Well, ideological stress tests certainly make membership a lot easier to figure out. Why bother with cordial dissent, compromise, negotiation or actual, you know, conversation when you can just hand people a clipboard and make them tick off their eight points?
The world is a lot easier to define when it looks black and white.
@Lymed: That's what I was thinking. They based this on the influence of a race they LOST? ANd didn't they also lose in 2006 and 2008 becausethey moved too far to the right? Oh my god, is it Opposite Day?
I saw an old friend of my father's yesterday. This guy was a big enough deal in the GOP to be granted private audiences with St. Ronnie whenever he traveled to DC.
He told me that there will never be another president as great as St. Ronnie, and I said - you mean all that raising of taxes and tripling the deficit?
@PaintedTrollop: I'm too young to remember much from the '80s that wasn't a cartoon or toy, but I read 'And The Band Played On' and still cannot believe that this man is held up as anything but a complete asshole.
@HannahBethD: Yes. For that and so many other reasons. Whenever I see the picture of the dead nuns in El Salvador, I picture Ronnie burning and twisting in hell. He deserved to die wearing an orange jumpsuit in a cell.
@HannahBethD: It's okay - this stuff isn't taught in school. No one wants to remember that Iran-Contra existed, because it besmirches St. Ronnie's halo. US involvement in El Salvador resulted in over 75,000 deaths. Our tax dollars funded/trained the death squads that did the killing.
@HannahBethD: When Carter was President, members of the El Salvador National Guard raped and murdered 4 American nuns who were in El Salvador to provide needed aid. The U.S. was providing support to the country during their civil war. Carter suspended aid after the incident, although right wing pressure lead to it being reinstated. But Reagan increased military aid and send military advisors.
@PaintedTrollop: Fewer people still remember that if Reagan hadn't conveniently come down with Alzheimer's, he might have actually been charged with treason. "I disremember" was a highlight Freudian slip from his testimony in front of the Tower Commission. GW Bush and Reagan slipped out of that without a scratch, although in retrospect, it seems highly unlikely that they gave anything less than their tacit approval; let's not forget GW's long reign as Director of the CIA, which would have positioned him perfectly for creating a network of collaboration that would foster this type of deal.
Sidenote: This was America's introduction to John Kerry, who fought to reveal the truth, in spite of a massive tide of public ambivalence and administration tap-dancing.
Reagan, we are the GOP; oh make us one
Like drops in the trickle-down river
Oh, make us now together run
As swiftly as thy shining Gipper.
Come, Greater Being, Socially Conservative Friend
Annihilating GOP-in-One!
We long for you to die, for when you end, Our larger life has but begun.
NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU, IMMIGRANT!
The party of NO has spoken. You WILL agree with ALL of their ideas, or they are going to kick you out of the sandbox. Grow up republicans, you can't have a democracy without some dissent within the party. I can't wait to see how Megan McCain responds to this new republican doctrine!
No worries. If they're opposing *all *denial of health care, they're going to spend the next 4 years on hold with Blue Cross anyway, so they won't have time to touch the rest of the agenda.
I absolutely think that the Republican party is going to split within the next 20 or so years. There's no way it can continue to be a big enough tent to fit the socially conservative teabaggers and the traditional fiscal conservatives. And I can't wait to sit back and watch it happen...
@bluewine: I hope you're right. I also hope the Dems split too. I'd like to distance myself from the moderate-who-needs-gay-rights-and-abortion lefties. Queer/womens rights [lowercase] green party FTW!
My temptation is to feel gleeful in my outrage, and say good, marginalize yourselves even more. But the good governance dreamer in me feels so despondent - this shit is terrible for democracy and good policymaking, and we're on our way to being ungovernable, California style.
But are they going to giggle over their purity scores at a slumber party and then show up to school the next day to see somebody wrote your score in the bathroom and its probably because their totally jealous and it was only this one time and he barely got to third and whatever your score was so not as bad as Tiffany's because like oh my god what a ho and whatever its not like everybody hasn't posted their scores on myspace anyway.
So apparently Obama isn't also president, unlike President Reagan. Oh right, I forgot, to these nutjobs he's a foreign-born muslim communist unqualified to be president, so that's why he doesn't get his title before his name. A little tiny bit of respect would be nice people.
I think that even Reagan himself is looking down from heaven (of COURSE he's in heaven) and shouting in vain "I am DEAD, you guys. Let's MOVE ON, shall we?"
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I'm pretty sure they're more interested in the wrathful, scary Old Testament stuff than that hippy Jesus in the New Testament!
11/24/09
The world is a lot easier to define when it looks black and white.
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He told me that there will never be another president as great as St. Ronnie, and I said - you mean all that raising of taxes and tripling the deficit?
They think we don't remember.
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#tips
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And yes, I should have probably learned this at some point, but I didn't and I'm curious now before any 'Kids these days' fingerwagging begins.
ETA: didn't mean for that to sound harsh or directed at you. There's just so much I don't know and i sometimes get uneasy about it.
11/24/09
[www.laprensa-sandiego.org]
[en.wikipedia.org]
[www.commondreams.org]
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Sidenote: This was America's introduction to John Kerry, who fought to reveal the truth, in spite of a massive tide of public ambivalence and administration tap-dancing.
11/24/09
Reagan, we are the GOP; oh make us one
Like drops in the trickle-down river
Oh, make us now together run
As swiftly as thy shining Gipper.
Come, Greater Being, Socially Conservative Friend
Annihilating GOP-in-One!
We long for you to die, for when you end, Our larger life has but begun.
NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU, IMMIGRANT!
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1. Poor people, fuck you.
2. Minorities, fuck you.
3. Homos, especially fuck you.
4. Non-Americans, you're all dead.
11/24/09
Labor, fuck you; management, fuck yeah!
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