GOP Civil War

[TruthOut10]

The Reign Of Morons Is Here

Only the truly naive can be truly surprised.

Only the truly child-like can have expected anything else.

In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.


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[TruthOut10]

It's open warfare within the GOP – and all of America is caught in the crossfire

The day before Congress broke for its August recess, on an afternoon when most of official Washington was tying up loose ends and racing to get out of town, Sen. Ted Cruz was setting the stage for the chaos that has consumed the nation's capital in recent weeks.

Meet the Eight Tea Party Morons Destroying America

The tall Tea Party-backed Texan – the state's junior senator, with less than a year in office – worked his mischief in a windowless Capitol basement, where dozens of the most radical members of the House had gathered for a meeting of the Republican Study Committee. Once a marginal group known for elevating anti-government dogma above party loyalty, the RSC now counts among its members 174 of the 232 House Republicans.

"Father, we thank you," says Rep. Michele Bachmann, opening the meeting. "You are the most important presence in this room." In a pinstriped suit and yellow tie, Cruz sits at the center of a long conference table, flanked by RSC chair Steve Scalise and by the group's most powerful member, former chair Jim Jordan of Ohio – who has routinely marshaled House rebels into battle against leadership. Jordan flashes the visiting senator a conspiratorial smile.

Soft-spoken but passionate, Cruz derides the work of House leadership, who this same week have scheduled a 40th, futile bill to roll back Obamacare. Instead of "symbolic statements" that "won't become law," Cruz says, the time has come to force a real fight – one that Republicans can "actually win." It's imperative to act now, Cruz warns, before the full benefits of Obamacare kick in and Americans get "hooked on the sugar, hooked on the subsidies." His plan: Yoke the defunding of Obamacare to the must-pass budget bill the House will take up in September. The endgame? To force a government shutdown so painful and protracted that Barack Obama would have no choice but to surrender the crown jewel of his presidency. "As scary as a shutdown fight is," Cruz insists, "if we don't stand and defund Obamacare now, we never will."

Tea Party Politics: A Look Inside the Republican Suicide Machine | Politics News | Rolling Stone

 

[TruthOut10]

The tea party group had to take out a $1 million line of credit, and its fundraising efforts have tanked this year, sources say. FreedomWorks dismisses the accusations as claims made by “bored former employees.”

WASHINGTON — The tea party group FreedomWorks has fallen into dire financial straits, and was forced to take out a $1 million line of credit earlier this year, sources close to the organization told BuzzFeed.

The conservative nonprofit, which raised more than $40 million in 2012, has brought in less than $10 million this year, according to the sources. And former employees say the group’s rank and file have grown increasingly frustrated with what they view as management’s exorbitant expenditures, including a pricey craft beer bar and fancy Las Vegas hotel rooms that rack up thousands of dollars a night in charges.

FreedomWorks spokeswoman Jackie Bodnar did not deny the spending or the debt, but she broadly dismissed the claims as accusations from disgruntled former employees.

“Someone has clearly contacted you with the rumors being spread about FreedomWorks, and they are part of a series of baseless attacks from salty former employees who have decided to spend their days spreading lies rather than working to advance the movement,” Bodnar said. “It’s really unfortunate to watch the malice unfold from these nameless accusers who lurk in the shadows of ‘deep background’ interviews.”


Sources: Cash-Strapped FreedomWorks In State Of Financial Disarray

 

[TruthOut10]

Pat Buchanan covers many movements across U.S. to divorce from urban rulers

In the last decade of the 20th century, as the Soviet Empire disintegrated, so, too, did that prison house of nations, the USSR.

Out of the decomposing carcass came Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova, all in Europe; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.






Transnistria then broke free of Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free of Georgia.

Yugoslavia dissolved far more violently into the nations of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo.

The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. Yet a Europe that plunged straight to war after the last breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939 this time only yawned. Let them go, all agreed.

The spirit of secession, the desire of peoples to sever ties to nations to which they have belonged for generations, sometimes for centuries, and to seek out their own kind, is a spreading phenomenon.

Scotland is moving toward a referendum on independence from England, three centuries after the Acts of Union. Catalonia pushes to be free of Madrid. Milanese and Venetians see themselves as a European people apart from Sicilians, Neapolitans and Romans

Read more at Is red state America seceding?