About time to get rid of the noise! We can't defeat the Right in a pissing contest. They have more practice.

We have serious problems to discuss. The year is 2014, an election year. The Democratic Party is in the hands of people with good intentions but a poor understanding of how the world works.

Obama is playing the Republican game: reduce the deficit over the next decade. They want to do it with spending cuts only. He wants some spending cuts and some tax increases on the rich.
He has been losing this game badly and I fear he will let government shrink to bathtub size.

He was a pawn in the hands of Geithner and Sommers. He let Republican Senator Olympia Snowe design "his" stimulus. He let Congress make a mess of healthcare. For some reason, he didn't listen to Krugman and Stiglitz and insist on a stimulus big enough to cover the output gap, about $3T. He could have done it with a simple majority vote, like Bush did with tax cuts, or as Pelosi did with ACA

This is my second depression. I was 10 years old when both FDR and Hitler took office in 1933. Hitler immediately ended Germany's depression by spending heavily on everything from the autobahn to TV but mostly on armaments. The Germans loved him for that.

FDR did the same thing with the same result. Americans loved him for that. Unfortunately, he waited until 1940 to start really spending.

Republicans wouldn't let him spend enough during the '30s: we can't pay for it. We are broke! Now it's the same story. We are broke! We can't afford unemployment relief but we can afford Iraq.

Few Americans know how WW II was financed. The money was printed. High taxes and War Bond sales did not finance the war. That only disposed of the extra cash that everybody was making by working overtime. With rationing and no goods being produced, there was no place to spend it anyway.

The war was fought with printed money and the result was prosperity that lasted for 35 years that included a LOT of spending: on GI education and housing, the Marshall Plan, Cold War rearmament, nuclear energy, Korean War, the Interstate Highway System, NASA, Vietnam, a dozen proxy wars.

All that spending gave us prosperity and the growth in GDP lowered the Debt/GDP ration from 120% to 30%. But now, somehow, Obama wants to cut the deficit.

No matter what liberals propose the conservative answer is: we can't pay for it. We are broke!. Obama has said that himself. The only way to get the government to spend enough to spur the economy is to declare war on Mars.

The key is the so-called "national debt". It is the Republican's only weapon. We have to make it go away. I listed my plan to make it go away in this forum and all I got was derision. I am disappointed but will keep on trying.

About time to get rid of the noise! We can't defeat the Right in a pissing contest. They have more practice.

We have serious problems to discuss. The year is 2014, an election year. The Democratic Party is in the hands of people with good intentions but a poor understanding of how the world works.

Obama is playing the Republican game: reduce the deficit over the next decade. They want to do it with spending cuts only. He wants some spending cuts and some tax increases on the rich.
He has been losing this game badly and I fear he will let government shrink to bathtub size.

He was a pawn in the hands of Geithner and Sommers. He let Republican Senator Olympia Snowe design "his" stimulus. He let Congress make a mess of healthcare. For some reason, he didn't listen to Krugman and Stiglitz and insist on a stimulus big enough to cover the output gap, about $3T. He could have done it with a simple majority vote, like Bush did with tax cuts, or as Pelosi did with ACA

This is my second depression. I was 10 years old when both FDR and Hitler took office in 1933. Hitler immediately ended Germany's depression by spending heavily on everything from the autobahn to TV but mostly on armaments. The Germans loved him for that.

FDR did the same thing with the same result. Americans loved him for that. Unfortunately, he waited until 1940 to start really spending.

Republicans wouldn't let him spend enough during the '30s: we can't pay for it. We are broke! Now it's the same story. We are broke! We can't afford unemployment relief but we can afford Iraq.

Few Americans know how WW II was financed. The money was printed. High taxes and War Bond sales did not finance the war. That only disposed of the extra cash that everybody was making by working overtime. With rationing and no goods being produced, there was no place to spend it anyway.

The war was fought with printed money and the result was prosperity that lasted for 35 years that included a LOT of spending: on GI education and housing, the Marshall Plan, Cold War rearmament, nuclear energy, Korean War, the Interstate Highway System, NASA, Vietnam, a dozen proxy wars.

All that spending gave us prosperity and the growth in GDP lowered the Debt/GDP ration from 120% to 30%. But now, somehow, Obama wants to cut the deficit.

No matter what liberals propose the conservative answer is: we can't pay for it. We are broke!. Obama has said that himself. The only way to get the government to spend enough to spur the economy is to declare war on Mars.

The key is the so-called "national debt". It is the Republican's only weapon. We have to make it go away. I listed my plan to make it go away in this forum and all I got was derision. I am disappointed but will keep on trying.

About time to get rid of the noise! We can't defeat the Right in a pissing contest. They have more practice.

We have serious problems to discuss. The year is 2014, an election year. The Democratic Party is in the hands of people with good intentions but a poor understanding of how the world works.

Obama is playing the Republican game: reduce the deficit over the next decade. They want to do it with spending cuts only. He wants some spending cuts and some tax increases on the rich.
He has been losing this game badly and I fear he will let government shrink to bathtub size.

He was a pawn in the hands of Geithner and Sommers. He let Republican Senator Olympia Snowe design "his" stimulus. He let Congress make a mess of healthcare. For some reason, he didn't listen to Krugman and Stiglitz and insist on a stimulus big enough to cover the output gap, about $3T. He could have done it with a simple majority vote, like Bush did with tax cuts, or as Pelosi did with ACA

This is my second depression. I was 10 years old when both FDR and Hitler took office in 1933. Hitler immediately ended Germany's depression by spending heavily on everything from the autobahn to TV but mostly on armaments. The Germans loved him for that.

FDR did the same thing with the same result. Americans loved him for that. Unfortunately, he waited until 1940 to start really spending.

Republicans wouldn't let him spend enough during the '30s: we can't pay for it. We are broke! Now it's the same story. We are broke! We can't afford unemployment relief but we can afford Iraq.

Few Americans know how WW II was financed. The money was printed. High taxes and War Bond sales did not finance the war. That only disposed of the extra cash that everybody was making by working overtime. With rationing and no goods being produced, there was no place to spend it anyway.

The war was fought with printed money and the result was prosperity that lasted for 35 years that included a LOT of spending: on GI education and housing, the Marshall Plan, Cold War rearmament, nuclear energy, Korean War, the Interstate Highway System, NASA, Vietnam, a dozen proxy wars.

All that spending gave us prosperity and the growth in GDP lowered the Debt/GDP ration from 120% to 30%. But now, somehow, Obama wants to cut the deficit.

No matter what liberals propose the conservative answer is: we can't pay for it. We are broke!. Obama has said that himself. The only way to get the government to spend enough to spur the economy is to declare war on Mars.

The key is the so-called "national debt". It is the Republican's only weapon. We have to make it go away. I listed my plan to make it go away in this forum and all I got was derision. I am disappointed but will keep on trying.

RIGHT WING EXTREMESTS
The purpose of this group is to discuss right wing extremism and its impact on American politics.
A technical name for right wing extremists is Authoritarian followers and they can be described by the twelve indicators following: If you are able to read this through the definition of Authoritarian follower, and attempt to understand it, even while you may disagree with it, you are extremely unlikely to be an authoritarian follower. True Authoritarian followers find it impossible to read through and comprehend it or to see it in himself.

Definitions of Authoritarian Followers:

1. Authoritarian submission. Authoritarian followers submit to the people they consider authorities much more than non-authoritarians do. In this context, authoritarian followers seem to believe without question whatever their chosen authorities say. Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, various religious groups, the House and Senate GOP leaders, Sen. Grassley from Iowa, Rep. Bachmann from Minnesota, and of course Sarah Palin can say whatever they want about their opposition, and the followers will accept it and repeat it. The followers don't find out for themselves what is really in a bill, what a treaty actually specifies, or whether taxes have really gone up. They are happy to let Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin do their thinking for them. It has gotten so bad that their leaders casually say preposterous things that are easily refuted, because they know their audience will never believe the truth, or even hear it.

2. Fear. Fear constantly pulses through authoritarian followers, and Tea Partiers are mightily frightened. They believe President Obama is a dictator. They also think the country will be destroyed by its mounting debt. They readily believed the health care proposals provided for “death panels” that will euthanize Downs syndrome babies, “put Grandma in the grave,” and place microchips in each American so the government can track us. Conservative leaders especially vilify Barack Obama, recently calling him in the space of two days the “most radical president ever” (Gingrich) who is “inflicting untold damage on this great country” (Limbaugh) and is inviting a nuclear attack on the United States by indicating we won't hit back (Palin). The people who authoritarian followers know well what button to push first and hardest among social conservatives, and they work it overtime. And they know spreading fear “works” with others as well.

3. Self-righteousness. Self-righteousness runs very strongly in authoritarian followers, and combines with fear to unleash aggression in them. The followers commonly describe themselves
as “the good Americans,” “the true Americans,” “the people,” and “the American Patriots.” They could hardly wrap themselves in the flag more thoroughly or more often than they do. Theirs is the holy cause. They believe they are the only ones who can save the country.

4. Hostility. Authoritarian aggression is one of the defining characteristics of authoritarian followers. Do authoritarian followers seem particularly aggressive? They angrily call people who disagree with them “Liars,” “Communists,” and “Traitors.” 5. A lack of critical thinking. Authoritarian followers have more trouble thinking logically than most people do. In particular, they tend to agree with sayings and slogans, even contradictory ones, because they have heard them a lot. Thus authoritarian followers reflexively, patriotically thump that the United States is the best country on earth, but as well that it is now an Obama dictatorship. They also have extra trouble applying logic to false reasoning when they like the conclusion. A ready example can be found in their assertion that Obama is a socialist. They have heard this over and over again from Rush Limbaugh, etcetera, and “so it must be true.” But Obama has never advocated state ownership of an industry. He certainly did not advocate state ownership of health insurance, and eventually even backed away from the “public option” (that most Americans wanted) which would have let the government as well as private companies offer health insurance. 3

6. Our “biggest problem.” Authoritarian followers will readily believe that lots of things are our “biggest problem.” It can be drugs, the decline of religion, the breakdown of the family, you name it. Thus it was not hard to get followers worked up about, of all things, a plan to improve health care to the levels found in other industrialized countries. Yet Tea Partiers believe the passage of the health care bill marks the end of liberty. But they could just as easily have been led to believe that climate change legislation, nuclear disarmament, gay marriage, or taking “In God we trust” off the money would sound the death knell for America. In earlier eras it could have been sex education, Sunday shopping, the 40-hour week, or a Catholic president that would lead to our doom.

7. Compartmentalized thinking. Authoritarian followers can have so many contradictory beliefs and “biggest problems” because their thinking is highly compartmentalized. Ideas exist independently of the other ideas in their head. Their thinking is so unintegrated because they have spent their lives copying what their authorities say, without examining whether the ideas fit together sensibly. And followers say over and over that the Democrats are installing a dictatorship, but they demonstrate every time they demonstrate that Americans still have all the freedom of speech they ever had. And one notes the health care reforms bear a striking resemblance to Social Security and Medicare—which many of the protestors happily enjoy and would never give up.

8. Double Standards. Highly compartmentalized thinking makes it easy for authoritarian followers to employ double standards in their judgments. Followers protested about the federal deficit growing by unprecedented leaps and bounds under Obama. But it grew by unprecedented leaps and bounds during George W. Bush's presidency, also. Followers have asserted that the Obama administration has too much power and is taking away our Constitutional rights. But they did not cry out when President Bush set up illegal domestic spying operations. Followers howled, on cue, when the Senate used the reconciliation process to pass health care reform. How loudly did they howl when the Republicans used reconciliation to pass George W. Bush's tax cuts? It’s pretty clear that many, many followers aren’t really against the things they say they’re against.

9. Feeling empowered when in groups. Authoritarian followers seem to want to disappear as individuals. They are not comfortable taking stands on their own, or acting alone. Instead they seem fulfilled simply by being part of a large, powerful movement on the march. experiments have shown that authoritarian followers are highly conforming. Being in a crowd of fellow-believers also helps them maintain their opinions.

10. Dogmatism. We also know that authoritarian followers lead the league in being dogmatic. When their leaders set their opinions for them, those opinions are set in stone. Experiments show that nothing (aside from their authorities) can convince them they are wrong. If overwhelmed by logic and evidence, they simply “castle” into dogmatism. This is probably because they don't really know why they believe what they believe. They didn't figure it out for themselves; they Xeroxed what their authorities said.
.
11. Ethnocentrism. Authoritarian followers are notably ethnocentric, constantly judging others and events through “Us versus Them” lenses. They largely choose their friends according to their beliefs. They stick to news outlets that tell them what they want to hear. They live in a polarized world, divided into their in-group, and out-groups consisting of everybody else. They stress in-group loyalty, and try to keep their distance from the out-groups. They wrap themselves in the flag so tightly, everybody else is outside it. They have very definite out-groups. This fierce in-group orientation, along with the followers‟ need for external confirmation of their beliefs, explains why Fox News has such a big audience compared with other outlets, why Sarah Palin's, Glenn Beck's, and Ann Coulter's books leap to the top of the best sellers lists, and why “hate radio” is so popular. Authoritarian followers have to get their ideas “validated” by others more than most people do. So they constantly seek out sources of information that will tell them they are right. It amounts to in-group in-breeding of the intellect. Research shows that less authoritarian people are more likely to consider different sides of an issue, and figure things out more for themselves.

12. Prejudice. Studies have found that authoritarian followers are among the most prejudiced people in society. It is the nastiest aspect of their ethnocentrism, and one they insistently deny—to others and to themselves. And they really do not realize how prejudiced they are, compared with others, because they associate so much with other prejudiced people. So their prejudices seem normal and perfectly justified to them.
Notes: Congratulations, If you have read the entire post, It is very safe to say that you are not an authoritarian follower.
These characteristics are excerpted and modified from an article titled, Comments on the Tea Party movement at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/drbob/Comment%20on%20the%20Tea%20Party.pdf

While I'm a bit skeptical about spend spend spend, I do know we should be spending on infrastructure as investment, which legitimately can be seen as like a mortgage for home improvement...in this case, national improvement. Not only repair and upgrade of existing structure but in particular a high speed passenger rail system across the whole nation. Literally I have zero choice for passenger service from northwestern Wisconsin to East Tennessee except driving my car...no train, no bus, no direct plane...and I don't like plane transport. It's also highly polluting compared to rail...thus rail a good investment. Where would we be without the national highway system? I remember how it was before--barely workable.

These idiots would trash the constitution with an amendment to require a balanced budget...which would preclude large national investment projects. Please note that most of those investment projects merely jump start what becomes private business. Where would East Tennessee be without the federal investment in the Tennessee Valley Authority? I'm not sure about what future NASA makes possible, but I believe it has been worthwhile investment. The internet makes possible multiples curriculum plans and materials that could enable individualized education and degree of choice and own direction with teachers becoming coaches instead of dictators down one limited path. It would have to be funded and guards in place that it is truly multiple choice not dictated path. With virtual space as new frontier who knows what's possible for individualism in the future for all people?!

Thank you, Marvin for posting your idea. Some of us old geezers have some intriguing POSITIVE ideas...as opposed to all the negatives from the extreme rightwingers.

I thought they would get aboard and participate in exchange of views and discussion, I don't think some of them have the capacity to do that, so I am going to just ignore them without further comment to them. I have started with two of the most extreme and just plain nasty. I have informed Vernon and Banjohack that I am going to ignore their comments and obviously not respond to them. I did say if they apologize I may reconsider. I am sure neither of these two have the balls to do so. If Necessary, I will quit responding to others and I hope others of you will do so, also. That will eventually send them to other forums that are more suitable for them.

Although I think that comment was in jest, I will endeavor to enlighten you, According to Gen Partin there are 164 FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMPS in America. Meaning those surrounded with Barbed wire, electrified fences, and guard houses, some have huge one way turn styles, and fenced connectors that connect to the rail cars (also with leg irons welded to the floor) Another thing I noticed is Huge new Ogden-Martin incinerators either on or near most of the "Camps" 3 here in Fla. I'm told that there is a huge one in the camp in the old train station in Indianapolis. Here it was built in Avon park, so large that to run it they had to "Solicit" garbage from other counties! In the past the Ga. Militia published a map showing where the 5 camps in GA. were and pictures! I have a copy of Klinton's "Terrorist bill" (the one where Janet Reno had the Murrah building blown up to get passed?) In the finance pages it has one funding for "24 million dollars to FEMA for 12 more CONCENTRATION CAMPS" simple as that! Alex Jones has more pictures on his site! Until Obama began recruiting, the camps have been unstaffed! A lot has leaked out since Klinton!