A possible silver lining to this whole debt ceiling deal

[derby378]

Take another look at the vote on the House floor on Monday evening. 93 House Democrats voted for the compromise teabagger plan - but 95 House Democrats have voted against it. There is a split in the party that needs mending, and quickly, in order to restore some relevancy of Democrats on the House floor on unions, Social Security, Medicare, education, scientific research, etc.

All of a sudden, my semi-automatic rifle with the 30-round magazine, pistol grip, and muzzle brake has just been dropped a substantial number of ticks on the Democratic Party's "To-Do" list. This could be a very welcome development down the road.

But for now, it's time for all of us to pitch in and rebuild the party. Get in on the ground floor. Work your way up. The party needs to hear your voices, too.

[jpak]

1. God ,Gays and Guns are still the GOP mantra

Debt deal or not - they will bank on it.

Why cave to them?

[derby378]

2. Framing 101

Guns are not a GOP issue. They are our issue. Therefore, the idea of "caving" never enters the picture.

Nobody's saying that you have to stockpile military hardware, but do take some precautions for your own sake.

[SteveM]

4. I'll assume 6pak messed up his subject line. That said...

gun-controller/banners need to write on the blackboard at least 100X a day:

"Gun-controllers made the modern NRA"

And when they're finished with that:

"Keep bringing it up; da GOPer will love you for it"

[jpak]

26. I will not surrender to NRA terrorists

nope

[SteveM]

29. Well, if they attack you, don't. Why are you so paranoid? nt

[SteveM]

3. Wow! The GOP now goes along with the "Gay Agenda?"

I knew Rick Perry was trying to squirm his way outta the gay marriage issue, but the whole damned party beat him to it.

[rl6214]

36. It's about fricken time the GOP got on board with the gay issue.

[iverglas]

5. yes, it's lovely

how one way or the other, the right wing will get you what you want.

[derby378]

6. You missed the class

Try again.

[gejohnston]

8. It works like this

Rebuilding the FDR coalition that includes rural white gun owners. That was fractured in the late 1960s to 1970s. Gun control groups used a lot of regional anti rural bigotry in their propaganda. They also painted all gun owners as southern racists and misogynists. Misogynists, that sounds like some of the Canadian gun control group's propaganda.
Offended of course, rural and blue collar union members started voting Republican. Then there is Vermont, where Bernie Sanders carried

The founders of these gun control groups were conservatives. They are still ran by Republicans.

Until then, guns were a non issue on the federal level. The NRA supported the one of the two gun laws in the 1930s. Really didn't care about the other. Everyone wanted to bar felons from possessing and nobody cared about machine guns.

I am not saying CCGC are a bunch on Tories, nor is any parallel implied. Different culture, different system, different situation.

[iverglas]

10. ah, those "rural white gun owners"

The ones who have been in the forefront, the very vanguard, of the struggles for women's reproductive and other rights, for the GLBT community's marriage and other rights, for African-Amerians' voting and other rights, for religious minorities' equality rights ... yes, it's an amazement that they would feel deserted by all those other groups and the party that represents their interests (at least comparatively).

They don't need to stand up and make themselves heard in other people's struggles. In fact, they don't even need to not oppose other people's causes. They can be anti-choice homophobic racist bigots, and nobody must pay any attention. They are who matter.

Who fractured that big coalition? Why, not the gun militants of the "late 1960s to 1970s", with their cries of "your home is your castle--defend it!" against integrated housing and such awful things. No sirree. They couldn't be expected to live alongside people who weren't white.

And those blue collar union members, they were out on the streets supporting their brothers and sisters of all colours and sexes and sexual orientations and religious beliefs, were they? Or did they just wait until the manufacturing base collapsed and then become the only ones with problems that anybody oughta care about? Anybody notice that the collapse of blue-collar jobs hit people who aren't white too? Anybody seen Bulworth? Halle Berry explains it. And did the rural white gun owners and blue collar white union members give a shit what was happening to African-Americans who were also suffering from the loss of manufacturing jobs?

Everyone must fuss over the rural white gun owners and blue-collar workers who are just so misunderstood because all along they have been right there, standing foursquare behind the people who just didn't have it quite as good as them. Right?

They started voting Republican because they were "offended" that someone would try to do something about the crime and violence that affected people who weren't them. Well hard turds, boys. I guess you're reaping what you sowed now. Unfortunately, you're to blame for the fallout on everybody else too.

But whine some more, and people might get weepy for you and give you what you want. Then you can go back to not giving a shit about anybody else, boys.


The founders of these gun control groups were conservatives. They are still ran by Republicans.

Crap almighty you need to start doing some thinking for yourself.

[gejohnston]

12. Yeah I do, do you?

I do think for myself. I figured that out before I found the gungeon. I researched those people, All Republicans and one of the former activists is now has a job at a right wing think tank. You assume too much.

They started voting Republican because they were "offended" that someone would try to do something about the crime and violence that affected people who weren't them. Well hard turds, boys. I guess you're reaping what you sowed now. Unfortunately, you're to blame for the fallout on everybody else too.

No the propaganda. Those somebodies don't give a rats ass about violence in the cities, if they did they would care about all violent crime. If they really cared, they would stop financially supporting the drug gangs. Your groups are no different. CCGC talks about gun murders etc. That is only one third of your murders. They don't give a shit about the majority of your murders, otherwise they would be talking about curbing all violence. Someone stabbed to death or someone defending their home against an invader does not serve Wendy Cukier's political purpose. So please, don't insult my intelligence.

Back to FDR, issue then was economics, the rest of us vs the plutocrats. Ultimately that is what it is all about. It is not left/right, it is up/down. There are gay right wingers, there are gay progressives. In the south the oligarchs used Jim Crow to not only suppress African American human rights, but also keep poor whites in their place. The oligarchs knew that to keep power, they had to keep the majority of the people (who had more in common than either thought or cared to admit) at odds with each other. As Railroad baron Jay Gould put it, "I can hire half the working class to kill the other half." Today it is the white Christian fundamentalists vs the the black Christian fundamentalists. Once all of these factions get it, the better it will be for all of us.

[iverglas]

15. okay ... so ...

Rural white gun owners and blue-collar workers delivering an oligarchic government to the rest of the population, not to mention themselves, makes someone care about them and eager to adopt their gun agenda when they do not want to and it is demonstrably against the interests of the rest ... how?

I guess those rural white gun owners and blue-collar workers have just held a gun to everybody else's head. Worked a treat all round, didn't it?


Those somebodies don't give a rats ass about violence in the cities

If you'd follow along slightly and loosen your grip on your obsession with those Joyce people and your determination to assassinate the character of everyone you disagree with for a moment, you wouldn't reply to me as if I'd said anything about those people or even had them in a closet in the corner of the back of my mind.

I was talking about people who live in the cities.

[gejohnston]

19. hard to explain

Or rural black gun owners too, who ever. Not the point. It is broader and deeper but this is simply an obvious flashpoint. I'll have to start making screen shots before mods delete them on various sites that have message boards to show good examples.

I have no obsession with anyone. How am I assassinating anyone's character? By simply pointing out that their primary motive, at least below the conscious level, is less about reducing violent crime and more about something more abstract like civilizing savages or hoping for a perfect world or some nonsense. Can explain why non gun deaths, murder or suicide, is not on their RADAR screen? On the conscious level, I think they generally think that it is about violent crime, and believe in their cause to the point that dishonesty is OK even for the greater good. Character assassination is spreading what you know to be false information about someone's character. I am not. That is my honest observation based on their writings and speeches. Take it or leave it.

[GreenStormCloud]

14. You may wish to research The Battle of Blair Mountain.

It was in West Virginia, late in August of 1921. Company union busting thugs were keeping the coal miner from joining the union. Thousands of workers rebelled and made an armed march on Logan County. They wore read bandanas around their necks. (That is the origin of the term "redneck".) Battle was joined between the armed miners and the company's mercenaries. After five days of battle and over a million rounds fired the President ordered the Army to intervene. The unions lost.

Those were southern culture men who were fighting for the right to unionize - hardly a conservative position.

[iverglas]

16. actually, I'm kinda fond of the tale of Shays Rebellion

Those oppressed working folk rising up against oppressive taxes ... and being shot down by the oligarchs and plutocrats running the show after that revolution of yours. I guess that tree of liberty needed watering with some working-class blood.


But once again, anyhow, I am presented with tales from generations ago. What's 1921, a good four generations back? What have your pet populations been up to these days?

[gejohnston]

20. history repeats itself

through reoccurring themes. On a macro level, check out a book called The Fourth Turning

http://www.fourthturning.com/html/history___turnings.html

[friendly_iconoclast]

25. How about busting OUR asses to get the health care YOU already enjoy?

And when I say 'our', I damn well mean OUR- as I am a member of the Service Employees International Union
In other words, I am a proud trade unionist- and a member of a union that is very heavily non-white, non-privileged, and mostly female.

I have endured near-endless blather about how the "racist misogynist right-wing GOP/NRA" are "exploiting" the "oppressed"

Guess what? You DON'T know what's in their best interests as you do not work with them. I do.
Hell, I not only work with them, I am them.

My dad was the first generation in his family to go to college, and he is only this year retiring at age 82.

He had to work that long as us USAians still don't have the health care that you are privileged to enjoy, and that only because people like Tommy Douglas fought for it. Personally, I have to worry if some health problem will disable me before I become eligible for health care.

And my brothers and sisters and I are fighting for that health care, for ourselves and our families, at the same time we
fight for a living wage. It's hard- but it's okay, there's a lot of us to share the burden.

My 'siblings' come from Jalisco and Jacksonville, Cap Hatien and Cape Ann, Fall River and Fellesmere, Trinidad and Trenton
and Tegucigalpa, North Plymouth and South Boston, East Saint Louis and West Roxbury. I think we'll win.

So kindly gather your "knowledge" and "concern" and "caring" carefully together in one place, and contact your local
HAZMAT squad so they may properly dispose of it...

[iverglas]

27. I really don't know what your issue or point is here ...

I suggest you search this site and the internet for me talking to people in the US about healthcare.

At this site, I (and numerous other Canadians) have taken every opportunity to provide accurate information about the Cdn healthcare system, to help people in the US debunk lies that are against the interests of people in the US. And I've contributed to debunking lies (like Fox News's poster girl Shana what's her name and her alleged brain tumour) on other sites where possible.

I have also discussed *how* the present Cdn system came into being, the whole gradual implementation thing, from Tommy Douglas in Saskatchewan, provincial adoption, through hospital care and eventually health care nationally, refinements and advances in the system (elimination of co-pays called "extra billing", etc.). I've talked about how it's probably unrealistic to expect to parachute a Cdn-style plan into the US nationally, the value of state-by-state adoption, and how by heavy-duty regulation at the federal level is worth considering as a starting point.

Perhaps you're saying I should gather my knowledge and concern and caring in that regard and shove it? I can't tell.

It's actually counter to my own interests to assist in any effort to get universal single public payer health insurance in the US. Our plan gives us a real competitive advantage, by ensuring a healthy work force, eliminating wasteful spending both private and public, and providing an attractive environment for employers who don't have to spend exorbitant amounts on employee health plans to attract skilled workers. If you had the same kind of arrangement down there, we could expect to lose jobs here. Not that we haven't already lost enough to the US via free trade. "Your" jobs aren't exactly flooding over this border, but we've lost whole industries to your "right to work" states: the carpet mills are all in Georgia these days.


If you're actually interested, here's a start (and other posts in these threads):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3498793&mesg_id=3499796
(see also posts 133, 142 and you'll want to read 186 ... for example)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=190x27473
(Canadians reply to request about our healthcare experiences; I provided links to other threads on the issue)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=190x4860

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=190x25857
(NAFTA gets us coming and going: there continue to be fears that US insurers will try to get access to our health care)

By the way, my brothers and sisters and I were the first generation in our families to pursue postsecondary education -- my parents grew up poor during the Depression: my maternal grandfather started work in a factory at 13 and was a longtime union local president and fought for the 40-hour week, my paternal grandmother was mistreated by an alcoholic philandering gambling husband. I grew up lower-middle-class in a working-class part of town disdained and despised by the rich/Tory establishment class that ran the place. I live in an even "worse" neighbourhood now: my neighbours include poor people and immigrants and the druggies and other undesirables attracted to neighbourhoods with housing stock like ours. And I've been a woman all my life. So don't you try playing those cards at me.

[friendly_iconoclast]

35. The point is, our situation is not your situation, and while your efforts may be entirely sincere...

..your tone is at best patronizing, and at worst reminiscent of the old Imperial "civilizing mission", albeit from
an entirely different political stance.

Don't presume to judge us from afar (and it is afar, though not in a strict geographic sense).

[ileus]

17. coalfields solidly democratic, solidly armed.

Lived in WV for 35 years....

[X_Digger]

18. SW Va for 20.. Buchanan County, home of the billion dollar coal fields.

A UMWA sticker on every truck and a gun in every home. Used to be solidly democratic, until the 90's an Clinton. I think the whole NAFTA thing soured many.

[Union Scribe]

24. Where the fuck did that attack come from?

Was trolling about guns not enough and you had to throw in some slurs on unions, too? I guess you've never seen the photo of Walter Reuther marching with MLK.

[iverglas]

28. "slurs on unions:?

Quote me.

Do the UNIONS support the Republican party?

Not generally, that I've seen.

[AtheistCrusader]

30. I think the objection is on 'blue collar workers'

but that's a common misconception in the US. Blue Collar unions are on the decline. Only a very small percentage of the workforce outside the public sector, is unionized. I don't recall the number off the top of my head, but it's sub-20% if memory serves.

A lot of people use 'blue collar worker' as shorthand (or rather, longhand actually) for 'union worker'.

The confusion may have been an honest mistake on the part of the other poster. In the US, anti-union rhetoric is ratcheted up by the right wing, even though unions are not representative of the majority of the workforce.

[iverglas]

33. now you try reading who said what

I initially replied to this:

Rebuilding the FDR coalition that includes rural white gun owners. That was fractured in the late 1960s to 1970s. Gun control groups used a lot of regional anti rural bigotry in their propaganda. They also painted all gun owners as southern racists and misogynists. Misogynists, that sounds like some of the Canadian gun control group's propaganda.
Offended of course, rural and blue collar union members started voting Republican.

And that is what I have continued to talk about -- someone else's assertion that "gun control groups" used bigotry in their "propaganda" and the classes defined not by me got "offended" and voted Republican.

If all of the women and various kinds of minorities who were "offended" by the failure of rural white gun owners / blue collar union members to lift a finger for them had decided to vote Republican too ... well, interesting notion.

Unions themselves have obviously played strong roles in some areas of the struggles for women's rights and immigrants' rights. (In Canada, they take a much bigger lead in this regard and in other rights struggles.)

But *I* am not the one who portrayed blue collar workers as "offended" at some alleged slight and therefore voting Republican. The fact is, however, that a lot of them are doing exactly that.


typo fixed

[bvar22]

7. Well, I've got to hand it to you.

You are the FIRST person on DU to find a legitimate Bright Side to the Debt Deal Sell Out.
Congratulations!
AND K&R

Quick, post it to the Barrack Obama Supporters Group.
They really need some help today.

[gejohnston]

9. Is it really a sell out?

or a set up? Randi Rhoades makes an interesting argument for the latter.

[bvar22]

11. At this point, the two are synonymous.

The "OMG We have a "Crisis" and the Teabaggers are holding us hostage
Whatever WILL we do???!!!"...
was indeed a Setup,
that was accurately described IN DETAIL at a Press Conference in December by a young reporter.
You can view this, and Obama's nervous response, in the clip from Jon Stewart's Show from last night.


http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-1-2011/dealageddon----a-compromise-without-revenues
The clip of the reporter letting the cat out of the bag starts at 4:28.

[gejohnston]

13. I got that one but

her argument is that POTUS got even with various details and triggers in the bill. Like if the commission comes up with some bullshit does not go through the chambers or get vetoed, DoD takes the hit. The theory is that the MIC will be at odds with the Teabaggers, many of them who would like to end the wars and dismantle the empire as much as most progressives do.

[friendly_iconoclast]

21. The Teabaggers are neo-Falangists, not exactly the classical "fascists"

That's not to say they aren't dangerous, because they are.

But they do have a lot in common:

Reactionist, heavily corporatist, a desire for autarky, a ruling class painting itself as defenders of right-wing Christianity,
and inward-looking with a healthy measure of xenophobia.

[gejohnston]

22. All the more reason to hope that Rhodes has the correct

analysis. That said, if we don't get to the polls in droves, we are screwed even if she is right.

[Euromutt]

23. It's so nice to encounter someone else who knows his Spanish civil war stuff

Whenever I encounter some libertarian (small-l or capital L) who claims the exclusive right to the term, I point out the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists were using it to describe themselves well before Rand and Hayek bored their first publishers.

[SteveM]

32. Anarcho-syndicalism was something of a force in the old Yugoslavia...

I don't know if any of that old structure persists.

My brother's father-in-law fought in the Lincoln Brigade -- long barefoot flight back over the Pyrenees.

[friendly_iconoclast]

34. The anarcho-syndicalists got hit from *both* sides in the Spanish Civil War

The Nationalists/Falangists, for obvious reasons- but also the mainline Communists, due to their "heresy".

[SteveM]

37. Yeah, the "official" Communist part of Cuba opposed even Castro.

[AtheistCrusader]

31. Le sigh.

I still think it sucks all around.