The brothers partly behind tea party Libertarianism

[cubby1223]

Take the republican gubernatorial candidate in Florida...

<blah blah blah partisan partisan partisan>

Is this your fathers republican party?

Its not mine.....

Blagojovich

Your move

 

[Corn]

But you already said it was a left wing think tank, Corn, so they can't possibly be right about anything...

As usual, you're confused about which point is being argued. Good luck.

 

[BoberFett]

I think you're a tad confused as to the purpose of bumping.

As are you. Don't worry, maybe we can take up a collection here and hire a prostitute to touch your penis.

 

[First]

As are you. Don't worry, maybe we can take up a collection here and hire a prostitute to touch your penis.

You have an odd obsession with my penis. I know it's intimidating, but still.

 

[GroundedSailor]

Here a great article on the Koch brother. A long read but worth it to get an in depth view:
Covert Operations -
The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.

A couple of excerpts - will post more later when I have the time:

Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points.” The Arizona branch urged people to send tea bags to Obama; the Missouri branch urged members to sign up for “Taxpayer Tea Party Registration” and provided directions to nine protests. The group continues to stoke the rebellion. The North Carolina branch recently launched a “Tea Party Finder” Web site, advertised as “a hub for all the Tea Parties in North Carolina.”

The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.” With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.” The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.”

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”

..

 

[MotF Bane]

There are 'liberal' think tanks, but note that they work much differently - more honestly - than the right-wing 'think tanks' which are ideology weapons.

A liberal think tank tends to have an agenda good for the public and research policy for that; right-wing think tanks tend to operate to serve an ideology and the donors.

The money drives the agenda for them. They get seduced by the rewards.

Holy fuck, you're delusional.

 

[Jhhnn]

Holy fuck, you're delusional.

Amazing bit of denial. Delusion is believing that failed policy actually works as represented, aka offshoring and trickledown reaganomics, which is still the ideology of the Right. Holding taxes extremely low at the top is pivotal to that, the expressed goal of all such thinktanks, yet implementation has given us the current bad outcome and an ongoing shift of income and wealth to the very top of the economic food chain.

Basically, Righties hold that more of the same, harder and deeper, will somehow yield different results. It's a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome on a national political level.

 

[MotF Bane]

Buzzword buzzword buzzword. Partisan rabbling. Ideological babbling. Buzzword buzzword.

You and Craig are cut from the same cloth. Ideologues to the core, who like to go on and on about others being ideologues, and completely unable to see it in yourselves.

 

[soulcougher73]

So many sheeple in this thread. All you ever do is bitch back and forth and hold tight to your beliefs. Become free thinkers. All of you. There is room in the middle to meet. you may even learn something.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

So many sheeple in this thread. All you ever do is bitch back and forth and hold tight to your beliefs. Become free thinkers. All of you. There is room in the middle to meet. you may even learn something.

I agree, but according to Craig, my "centrist bias" prevents me from seeing the progressive utopia.

 

[MotF Bane]

So many sheeple in this thread. All you ever do is bitch back and forth and hold tight to your beliefs. Become free thinkers. All of you. There is room in the middle to meet. you may even learn something.

No, the middle is a place of centrist bias. The only answer is whatever the progressives say. All other answers are ideological in nature.

 

[CycloWizard]

Amazing bit of denial. Delusion is believing that failed policy actually works as represented, aka offshoring and trickledown reaganomics, which is still the ideology of the Right. Holding taxes extremely low at the top is pivotal to that, the expressed goal of all such thinktanks, yet implementation has given us the current bad outcome and an ongoing shift of income and wealth to the very top of the economic food chain.

Basically, Righties hold that more of the same, harder and deeper, will somehow yield different results. It's a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome on a national political level.

Unfortunately, reality doesn't care what ideology you subscribe to. You think you can stop offshoring without even worse long-term effects? Your're wrong. You think you can magically tax the demographic which creates jobs more without affecting job creation? You're wrong. You think you can prop up housing prices indefinitely without negative long-term effects? You're wrong. In summary, you don't believe that effects have causes, so you think you can achieve some effects without their natural corollaries. You're wrong again.

 

[manimal]

Blagojovich

Your move

Sanford, Ensign, Vitter, Denny Hastert, etc...


I am not and was not saying that Democrats are without faults. Lets not forget Dan Rostenkowski and the fallen before him. What I was saying is that the republican party has been coopted by extreme right views leaving the center to rot on the vine. Do we have to get in to what has become of "centrist" John Mcain....

My original point stands....The Koch brothers and the faux grass roots movements of the last two years are deliberate political tools of the powerful few.....

We do not need to get into a moral equivalency fight.... Just because one side does it does not make it right for the other to do it as well. I was happy to denounce George Soros in 2004....

We can offer more red herrings and straw men or we can talk about the original post.....

The Koch brothers are deliberately pushing politics to advance their own business agendas, while this isnt inherently wrong or new the tactics of lies, obfuscation, and villany has pushed the national conversation into the realm of fanstasy...


I still offer up the Gubenatorial candidate in florida... Can you say that man is good for the country?

Really

Im waiting...

 

[soulcougher73]

No, the middle is a place of centrist bias. The only answer is whatever the progressives say. All other answers are ideological in nature.

I dont mind progressives because as the name states they want to progress instead of doing the same ole same ole which obviously doesnt work very well. You can still progress the country towards better days while being conservative.

Ive learned a lot since reading P&N and have changed my opinion on many things on both sides of the isle. Ive gone from liberal ideas to more conservative thinking and visa versa depending on the topic. For me personally though i cant align with one party because depending on the topic ill either be seen as a D or an R. Or as i like to call myself a Liberal Libertarian LOL

 

[CycloWizard]

I dont mind progressives because as the name states they want to progress instead of doing the same ole same ole which obviously doesnt work very well. You can still progress the country towards better days while being conservative.

Ive learned a lot since reading P&N and have changed my opinion on many things on both sides of the isle. Ive gone from liberal ideas to more conservative thinking and visa versa depending on the topic. For me personally though i cant align with one party because depending on the topic ill either be seen as a D or an R. Or as i like to call myself a Liberal Libertarian LOL

The problem is that it's not always better to do something than nothing. For example, if you are standing on the edge of a cliff, is it better to take three steps forward or stay where you are? Progress for its own sake says yes, we must keep moving forward! Sanity says maybe we should look for a better way down.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

The problem is that it's not always better to do something than nothing. For example, if you are standing on the edge of a cliff, is it better to take three steps forward or stay where you are? Progress for its own sake says yes, we must keep moving forward! Sanity says maybe we should look for a better way down.

"Progress" is only when the "Progressive Movement" pushes out an agenda/view they agree with but never when its something which disproves their views/agendas. That's the catch and the trick being played.

 

[Jhhnn]

You and Craig are cut from the same cloth. Ideologues to the core, who like to go on and on about others being ideologues, and completely unable to see it in yourselves.

Interesting that you can't seem to address the point, merely rave around it. The point being, for sure, that lots of people have been convinced to vote against their own interests, and have helped create the mess we're in today by doing so. Reaganomics has delivered ruin on our doorstep, except for a very, very few at the top of the foodchain. If you can't acknowledge that, then you're *in denial*, by definition. It's just that simple.

And it's been accomplished largely through the efforts of people like the Koch brothers who have cultivated a truly formidable propaganda effort to enhance their own positions. The cost/ benefit ratio is really fantastic from their perspective, I'm sure. Thinktanks are cheaper than taxes, obviously, and the right wing politicians who follow them are apparently even less expensive.

I can understand and even appreciate all of that. What I don't understand is what's in it for rank and file Righties, the believers, other than the usual emotional payload. I could go on and on, cite enormous quantities of facts, figures and opinion showing that middle america has received mostly pain from implementation of Rightist policy, but It won't make any difference in the formulation of opinion among that rank and file. They believe what they believe because they believe it, and are unwilling to question their most deeply held articles of faith in even a peripheral sort of way.

 

[hal2kilo]

Amazing bit of denial. Delusion is believing that failed policy actually works as represented, aka offshoring and trickledown reaganomics, which is still the ideology of the Right. Holding taxes extremely low at the top is pivotal to that, the expressed goal of all such thinktanks, yet implementation has given us the current bad outcome and an ongoing shift of income and wealth to the very top of the economic food chain.

Basically, Righties hold that more of the same, harder and deeper, will somehow yield different results. It's a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome on a national political level.

Yep, they can't leave that husband that keeps beating them.

 

[BoberFett]

Are you guys done jerking each other off yet?

 

[Jhhnn]

Are you guys done jerking each other off yet?

The part that I didn't mention is that believers will resort to most anything when they get in a position where looking at what they believe is uncomfortable. Kill the messenger? Absolutely, if that's what it takes.

 

[CycloWizard]

The part that I didn't mention is that believers will resort to most anything when they get in a position where looking at what they believe is uncomfortable. Kill the messenger? Absolutely, if that's what it takes.

Now I'm confused. Are you talking about yourself or the Tea Party?

 

[Jhhnn]

Another look at the patron saints of the Tea Party-

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all

 

[manimal]

Are you guys done jerking each other off yet?

Are we using too many big words for you understand?

 

[BoberFett]

Keep bleating, sheep. You believe that you have all the answers and your enemies are ignorant. It's just the religion of politics and you're the zealots who keep the money flowing to your high priests. It's pretty depressing to watch.

 

[FuzzyBee]

Someone saying 'I inherited billions and hate the US government and will try to fund movements furthering its dismantling with propaganda infrastructure' and groups like a union saying 'we'll donate to groups who support our continuing to obtain living wages for our workers' are not the same thing.

Thanks, Craig. Just in case someone stumbling upon this forum thought you had a lick of sense, you say things like the above and correct that thought. Verbosity doesn't equal intelligence, friend.