General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNot to scare the shit out of you, but the Republicans are attempting a coup
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/07/1244724/-This-isn-t-a-shakedown-Republicans-are-attempting-a-coup-d-etatWhat they are doing right now is, in essence, nothing short of the overthrow of the government and our Constitutional system.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/10/boehner-no-clean-votes-on-reopening-government-or-debt-ceiling-without-negotiations-with-president-obama/
RainDog
(28,784 posts)just as I watched in horror during the 2000 election.
if they are outmaneuvered, they'll say... heh, just kidding.
and those who are attempting this coup are acting just as the south did after the civil war.
LiberalLoner
(9,762 posts)TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)he is so full of shit that it's admittedly tough to believe he actually believes the lies and nonsense. Must be more to it, eh?
But, I really don't think these assholes are bright enough to actually engineer a coup.
A coup usually means a major crisis is happening, and maybe, just maybe, a default would cause enough chaos for someone to try a putsch. And maybe, just maybe, Cruz and some acolytes hanging out in the shadows jump in and "save the day."
Hey, that's how he who calls to Godwin got his job.
Civil war? Who knows what would happen if someone actually tried to nullify an elected Congress and eject a sitting President from the White House. The Constitution, like all laws, is ultimately interpreted by who has the biggest guns-- to paraphrase Stalin, how many divisions does the Supreme Court have? Where will the military and law enforcement stand?
I really don't think it will come to that, but we have to recognize that cooler heads do not always prevail.
RainDog
(28,784 posts)the cruz controllers, too (the Kochs) because they want to defund govt.
iow, the extremists in the Republican party are trying to bring down this govt. and are willing to cause an international financial crisis to do so.
how this is not illegal is beyond me.
I guess the founders thought no one would elect such idiots to office.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)direct election of Senators was originally forbidden and state legislators chose the Senators until that was changed y amendment.
Only white male landowners, or otherwise "men of substance" were allowed to vote in the early days. Women are still smarting over ex-slaves (male) being given the vote a long time before any women were.
There were only 13 states back then, and still the agricultural vs industrial and trade states was brewing rebellion. The well-known Whiskey Rebellion was a tax fight, but others had different causes.
Here's a short list of US rebellions over the years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rebellions_in_the_United_States
Missing seems to be the bloodshed over the Kansas-Nebraska Act that was a key instrument in starting the Civil War.
We do have a fairly "revolutionary" history
malaise
(269,157 posts)Ask Michael Parenti
RainDog
(28,784 posts)Washington couldnt have gone dark without a radicalized Republican Party. Or maybe it was destined to all along.
Linz attributed our puzzling, anomalous stability to the uniquely diffuse character of American political parties. The Republicans had loads of moderates, and conservative whites in the South still clung to the Democratic Party. At the time he wrote that, the two parties were already sorting themselves into more ideologically pure versions, leaving us where we stand today: with one racially and economically polyglot party of center-left technocracy and one ethnically homogenous reactionary party. The latter is currently attempting to impose its program by threat upon the former. The events in Washington have given us a peek into the Linzian nightmare.
Traditionally, when American politics encountered the problem of divided governmentwhen, say, Nixon and Eisenhower encountered Democratic Congresses, or Bill Clinton a Republican oneone of two things happened. Either both sides found enough incentives to work together despite their differences, or there was what we used to recognize as the only alternative: gridlock. Gridlock is what most of us expected after the last election produced a Democratic president and Republican House. Washington would drudge on; it would be hard to get anything done, but also hard to undo anything. Days after the election, John Boehner, no doubt anticipating things would carry on as always, said, Obamacare is the law of the land.
Instead, to the slowly unfolding horror of the Obama administration and even some segments of the Republican Party, the GOP decided that the alternative to finding common ground with the president did not have to be mere gridlock. It could force the president to enact its agenda. In January, Boehner told his colleagues hed abandon all policy negotiations with the White House. Later that spring, House Republicans extended the freeze-out to the Democratic-majority Senate, which has since issued (as of press time) eighteen futile pleas for budget negotiations. Their plan has been to carry out their agenda by using what they call leverage or forcing events to threaten economic and social harm and thereby extract concessions from President Obama without needing to make any policy concessions in return. Paul Ryan offered the most candid admission of his partys determined use of non-electoral power: The reason this debt-limit fight is different is we dont have an election around the corner where we feel we are going to win and fix it ourselves, he said at the end of September. We are stuck with this government another three years.
When one party doesn't recognize the elected legitimacy of the other, in spite of a majority of votes, and even a larger majority of votes for the Democrats in the House... you just have to wonder if it's possible to exist as a nation with such an attitude.
And it's not like they just started this attitude. They went after Clinton, and it didn't matter that the American people re-elected Clinton. Their supreme court five made a one-time ruling in their favor. Under the Bush administration, they tried to prevent Democrats from participating in committees, etc... I mean, after a while, you have to wonder if you want to share political real estate with a party who, for decades, refuses to accept the legitimacy of the majority of the population's voter preference.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/on-this-issues-cover-the-worst-congress-ever-20061016
Jonathan Turley: "The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment."
Now, apparently, the current Congress is going to overtake the 2006 record...
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/07/13/12726689-worst-congress-ever?lite
RC
(25,592 posts)They couldn't win by cheating, so now they are trying blackmail. Regardless of what some around here are saying, what the House Speaker and 30 or so Tea-baggers are doing needs to be brought up on ethics charges, at the very least.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)that democracy is inherently unstable.
Someone else said the end comes when the public learns it can vote itself things it doesn't have to pay for. Maybe that was Plato, too.
RainDog
(28,784 posts)But has been attributed to others.
via Wiki: The earliest known attribution of this quote was December 9, 1951, in what appears to be an op-ed piece in The Daily Oklahoman under the byline Elmer T. Peterson, Elmer T. Peterson (9 December 1951). "This is the Hard Core of Freedom". Daily Oklahoman: p. 12A.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler
It sounds like a typical scare quote from John Birchers, since the public, as long as it was only white males, didn't seem to have a problem with voting itself things it didn't have to pay for.
Just look at the financial crises of the 20th century.
The middle-class taxpayer has been the one bailing out the rich after they loot by law.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)had organized themselves into separately governed entities under our original Constitution to wait out the insanity. California is pretty solidly Democratic and not likely to change soon.
JackInGreen
(2,975 posts)but tell that to the red necks in modesto and the rest of the valley. There are plenty of sensible folks (like my parents, barely, I swear Fox News comes in every IV that the VA hospital runs), and then there are the rest of the megachurch slobbering gun nuts.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)Especially the number of registered Democrats in Fresno County -- the most populous of all the Central Valley counties. Put down your fucking Merlot obtained from VALLEY GRAPES, quit reading farm signs (which the farmers are paid for) and do some actual research before you comment on things about which you know NOTHING. And our VA, which I have volunteered at, does NOT have Fox news on as you claim. Christalmighty the ignorance on this board is astounding sometimes, not to mention the geographical elitism. And from a wiccan too. I thought you guys were smarter than that.
JackInGreen
(2,975 posts)to a post born of personal experience (I never did say that they had it on at the VA, only that the right wing thrust runs strong in most of my parents VA associates and friends and it seems every time they go, either the doc or one of their peers has dropped some lovely right wing turds in their ears), I never quoted any figures, and my read of the valley (again, personal experience for that area and its occupants) I think is relatively sound for a bystander.
Oh, as to the 'Wiccan', I'm not, though it's one of the few definitions for alternate religions available. I bear a pentacle, but my faith doesn't lay with most of my sisters.
You're not doing any cause any favors with chops like that Taz even if I can get where you're coming from, I might be an ignorant fuck sometimes but I don't have your attitude, and I'm thankful. You can take it and stick it.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)about calling millions of good people "rednecks." You sling shit with a BROAD brush, based on nothing but "personal experience," and NOT actual data, don't be real surprised when it comes back and covers you in it. Know what I mean?
JackInGreen
(2,975 posts)I fucking HATE Merlot, thanks.
hue
(4,949 posts)I think President Obama's team is aware of this.
The oligarchy wants to take control now! Their obstinate & unreasonable behaviors indicate that they care nothing about how the public perceives them. I think they see their control could slip away in the near future and they are desperately moving towards a coup.
greenman3610
(3,947 posts)means that the US becomes a banana republic
Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)they will never govern again within our present system.
IT is the beginning of the dying quivers for the GOP!
wandy
(3,539 posts)Only in this case it's a cornered elephant, and a well moneyed one at that.
one must be careful around cornered rats and blind snakes,,,,,, blind snake strikes at any and everything!
mnhtnbb
(31,401 posts)It's very clear the Repubs do not give a crap about the shutdown effects on people, the economy,
or anything else. It's all about their power to get their way---balance of power among
the branches of government be damned. Gerrymandering supported this...and that didn't just
happen in one or two states by accident. It happened all over the country. In NC, where I live,
the 2010 election results put Repubs in control in the state house. The gerrymandering
that took place resulted in an outcome in the 2012 elections where the 7 Dems/6 Repubs
changed to 9 Repubs/4 Dems DESPITE MORE PEOPLE VOTING FOR DEMS THAN REPUBS.
I'll say that again. In 2012 MORE people in NC voted for DEM House Reps than Repubs,
yet due to gerrymandering, the delegation changed from 7 Dems/6 Repubs to 9 Repubs/4 Dems.
Do you think the Repubs give a $hit about democracy? THEY DO NOT. They want power,
and will do anything to get it.
These a$$holes operate by instilling fear. So, I fully expect them to push the country into
default. I have written POTUS and my House Rep (a Dem) and told them this is not
about ACA, it's about overthrowing our way of government and subversion of the Constitution,
which every one of them took an oath of office to defend and support. Personally, I think
they should be arrested, charged with sedition, and shipped to Gitmo. I know that won't happen,
but I can't imagine there isn't something in the Patriot Act that can be used to throw Boehner
and the leaders of this tea party movement in jail. That's where they belong.
ZRT2209
(1,357 posts)napkinz
(17,199 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)silvershadow
(10,336 posts)They're going down in flames, and that is rather an embarrassment. Add to that they've gotten certain segments of their side all ginned up, and no where to go. Yep, we are in for a rocky ride. I don't doubt that a coup is being formulated at all times. They've got any number of ways to go about it. God help us all.
Beartracks
(12,821 posts)As usual, conservatives are trying to blame the left for what the right is actually doing.
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RainDog
(28,784 posts)Republicans (some of whom are leaving the party) are calling the current Republican party dangerous, insurrectionists, and religious fanatics who have framed Democrats as the "great Satan."
hmmmm. where have I heard that before...
If you have long-standing well connected members of your own party calling you religious terrorists, maybe that's what you are.
CrispyQ
(36,500 posts)Facebook this!
on edit: Link, so you can give EarlG some kudos for his fine work!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017150207
Beartracks
(12,821 posts)Then I see I was wrong. Fabulous link, however, so I'm very grateful!
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Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)jeff47
(26,549 posts)So while the deficit is smaller each year, a deficit still exists.
Capt.Rocky300
(1,005 posts)The administration, specifically the Justice Department has gathered information by way of the NSA or FBI, has or will present it to a grand jury and indictments for conspiracy to commit sedition will follow. It would raise the ire of the those on the right but too bad. Their ire is already raised just because a black man is president.
RandiFan1290
(6,239 posts)The Democrats were too afraid to call Bush a liar for 8 years. I doubt they would bring any charges against their teammates on the right.
Capt.Rocky300
(1,005 posts)or his cronies for trying to get Gen. Smedley Butler to lead a rebellion in the early '30's.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Subjugation of a nation and its people by the rich isn't a new thing on this planet. It's basically the transformation of wealth into ruling power---and that is, and has always been, the foundation of the ruling nobility. It emerges because some people with riches so resent other people limiting their selfish interests, that they actively work to undermine the democratic will.
Within the US we are well beyond half-way along the path and the incipient feudalism is getting pretty obvious. Everyone is aware that politicians are mere functionaries of those who buy their service. But most people don't pursue this knowledge of corruption to see that it isn't random. It is coordinated by activist billionaires with the Kochs being the current best known model.
The koch kapitalists, boyar billionaires, now control 40% of elected legislative offices in the country, and control roughly half the state governments.
They resent restraint of their behaviors by the government, and their goal is to reduce the power of the central government, by dysfunction or dis-assembly, thereby making most established regulatory protection go away. They are pursing creation of a new political landscape in which the activist rich are the effective government, coordinating pro-wealth policies through unelected and highly non-representative governance committees. That look exactly like what exists with the A.L.E.C. 'working groups'.
Bought and paid for politicians push these policies through legislatures with a 'let the public be damned' attitude that exceeds the abuses of the era of the Robber Barons. This is only going to get worse when SCOTUS rules to remove all limits on campaign donations.
In terms of trying to understand the current chaos in Washington. It is an on-going counter-evolutionary change away from democracy and toward plutocracy. It's televised. But, few people grasp the day to day events as components of purposeful threat to democracy.
wandy
(3,539 posts)Jim Warren
(2,736 posts)summation I have not read in recent memory.
Ignorant, I had to look up ALEC. Wow.
snip//
ALEC provides a forum for state legislator and corporate members to collaborate on "model policies"draft legislation that members can customize for communities and introduce for debate in their own state legislatures. Approximately 200 per year become law. ALEC has produced model policy on issues such as reducing corporate regulation and taxation, tightening voter identification rules, digital due process streamlining or minimizing environmental protections, over-criminalization and promoting gun rights. ALEC also serves as a networking tool among state legislators, allowing them to research the handling and "best practices" of policy in other states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council
ananda
(28,873 posts)It seems to me that the vast majority of people negatively impacted
are basically doing nothing about it.
stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)There is ANOTHER coup also potentially taking place simultaneously.
That is the TPP, and it would be a corporate coup over the United States government and its people.
It's possible that ALL of this ridiculousness is meant to distract from the other coup (which is definitely more important to multinational corporation interests).
Since our government clearly works for multinational corporate interests, all of this COULD be theater. Please know I'm not saying that it definitely is, but that it is certainly possible.
We have to mobilize against both threats. They are both threats to the very fabric of how our government has operated, and they are both threats to our basic rights as American citizens.
Jim Warren
(2,736 posts)TPP......keep it in the foreground.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)Make no mistake, and Godwin's law be damned, these fuckers are flat out Nazis, and they will bring with them everything that being Nazis entails.
The Handmaid's Tale is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic military dictatorship formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America. It was founded by a racist, homophobic, Christian nativist-derived, theocratic-organized cult's military coup as an ideologically driven response to the country's ecological, physical and social degradation.
Beginning with a staged terrorist attack (blamed on Islamic extremist terrorists) that kills the President and most of Congress, a movement calling itself the "Sons of Jacob" launches a revolution and suspends the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order. They are quickly able to take away all of women's rights, largely attributed to financial records being stored electronically and labelled by gender. This allows the new rulers to freeze women's bank accounts (the story also takes place in a future of a cashless society utilizing electronic money which leaves them with no funds after this), then outlaw employing them. The new regime moves quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsorily cult-Christian regime of selectively skewed Old Testament-inspired social and religious ultra-conservatism among its newly created social classes. In this society, almost all women are forbidden to read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale
uponit7771
(90,356 posts)MillennialDem
(2,367 posts)there's only one proper way to deal with them and not in the way the Weimar republic dealt with Hitler.
Iggo
(47,564 posts)Skidmore
(37,364 posts)as in "No s**t, Sherlock." It started in 2000 and has been rolled out in stages ever since. For years I have posited on DU that the Rs were taking over using the hostile takeover model of the corporate world. Those threads have always sunk. Hostile takeovers are coups.