I lived to See the Day when the Pope is more flexible than the GOP

[Joecooool]

The United States has all along been a society dominated by the wealth, and more especially by the business classes. But businesspeople are not all cut from the same cloth. You had high-minded responsible businessmen like Benjamin Franklin and you had mean-spirited businessmen, including the slave-owners.

In recent months we have been bombarded by news items emanating from the really, really do-absolutely-nothing GOP-dominated House of Representatives, which when it does do something usually does something downright mean. Also rigid and unthinking and narrow-minded and wrong-headed. There, I’ve repeated myself. It might have been enough to say “GOP.” And some of the Republicans in the Senate haven’t been much better.

At a time when Pope Francis I has called for the Church to be less rigid in its attitudes toward e.g. gays as persons, and when President Hassan Rowhani of Iran has sought a more reasonable tone toward the US and Israel, our hard line Republicans have become more and more blinkered.

The House of Representatives has just passed a budget that would keep the government operating until later this fall, as the fiscal year ends, but only if the Senate and President Obama agree to defund the Affordable Health Care Act, which is the law of the land and cannot be defunded.

Note that the GOP House did not actually pass a proper budget. It doesn’t believe enough in government to do that. It just permitted the government not to close down altogether, but only if it can impose its minority views on the rest of the country. President Obama ran twice on health care reform and if the country had wanted to get rid of the AHCA, it could have voted for Mitt Romney but it didn’t. The GOP House has wasted a lot of time attempting to repeal Obamacare, which it cannot do at the moment because the Democrats have the Senate and the presidency. They know this. Governing for them has become like a strange ritual.

The reason the GOP wants to do away with the Affordable Health Care Act is that big business does not want it, and the Republicans in the House of Representatives no longer represent the American people. They represent big business and it alone. Big business deserves to have some representation in the US government. The 2000 biggest corporations are half the US economy. But they don’t deserve to be the only voice that is heard there, and they shouldn’t be able to undo the will of the majority of voters with a whispering campaign on the Hill.

The GOP is willing to try to destroy the AHCA, even though this act benefits some 30 million Americans who otherwise lack health insurance. Apparently they are supposed to do without medical care until they get deathly ill, at which case they should take a chance on Emergency Room Treatment. This proposition is a non-starter. The heroic health care professionals in ERs cannot possibly serve all those 30 million. And, it is much more expensive for taxpayers to pay for emergency room care than to simply fund the AHCA. It is only business interests that would benefit from the latter’s demise. Not the middle classes who pay the taxes and don’t have Caribbean tax havens. Not the poor, whose health suffers from lack of medical care and physician access. Children are much less healthy later in life if their mothers had no regular physician visits, and lack of such visits raises the risk of miscarriage and infant mortality.

The GOP House, in trying to get rid of Obamacare, is literally acting as baby-killers. They are set on this course the way the Inquisition used to be determined to burn heretics at the stake. They are loyal servants of the corporations, the way the Aztecs were loyal servants of the gods to whom they sacrificed innocent victims.

The Grand old Party of Scrooge likewise cut $4 billion a year in food stamps. Having deregulated the banks and encouraged the demon instrument of derivatives and driven the country into the ground with their economic policies, the Republicans now want to heap further punishment on the very people they have made homeless. Before the apogee of GOP policy in 2008, 11 percent of Americans were poverty-stricken and food insecure. Every year since the Great GOP Depression of the 21st Century, the percentage of food insecure people in America has been over 14. The GOP, having advocated baby-killing through the abolition of Obamacare, now wants to engage in baby-starving.

Not since British landlords actually exported food from Ireland for profit during the Great Famine of the 1840s have we seen this kind of hard-heartedness in an elite.

Have we had a rash of mass killings? Should we have gun control? No, because a handful of huge corporations such as Colt and others make billions off semi-automatic pistols and rifles. The GOP doesn’t represent the children who are shot down by the mentally unbalanced with those weapons. It represents the manufacturers and the retailers who make money off the sale of military-style weapons to civilians.

Has Egypt had a military coup and engaged in a bloody crackdown? A congressional delegation including Michele Bachmann promptly went off to Cairo to assure the generals that they fully supported the human rights violations. Ironically, Bachmann’s policies in the US differ little except by denomination from the Muslim Brotherhood she hates, and the secular officers would arrest her as a fundamentalist and cultist if they knew what she advocates.

Is Iran’s new president positioning himself for serious negotiations with the US? Sen Lindsey Graham calls for war on Tehran, and Congress passes stringent new sanctions that amount to financial warfare on that country.

This Congress, and especially the House of GOP Scrooges, represents narrow and mean-spirited interests, not the broad mass of Americans. Indeed, it seems obvious that if only they could find a way to legalize slavery again, the GOP would be perfectly happy to sell us down the river for the sake of our plantation masters.

It is the policy of a cult, not of a national party that has a hope of gaining the presidency. They should take a lesson from other cults that have attempted to rule in a narrow and injurious manner, producing public anger and backlash against them. Indeed, that was exactly the charge against deposed Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi. There won’t be a coup against the GOP Scrooges, but it seems very likely that there will be a wave of public revulsion that reduces them to further isolation and irrelevance.

Juan Cole

[TacoJim]

Interesting, I just saw this on Reddit

[Y2Kvert4me]

Thank you House of Representatives!

[Loco Vette]

It's been a while since we've had a leftist crap and run post. Good to know the earth is still in orbit.

[mrvette]

HOO nose or CARES?????

[DukeAllen]

[Sea Six]

Does anyone give a shit what Joecooool posts anymore?

[99 pewtercoupe]

Another seagull post...fly in, dump a load of crap and then fly out again

[TacoJim]

Originally Posted by Sea Six

Does anyone give a shit what Joecooool posts anymore?

As someone that is both new to the forum, and very interested in the topic, does anyone here want to actually discuss the post made and not just the person making the post?

I am pretty anxious to hear someone defend some of the claims made in the article.

I don't know joecooool, but it seems he posted an article that he wanted to discuss and all he's gotten is people saying he sucks. So to be fair I'd ask all of the people that claimed he posted and left : What should he say? You guys really haven't made an argument.

Btw before people start nailing me to the proverbial "lib loon" cross, I'm not a liberal. I'm just a person that likes to be intellectually honest. Even if it means asking uncomfortable questions.

[DukeAllen]

You're going to be loads of fun around here.

[mrvette]

Originally Posted by TacoJim

As someone that is both new to the forum, and very interested in the topic, does anyone here want to actually discuss the post made and not just the person making the post?

I am pretty anxious to hear someone defend some of the claims made in the article.

I don't know joecooool, but it seems he posted an article that he wanted to discuss and all he's gotten is people saying he sucks. So to be fair I'd ask all of the people that claimed he posted and left : What should he say? You guys really haven't made an argument.

Btw before people start nailing me to the proverbial "lib loon" cross, I'm not a liberal. I'm just a person that likes to be intellectually honest. Even if it means asking uncomfortable questions.

TJ, if WE did not buy your overpriced cars, Germany would be BK over their typical European socialist policies, which are true from north to south....


Europe in general is a failure....

the issue here is to be aware of the islam invasion....

[PortDawg]

Originally Posted by Gilligan

TJ, if WE did not buy your overpriced cars, Germany would be BK over their typical European socialist policies, which are true from north to south....


Europe in general is a failure....

the issue here is to be aware of the islam invasion....

He is an American serving overseas.....

[Loco Vette]

Originally Posted by TacoJim

As someone that is both new to the forum, and very interested in the topic, does anyone here want to actually discuss the post made and not just the person making the post?

I am pretty anxious to hear someone defend some of the claims made in the article.

I don't know joecooool, but it seems he posted an article that he wanted to discuss and all he's gotten is people saying he sucks. So to be fair I'd ask all of the people that claimed he posted and left : What should he say? You guys really haven't made an argument.

Btw before people start nailing me to the proverbial "lib loon" cross, I'm not a liberal. I'm just a person that likes to be intellectually honest. Even if it means asking uncomfortable questions.

Hang around a while. You'll see a pattern.

[PortDawg]

Originally Posted by Loco Vette

Hang around a while. You'll see a pattern.

...and there's that...

[Chris Fowler]

There are three major items in this thread that I don't pay any attention to when it comes to social issues. They are, in descending order:

Joecooool - too far left
The Pope - too far right
The GOP - too far right

[DukeAllen]

Originally Posted by Chris Fowler

There are three major items in this thread that I don't pay any attention to when it comes to social issues. They are, in descending order:

Joecooool - too far left
The Pope - too far right
The GOP - too far right

I consider the modern GOP to be too far left (since they're in bed with the dems) and the current Pope seems a good change (but I'm Baptist so I don't care) but otherwise I think you're right

[Craig]

Obama is a blithering, unqualified moron who, just over half the country voted for out of ignorance and spite...I don't see how any of this changes that.

[Admiral Blue]

"The Grand old Party of Scrooge likewise cut $4 billion a year in food stamps."

Take a look at a graph of those who applied for and started receiving such benefits in the last 5-6 years, then get back to me.

...and don't tell me that it was because of the great recession...your savior perpetuated commercials encouraging people to sign up for benefits, etc., etc., etc.

Furthermore, these food stamps are directly being used by terrorists to wage wars against us and our allies.

All facts.

[TacoJim]

Originally Posted by DukeAllen

You're going to be loads of fun around here.

Thanks. I'm looking forward to more of these kinds of posts from you.

Originally Posted by Gilligan

TJ, if WE did not buy your overpriced cars, Germany would be BK over their typical European socialist policies, which are true from north to south....


Europe in general is a failure....

the issue here is to be aware of the islam invasion....

As PortDawg said, I'm an American serving overseas. Why is Europe a failure? I know they have their issues but to call it a failure seems a bit of an exaggeration. What does "failure" even mean in this context?

Originally Posted by Craig

Obama is a blithering, unqualified moron who, just over half the country voted for out of ignorance and spite...I don't see how any of this changes that.

Still not a single person has addresses the post. Name calling isn't a valid form of debate.

I didn't vote for him either but what does that have to do with what is said in the post?

It seems everyone here is to busy hating Obama to actually defend anything the GOP is doing. From the responses so far all I can gather is that you all have no counter arguments and therefore everyone here agrees with the author.

[TacoJim]

Originally Posted by Admiral Blue

"The Grand old Party of Scrooge likewise cut $4 billion a year in food stamps."

Take a look at a graph of those who applied for and started receiving such benefits in the last 5-6 years, then get back to me.

...and don't tell me that it was because of the great recession...your savior perpetuated commercials encouraging people to sign up for benefits, etc., etc., etc.

Furthermore, these food stamps are directly being used by terrorists to wage wars against us and our allies.

All facts.

We posted at the same time. Finally someone addressing the post. Care to back that last statement with some proof? I'm not doubting you I just haven't heard that before. Also shouldn't we then also take away everyone's guns because they are directly being used by terrorists to wage wars against us and our allies?
(Im pro 2nd amendment btw)