffee-party-movement-including-west-palm-beach-event/
BECAUSE it’s getting traction, elements of the Democratic party respond not by grappling with the issue, but labeling it Republican astroturf, then emulating it.
I think that’s an adverse effect of thinking that other people are just like oneself.
Of course the Democrats are going to see it as astroturf.
If you listen to the Democrat leadership and what they accuse the Republicans of doing, I can guarantee you that you are getting a pretty good description of their own activities.
I guess I’m just reality-impaired. Oh well, I was when Bush was President too, back when I was saying the “Reality-based community” was sort of like “a cheese-based product.” (Well yes, there’s some cheese in it, but…)
And considering our history, no, I don’t think we’re at the cusp of violent revolt. Just some heated emotions. I guess we’ll see who’s right. Me? I think in November Democrats will take a shellacking and that’s about it.
People just don’t put up with violence. If the Tea Partiers were to turn violent (which I find extremely unlikely by the way, all this crap about them being nothing but ignorant violent racists is crap) all it would do is destroy their movement.
I look back to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and I see much bigger and more important issues at stake, and if we can survive that we can survive a big argument over how we manage health care.
I just sat through 8 years of being told that George W. Bush and the Republicans were destroying the Constitution, destroying everything the Founding Fathers stood for, eliminating all our most precious civil rights, and so on. Because we were holding enemy combatants without charging them, and were listening in on overseas phone calls without a warrant. Now we’re arguing over marginal tax rates and how to structure health insurance. Meh.
Dean, I appreciate your religious adherence to your goal of being the “most reasonable centrist person in the room.” But yes, I do think you are hiding your head in the sand.
The anger over Obama’s reshaping of America is real, visceral anger, not the manufactured self-righteous anger of the moonbat liberals.
You are right, we will see who is right. If health care reform is passed and people are sent to jail for not buying insurance, you will see violence in the streets.
Nothing Bush ever did actually threatened to criminalize people’s basic economic rights. What Obamacare is doing is saying that if you are not willing to subsidize health care through compulsory means, you will go to jail. There is a likely extension here that if you are a doctor and you provide services for someone who does not have health care, you will be punished too.
I know several people who do not buy health insurance today because they have rationally concluded that it is not in their best financial interest to do so. I know that all of them are simmering with anger over being told that they will be forced to participate in an obvious wealth redistribution scheme.
And that’s not even talking about when Cap and Trade hits and people realize that their energy bills will double.
The anti-Bush sentiment was about abstract notions that do not affect people in their day to day lives. What Obama is doing will have a direct and significant impact on every person in this nation. The Bush hatred was purely ideological. What Obama is doing is causing people to experience actual life-altering economic hardship.
If we can stop this train from hurtling over the cliff, then good for us. But if not, and if Obama succeeds in criminalizing personal choice around health care and people see their energy bills start to compete with their house payments, there will be hell to pay.
I’ve had experience with people trying to compel me to be a certain way, or live a certain way. I’m less than appreciative. Some of that has been expressed here recently.
The last year has really crystallized my sentiments on the subject. I’ve come to the conclusion that being patient with people who are into that really doesn’t work out very well for me. I’ve concluded that I will never be deemed worthy by those who wish to compel me. That’s fine with me. It’s useful to know.
Someone recently said here that it’s all about power. That’s fine, too. I don’t think that portrays the speaker in a terribly flattering light, but that’s just me.
I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. People who don’t like it are welcome to whine about it. I don’t care.
I’m not suggesting, threatening, or implying violence. I’ve got more tools than that. I figure that if there is violence, it’ll most likely be the progs throwing a tantrum when their fantasies come crashing down.
Dish, the world of progressive fantasies is coming apart at the seams from Greece to California to England. What progressives want is a world that runs on an unsustainable economic model. In a very real sense progressives are looking for an ideological perpetual motion machine. They believe in a world that does not follow the laws of nature. They think they can legislate wealth and happiness. And when they are frustrated in their goals, they never recognize reality, they just demonize the people who try to tell them about reality.
The inevitable result of their policies is a total economic collapse. All you have to do is look at Greece or California or Michigan to see what their policies inexorably lead to.
And yes, I am damn sick and tired of having people who are completely oblivious to actual reality telling me that I’m the one who is causing the problem. This health care bill is a classic example. I literally have to listen to people tell me it is “revenue neutral” when the bill itself pays out benefits for six years on ten years of taxes. And that’s assuming the insanely optimistic numbers that Obama and his cronies are throwing into it. This is a classic progressive fantasy that they can increase services, reduce costs and expand coverage at the same time. A third grader should know better. Their own bill proves it by collecting ten years of taxes to pay for six years of benefits. The bill as written shows a 40% defecit in the first 10 years, and that’s before the aging baby boomer population starts to suck the federal teat dry.
The only logical conclusion is that this will either bankrupt the nation or services will have to be drastically rationed.
The American people are tired of being played for saps. I’ve never seen this much anger in the average middle class American. And that anger is real. If Democrats continue to ignore it and continue to play unconstitutional games to try to ram this thing down our throats, I do think November will be a Democrat disaster.
But then it will be too late, and that’s what Obama/Pelosi/Reid are counting on. They’re willing to sacrifice one election to reshape the country into their progressive fantasy.
When it all comes crashing down, they will be the ones blaming everyone else for it.
They’re willing to sacrifice one election to reshape the country into their progressive fantasy.
That price is apparently not sufficiently high.
For myself, I have concluded that progressives are willing to lie, to themselves and everyone else, in the name of seizing power and compelling others, with whatever bits of honesty thrown in to conceal their nature. I have concluded that their acts are fundamentally in bad faith.
General acceptance of the above positions might constitute a basis for “sufficient price”.
Locally, when the Kansas City Tea Parties were formed, I was there. I know the people who did the organzing and they were political newbies, as grass roots as they come. But early on they did get important help from powerful people working in their own interests. That is, a pair of local talk show hosts. Darla J thought it was interesting to show up at the first protest they led (and I attended via an email invite with my daughters). She talked about it on her show, and it was good business for her. She got loyal local listeners out of it. The Tea Party People got good publicity out of it. That relationship remains to this day.
Shortly thereafter another local radio host for a different station, Chris Stigall jumped on board – and since there were two big tax day rallies in KC, he and Darla didn’t even have to show up at the same one. He also remains friendly to the Tea Parties to this day.
I know this doesn’t fit in with the progressive preferred narrative or the conservative preferred narrative (or that of the Aggressively Adamantly Moderate Host (AAMH)), which is one reason I advanced it.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you moderates can’t be extreme in their moderation.
Yours,
Tom
Tom, there is a vast difference between two radio hosts glomming onto the Tea Party movement after the fact and the Coffee Party which was STARTED by a Democratic operative.
The fact that CNN covered a meeting of 30 people associated with the Coffee Party ought to tell you all you need to know about them. Its just another arm of the Organizing for Obama wing of the Democratic Party and nothing more.
And I will predict that if there ever IS a large scale Coffee Party rally somewhere, it will be easily recognizable by the paid, bused in purple shirts of the SEIU.
Coffee Party attracting people? All over the country they had TENS of people participate, and got front and center CNN attention.
The Tea Party movement attracted THOUSANDS of people for one event (Kill the Bill rally) and I have yet to see a major news story about that.
Old media is proving why it’s outdated every single day. They no longer cover all the news… they just cover the news that fits their political slant.
I dont understand teh antipathy towards either Tea Parties or Coffee Parties. I think they are pretty awesome, to be honest.
ah well, proof yet again that far left and far right are brothers in arms. X is good/bad if we/they do it, repeat ad infinitum.
You’re not wrong on that. Being mad about politics won’t start it. What I’m afraid of is the appearance of an illegitimate election. We had shades of that in 2000, but even the “selected not elected” idiots really didn’t buy their own BS. This House action of “deeming” an unpopular bill passed anyways, though, speaks to a deeper contempt of the system that could lead to general, obvious ballot tampering.
The sad thing is that I think that we may have gotten to the point where even a legitimate election will be seen as illegitimate. If the Dems take a shellacking in November, but still manage to hang onto control by a thread, I think that there are enough people who already think that the elections are illegitimate (and I’m close to it myself) to say, “we’ll never have another real election again unless we do something now.” And I’ve always said that there’s one issue sure to start an insurrection, and that’s disenfranchisement.
I would agree with you that the Koffee Party is far left, but I think that the TEA groups left the far right for the mainstream at least six months ago.
we disagree, then – the tea/Coffee parties are not at the extremes, but the accusation of them being so, is. They are really very mainstream expressions of popular discontent.
Because of their momentum, they are being used by fringe groups as well, like remoras – theres not much you can do about that, but you can at least maintain a professional distance.
so, tea party – expression of populist anger at the Establiishment. Accused of being far-right extremists by far-left extremists, because of a non-negligible number of genuine far-right extremists who are parasites seeking a share of the media attention.
coffee party – expression of populist anger at the Establiishment. Accused of being far-left extremists by far-right extremists. Parasites have yet to arrive because its so new, but it is guaranteed to happen. That isnt stopping far-rightists from making teh accusation of far-leftiness anyway.
deadrody,
> Tom, there is a vast difference between two radio hosts glomming onto the Tea Party movement after the fact
Not after the fact. Darla J talked up the first protest before hand and also attended it. Chris Stigall took a little longer, but then so did a lot of the protestors. Our first protests were hundreds of people. By April it was thousands.
As Dean says, this is how mass movements happen.
I’m not talking about the Coffee Party. I wasn’t there for that. I’m talking about the Tea Party.
Yours,
Tom
Socialism is not a fringe movement. Democratic Socialism and Christian Socialism have been popular movements that large numbers of people regularly vote for all over the world.
Yours,
Tom
Socialism is a fringe movement in America, or presidential candidates wouldn’t accuse you of racism when you claimed that they adhered to it.
Did Obama actually accuse someone of racism?
Incidentally – Tom Schaller has a very nice interiew with the founder of the Coffee Party movement. I liked what she had to say about how really the basic ideals of the coffee folks and the tea folks are universal American ideals. Its just a difference of opinion on how to get there, but there really is a lot of common ground.
read for yourself:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/03/coffee-party-founder-disappointed-in.html
Also, she was never a paid democratic operative but just a volunteer for various campaigns. The whole thing started on facebook and has barely raised any money. The accusation that this is some astroturf movement funded by Soros or whatever is simply absurd. This is the epitome of genuine grassroots organizing.
I guess one of the questions is whether or not you believe that the people pushing this horse s- were sanctioned from the White House to do it. Given that they explicitly commissioned the hit pieces on Limbaugh, I’m inclined to assume that they are.
I apologize for contributing to derailing the thread, but I’m really sick of this “Obama is so pure” BS.
o rly? Kinda like how G. Gordon Liddy never worked for Nixon? Just a string of front companies, which, you know, means no connection. Or rather, would have, it he had been left wing.
Who funded the 9500 Liberty film? Looks like the donations for the film go to Interactive Democracy Alliance. Who funds that 501(c)(3)? Well, I know that the Democracy Alliance is funded by George Soros, but I’m not certain that IDA is a subsidiary. I guess Fred Baron isn’t around to fund this filmmaker, but they should be able to find some Democrat bagman.
And that’s just what a quick google search turned up.
so, the coffee parties are poossibly funded by some mysterious liberal source, because the film that the girl who founded them was funded by a group that shares a similar name as one that soros funds?
okay then.
You are the one making definite, declarative statements like, “she was never a paid democratic operative.” Time is on my side.
Aziz, it’s pretty clear an unvarnished that the Coffee Party exists because and in reaction to the Tea Party. It’s also arguably true that the Coffee Party does not represent “universal American ideals” or the resonance with the American public would cause more participation.
The Coffee Party is pretty much sour grapes a la Aesop.
oh comon Aziz.. are you so naive that you honestly think such a blatant rip off like the “coffee party” movement isn’t pure astroturf?
The leftist media has spent the better part of a year trying to de-legitimize the Tea Party movement and have utterly failed at that. The best the media can do is pretend the Tea Party doesn’t exist by not covering them.
Is it so crazy that they’d also copy the Tea Party, throw a so called ‘inclusive’ slant on it, call it the “Coffee Party” and give it all kinds of press it doesn’t deserve at all. Again, TENS of people all over the country and it had front page CNN attention.
My Grad School club has more members than the Coffee Party movement. Does that make us CNN political news?
perhaps I am indeed naive. i cant rule that out.
> Socialism is a fringe movement in America, or presidential candidates wouldn’t accuse you of racism when you claimed that they adhered to it.
Nope. These are the typical word games people play as part of politics when a word is considered bad. American socialists call themselves liberals or progressives and then promote socialist ideas, like Medicare and single-payer – which socialize medical insurance. Those socialist ideas are socialism and they aren’t fringe.
Just so you understand, this goes the other way in places where the word games identify socialism as good. Democratic and Christian Socialists implement market based ideas when they think they are practical. These capitalist ideas are capitalism and they aren’t fringe there.
But the Democratic and Christian Socialist politicians get upset when people call them capitalists because they backed a practical market based idea.
It’s very important to me that conservatives not call socialism a fringe idea. Conservatives are supposed to be realists. There is something within the human character which wants to embrace socialism and big government. You could call it the communitarian impulse, and it appears to be tied in with good old fashioned Godly religion. That’s real and it will never go away. I believe that we need voluntary not compulsory communitarianism, but it’s very hard to keep every communitarian impulse out of the law.
Yours,
Tom
> perhaps I am indeed naive. i cant rule that out.
Perhaps you are not. It’s not as if we can measure top-down directedness in a political movement and there is a set level at which it becomes astroturf. It’s a continuum.
Look, I don’t care whether a political movement comes straight from the White House. If it has the numbers it is legit. If it doesn’t, who cares?
The Tea Party has the numbers. That’s what counts.
Yours,
Tom
I disagree. There is something in the human character that wants to embrace murder and pillage too, but we don’t indulge it. The fear of being labeled socialist in America stems from it being shameful. That’s not something I am eager to change. What you are proposing would only give socialism a veneer with which to remove the shame from its embrace. I would much prefer that those who propose systems which have ultimately led to tens if not hundreds of millions of governmental sanctioned murders in the 20th century be subject to public ridicule than a slight “tsk tsk” and “well, it’s all part of the human character.”
Phelps,
I can go with that. Socialism and progressivism are shameful. See Woodrow Wilson who was a theocratic fascist before the word fascism was invented. He promoted the social gospel, which is usually called social justice now. That impulse still exists today, because believe in the social gospel is common in mainline Christianity. Hi, Jimmah! Hi, Reverend Emmanuel Cleaver (D -MO)! Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom! Although my Mom and Dad, being Catholic, call it social justice.
Yours,
Tom
The fun thing about the Tea Party founder is the first article about the Tea Party appeared in the New York Times. The founder had worked for the NYT for quite a while according to her LinkedIn log, but this wasn’t mentioned in the NYT article _and_ her LinkedIn log was scrubbed of this job shortly after it was noticed – and saved – by various people out there on the net.
Sure smells like plastic lawn to me…
Dean, I appreciate your religious adherence to your goal of being the “most reasonable centrist person in the room.”
Meh. I get tagged as everything, including right-wing extremist and left-wing apologist, but rarely does “reasonable centrist” get thrown at me, since I’m pretty opinionated and too sarcastic.
I simply honestly do think the things I say I think. And I honestly do view modern politics through the lens of history and the heated passionate debates of the past and from watching what both sides say now.
What being a “centrist” really means, in my experience, is that you are treated with contempt by both sides. Either you are a sellout/apologist for the other side, or a wishy-washy fool. “Reasonable” is only something you’re tagged with when you happen to agree with one side or the other.
Good luck being both 100% in favor of our continued efforts in Iraq and 100% in favor of government-provided health insurance for 100% of citizens. Good luck being pro-life but conceding that outlawing abortion probably won’t be effective. Good luck being both against drug use and against the drug war. Good luck mistrusting both big government and big corporations at the same time.
I don’t believe the tea partiers are violent, not most of them, nor do I believe most would support violence if some element within the movement turned violent.
We didn’t have civil war when we were drafting young men and forcing them to go to Viet Nam to get blown to pieces against their will in a war most people didn’t even understand. You really think we’re going to go into civil war because the government says “you must buy health insurance and if you can’t afford it we’ll help you?” OK well I hope you’re wrong, but if so, well, violent sedition has its costs, and will generally be dealt with harshly. Just ask the folks who were on the Oliver Miller Homestead on a certain fateful day, or Daniel Shays.
And keep in mind how “reasonable centrists” like me will react to anyone who starts shooting a gun or setting off bombs because he doesn’t want to buy insurance. I’m such a “reasonable centrist” I’d think hanging was too good for ‘em.
Far too many people now realize that this really means, “you must buy health insurance or we will bust into your house at 3am and shoot you in the face.”
Sure, it has been more heated than this before, like when papers were openly accusing Burr of being a murderer (probably true) and Jefferson of pimping his sister out in Paris (probably not true, but who knows). The thing is, they were still less than a generation away from when they were shooting at each other.
Violent sedition has costs, but there are also rewards. Ask the American revolutionaries, or more recently, the Texan revolutionaries. It’s no coincidence that the first major TEA rally was in San Antonio. When the probability of someone in the government shooting you in the face gets higher, it shifts that cost/benefit ratio drastically.
Phelps,
> Violent sedition has costs, but there are also rewards.
Lately it tends to lead to Marxist / Fascist takeovers, even if more moderate people revolt. (See 1917.) Do you want tens of millions of Americans to die because your violent sedition went south? By your own logic, that is shameful.
I think we are more likely to have civil war because both sides want to criminalize political decisions by the other.
Sure, Obama and the people in his Administration aren’t following the Constitution by my lights. And that’s illegal. But Obama and the people in his Administration think they are following the Constitution, and they is making political decisions based on that belief. They should not be hounded by various special prosecutors later. If they are some President will eventually decide not to bother with the next election to stay out of jail (or keep his good people out of it).
This is why those ignorami who used to call for frog marching various Bush officals to jail (often on this blog) are also shameful.
Yours,
Tom
Far too many people now realize that this really means, “you must buy health insurance or we will bust into your house at 3am and shoot you in the face.”
I don’t even know what to do with this except to sarcastically reply, “then far too many people are nuts.”
I mean, really, I don’t even know where else to go with that.
What do you think happens to the people who say, “no, I won’t buy health insurance, and I won’t pay your ‘penalties’”? The IRS says, “damn, well, you got us, maybe we’ll have better luck next time”?
As opposed to the tens of millions that die after the Marxists/Fascists take over “peacefully”?
Agreed. That’s why I didn’t support the people wanting prosecutions of the DOJ attorneys for Bush, or Bush himself, and I won’t support any criminal charges against Obama. Period. I’ll support impeachment wholeheartedly, but once its over, one way or other, he goes home and does what he does.
Aziz; “Did Obama actually accuse anyone of racism?”
I’m not sure if he has in this healthcare debate, but he sure as hell has in the past. He was accusing republicans of racism every month through the presidential election campaign.
Remember all those statements that Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills’, or because he had a ‘funny name’.. etc.. ?
> I don’t even know what to do with this except to sarcastically reply, “then far too many people are nuts.”
I don’t even know what to do with this except to sarcastically reply, “then Dean is pretending not to use his brain.”
You know very well that “refuses to obey government insurance mandate” means “gets fined”, and that “refuses to pay fine”, means “gets jail time” and that “refuses to rot in jail” means “gets shot”.
Cause if any of those things aren’t true lots of folks will refuse to obey government insurance mandate.
People aren’t stupid or insane because they disagree with you, Dean.
Yours,
Tom
Well, I guess if I’m going to agree with Aziz, the Ides of March is as good a day as any….
Based on what I know about the Tea Partiers I would back them 100%. Based on what I know about the Coffee Partiers, I would back them 100% too, at least at this early stage of the game. Their “platform” seems to be wide open at this point.
I got my info on the Coffee Party at their website. From what I can tell, all that’s required to join is to take an “Oath Of Civility” or some such, where you agree to keep an open mind and allow polite debate on the topics at hand (my words). They think government is out of control and ineffective, and that the real power should come from the people. And they want to get together and talk things over and decide what to do about it.
My take is that a Coffee Partier might believe that more or bigger government could be a good thing if applied differently than today, but they might be open to less government as well.
And if I understand their plans correctly, all topics of discussion will be decided locally, at least at this point. It seems as if they are going to try to build consensus on general goals and objectives, but what their plan is beyond that is not really clear. So I think that is all good, if maybe a bit naïve.
Now, why they couldn’t pursue these objectives within the frame work of the Tea Party is beyond me. But as Aziz alluded too, it seems as if they are forming “in opposition” to the Tea Partiers because they have a perception that the Tea Partiers are only about raucous debate and protests.
Of course, time will only tell which direction the Coffee people deice to go. And it will be interesting to see just how open the local meetings will be.
That being said, I am totally open to the idea that the Coffee Party could be nothing more than an attempt to peel off some of the Tea Party crowd. In particular, folks who are disaffected with the current state of our government, but who aren’t necessarily small government/fiscal conservative types. And as that seems to be the direction the Tea Party is going as it necessarily starts to better define its platform, the timing could be right.
Then again, maybe the Coffee folks will discuss things amongst themselves and come to the decision that they’ve got more in common with the Tea Partiers than with anybody else.
Interesting times…..
The Coffee Party is a cynical deliberate attempt to marginalize the Tea Party.
That’s all it is. It is nothing else. It has no other purpose. It has no other genesis. It serves no other end. All of its rhetoric is designed to further the goal to marginalize the Tea Party.
Anyone who does not immediately recognize this is seriously deficient in political analysis skills.
There may well be individual useful idiots who join the Coffee Party based on the cynical rhetoric that is being presented, but that only means they are rubes, not that the Coffee Party has any purpose beyond marginalizing the Tea Party. The more people who join the Coffee Party based on the cynical lies of the Coffee Party organizers, the closer the Coffee Party organizers get to their goal. So it is in their best interest to convince as many people as possible that they are a legitimate political movement.
That’s how astroturf works folks. That’s what it is.
Well, CC, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks, at least.
In a way, they could be like the leftist trolls that show up here and elsewhere from time to time, and actively engage in circuitous debate with the sole purpose of keeping the opposition occupied and distracted.
If the conservative and libertarian types who show up at these initial meetings get shunned or poo pooed, and the “debate” turns into a push of progressive talking points, then yes, I’ll agree with you. In all honesty, if I had to put odds on that outcome, I’d put it at maybe 70/30.
But as of now, they’ve got a clean slate in my book.
What do you think happens to the people who say, “no, I won’t buy health insurance, and I won’t pay your ‘penalties’”? The IRS says, “damn, well, you got us, maybe we’ll have better luck next time”?
I already know what happens. It’s what happens to anyone who doesn’t pay their income taxes for any purpose, whether it’s supporting the military, supporting the FBI, supporting the Department of [insert here]. They get a tax bill. If they don’t pay it, they go into collections. They owe interest and penalties. If they can’t pay it, they can make an offer in compromise. If they have significant assetts, their assetts can be taken under the same laws that apply to any other debt collection, with a few extra powers.
If they refuse to file at all, or they lie, they can be arrested. A warrant is issued, and the arrest is made like any other arrest for any other crime.
I have friends and family who are law enforcement officers and I don’t even know what to say to someone who describes what they do as busting into your house and shooting you in the face. Do you just hate cops or what? I’m serious. Sometimes yes, there are fuckups, but Jesus man, what do you think law enforcement officers do in a typical day?
Tom: What I said above. To apply your logic properly, this means that if I refuse to show up in court to pay a speeding ticket, the cops bust down my door at 3am and shoot me in the face. After all, I can be arrested if I refuse to pay a ticket, right?
Right now I’m required to carry auto insurance. If I refuse to do so I pay a fine. And I can be arrested. Does this mean if there are laws saying I have to carry auto insurance, ipso facto it means that here in Michigan if you don’t have auto insurance they bust down your door at 3am and shoot you in the face?
Yes, I do. What do I think they do on a typical day? Tax collection. They cruise around looking for people to pull over for Opportunity Taxes. What good they do on the average domestic cases is overshadowed by the frequent ego trips and rights abuses. I bought the “a few bad apples” line for a long time, but the reality is that before we ever find out about a “bad apple”, there has been months and years of coverups and thin blue line silence. No one is watching the watchers. The few that aren’t willing to abide everyday, banal corruption are forced to quit within a few months.
Busting into houses at 3am and shooting people in the face? Sure, I would be crazy, if this wasn’t what they are actually doing already. Maryland finally started keeping statistics — a simple count — of how often SWAT teams are sent out. They are averaging over five times a day for every single jurisdiction, and the vast majority of those are on non-violent warrants.
The worst part? They shoot the dogs. They shoot dogs that are tied up, they shoot dogs hiding under the table, they shoot dogs running away. They shoot dogs because they are alive, and they can get away with making them dead. Just like a teenage sociopath, before he graduates to doing the same thing to people as an adult.
The police are a major part of the problem. I think the when they actually do help, its an accident. I’ve had five interactions with the police, including one where the perps were delivered to them red handed and not a single one ended up with anyone spending any time in jail. The one that was red handed was let go… because they forgot to call the family that was burglarized. Hell, at this point, I am beginning to think that we would be better off with vigilante justice. I’m a firm believer of 10 guilty men going free to avoid convicting one innocent man, but its looking to me more like 100 guilty men going free so they can convict one innocent man (who’s only offense happened to be lipping off to a cop.)
Yes. And it happens.
Yes. As a society, we have said that if you drive without auto insurance, you are dangerous enough that we are willing to go as far as sending men to your house at 3am to shoot you in the face. Do I agree with that decision? No, but that is the decision that we have already made.
> Tom: What I said above. To apply your logic properly, this means that if I refuse to show up in court to pay a speeding ticket, the cops bust down my door at 3am and shoot me in the face. After all, I can be arrested if I refuse to pay a ticket, right?
Nope. Let’s review:
You know very well that “refuses to obey traffic laws” means “gets fined”, and that “refuses to pay fine”, means “gets jail time” and that “refuses to rot in jail” means “gets shot”.
Phelps is using hyperbole (by way of real statistical outliers) to make two points. I am using logic to point out that his points are correct. Neither his hyperbole or my logic is insane. Oh, wait! You were engaged in hyperbole yourself! Are you insane? Of course not.
Here it are his points with additional rhetoric (I only got the second point when he expanded his points):
1. The government is planning on using force to mandate insurance. Force is violence. I thought Bush was evil because he was so violent.
2. We are wildly overusing SWAT teams, and it is getting both civilians and police killed. Many, many fewer arrests should be made by SWAT.
We do need to work to improve policing in this country. We also need to improve prosecution and the criminal justice system. And we need better prisons. Do these things rest on the shoulders of the police, the prosecutors, the judges and the prison guards?
Not really. They rest on the shoulders of the same people who are to blame for Social Security, Medicare and state pensions being much much more in the hole than just bankrupt.
Who is that? The voters. Democracy is failing in the predictable ways that democracy fails. A really great Constitution only goes so far. You have to keep it, in letter and spirit. Which means a small federal government. Which means no federal Social Security, and no federal Medicare and no federal Medicaid and no Obamacare. Wilson started us on the road to ruin, but Harding and Coolidge walked us back. FDR put us back on the road to ruin and we never left it. It’s like he never heard that Democracies are destroyed when the people begin to vote themselves largess from the treasury.
I have great faith in voters, but they have never been perfect. If we do things right we can recover from this mess. But Obamacare is a step in the wrong direction.
Yours,
Tom
My friends who are cops don’t make a habit of kicking in doors and shooting people in the face, but that’s just my take. If your experience is different, OK. In any case, if it’s an encroaching and corrupt police state you’re worried about, what you’re worried about is something much bigger than adding one more item to the tax code. And it’s been going on a lot longer than the current administration.
> In any case, if it’s an encroaching and corrupt police state you’re worried about, what you’re worried about is something much bigger than adding one more item to the tax code. And it’s been going on a lot longer than the current administration.
We cross posted, I think. Yes, the problem is old, as I said.
Yours,
Tom
No, none of it is new, and we aren’t talking about one item to the tax code, we are talking about 2700+ pages that will be inextricably intertwined — and 2700 pages that no one really understands what is in it. Not even the people who wrote it (the lobbyists.) They are relying on the idea that the favored won’t actually have it applied to them, which is probably true.
And I would posit to you, Dean, that you buddies on the force are much, much different people if you were to meet them on duty and as prey, I mean, an average citizen. I had a cousin who was a prison CO, and that person would slip out after he had a dozen drinks or so.
Hyperbole can indeed reach insane levels. You communist nazi perverts.
;-)
Look, seriously, this is simply the most enormous leap: “pay for health insurance or face a tax penalty” does not equate to disemboweling you and allowing vultures to feed on your entrails while you watch.
“Pay for health insurance or have SWAT teams break into your house and shoot you in the face” is not really honest rhetoric. That’s not what’s being proposed. It’s a tax penalty. There are a lot of those, for a lot of things. But “pay a tax penalty” doesn’t have quite the same emotional punch as “shoot you in the face” now does it?
Okay.
When does it become honest rhetoric?
You’ve acknowledged that this is, indeed, the eventual, extreme end game. When does it get to where it is the logical extension? When the penalty is $7500? That’s coming, especially once the average premium has risen to that point. When the budget is in so much crisis that “tax evaders” are public enemy number 1 and equated to traitors? When it is so rampant that they raise the fine to $75,000 as a “deterrent”? When there have been a handful of people shooting back at the cops when they come to seize the house to satisfy the tax (which was fairly common in the depression)? At what point do the police decide to start shooting first? You can’t possibly think that won’t happen, after 5, 50, 500 dead operators.
So how far down this teflon coated, oiled surface do we have to slide before it is honest?
if I thought that the legislation raised premiums, I’d be against it, full stop.
however if its premiums we are worried about, we should be advocating strongly for a public option. Australia has a hybrid private/public system much like we are proposing to create here, including a PO, and it hasn’t driven the private inurers out of business.
I don’t know when it becomes honest rhetoric, Phelps. Maybe when you end your bloodthirsty quest to foment violent overthrow of the government, and your clear effort to return us to an agrarian oligarchy like we were in the days of the founders? (j/k)
When income tax penalties become storm troopers breaking into your house to murder you, I just don’t know where to go with it. Maybe I’m just a sissy, I don’t know.
Aziz: Indeed, from what I understand there is now a thriving private insurance industry in places like the UK that used to have 100% government-run health care. Because they find it has substantial benefits, and gosh, the market advocates are right that competition does have its benefits.
God love the Aussies.
Oh, crap, I only just caught this:
This is why those ignorami who used to call for frog marching various Bush officals to jail (often on this blog) are also shameful.
What? Who did that? Are you thinking of Josh Marshall or someone? I don’t think anybody here did that, unless it was some random commenter somewhere that I don’t remember.
It’s a fair cop.
> Hyperbole can indeed reach insane levels. You communist nazi perverts.
That’s Comrade communist nazi pervert to you. And remember the leather coat and the three chickens next time.
> if I thought that the legislation raised premiums, I’d be against it, full stop.
IIRC the CBO said it would raise premiums 10 to 13%.
> What? Who did that? Are you thinking of Josh Marshall or someone? I don’t think anybody here did that, unless it was some random commenter somewhere that I don’t remember.
I was thinking of Adam, Ara, Mark and Shep. But perhaps that was on E Pluribus Unum.
Yours,
Tom
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