check out this one. Its about the Truth :

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=171772

Neither side has a coherent ideology nor particular skill in organizing enduring cohesive groups.

That’a the problem.

We have become a culture of bowling alone.

The first group that comes up with a way to positively engage community will have a winner.

War is peace.
Defeat is victory.

The sociopathic attitude described in this post can be found in most criminal gangs — which is what the Republican party has become. Sociopaths and the ignorant fools that they dupe into following them.
And the other party — the Democrats — is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. Talk about a great choice.

Just a reminder that the ‘good-for-me-bad-for-you is not unique to the ‘right.’

Welcome Ned.

I note that Mr. Vanderboegh’s disability payments ($1,300/month!) are for congestive heart failure, diabetes and high blood pressure. These are generally caused by lifestyle choices. If Mr. Vanderboegh stopped hating on people he disagrees with he might lower his blood pressure.

How did Mr. Vanderboegh’s private health information become public fodder for people like me? It’s none of my business. Why does he get free money from the taxpayers just for being in poor health when his wife has a job with health insurance? Shouldn’t the Vanderboeghs be able to live on the wife’s income? They’re lucky she has a job….with health insurance.

GOP = Got Ours, Piss-off.

The correlation isn’t causation and the author doesn’t bother to link to any hard facts. – he just says they are out there. I don’t think you’ll find many chechens in palestine. But hey, any way to turn those wretched palestinians into nazis works for you, doesn’t it?

You bothered?

An important aspect of what is going on is a deliberate attempt to diffuse populist movements by pitting them against each other, rather than at the PTB (wealthy and their political minions) who are responsible. Seems to be working.

But this goes back to something I and others have been arguing for a while: that to talk about “conservative principles” in relation to either the modern Republican Party or the Tea Party makes no sense whatsoever.

the tea party’s entire premise makes no sense, the original tea party was a revolt against the king removing taxes, not a revolt against the king raising taxes

in fact, “the stamp act” was rescinded almost a decade before the boston tea party, the king wanted one of his pals to do better business so he removed the tariff, the founders said, “oh no you don’t, we’re dumping any tea that enters without tariff to the sea”

and a new nation was born

so the entire premise of the tea party movement today is a moronic contradiction of events

Yup. And when stuck in bogus wars the best thing to do is declare victory and go home in peace. If we say that we won the war then we won the war. And really, ending it and coming home is a great definition of winning.

The tariffs were imposed by the king (parliament actually) to fund the soldiers required to protect the colonist in the expansion west over the Appalachians. By the time of Geroge III the king had no power to levy tariffs.

The tariff was lifted on the East India Company because it argued its owners were not interested in it expanding westwards. Because the East India Company lobbied well (had influence) the East India Company got what it wanted. Just like AHIP today.

Greed and special interests. Twas ever thus.

I do see a parallel today, not an exact parallel, by a victory of those with influence over those without.

Thank you, Pups … Many excellent posts tonight. I want to comment on this one in particular as I think it succinctly states the solution Jane seeks in her previous thread, “We Need a New Language of Politics” (http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/26/we-need-a-new-language-of-politics):

the language of a “universally applicable ethical standard.”

The tariffs were imposed by the king (parliament actually) to fund the soldiers required to protect the colonist in the expansion west over the Appalachians.

not so, the very reason the colonists oposed the tariffs was that the king imposed them unilaterally, without representation

by law the king had no power to impose tax unless those taxed had representation to argue for or against the tax, that was the rub, the colonists had no problem with taxes, they had a problem with taxes that were written without representation

a complete antithesis to the tea party’s complaints

but more to the point, the stamp act was repealed long after this entire debacle, the boston tea party was a revolt against the reduction of taxes

Seems to me that some of these “independent credible voices” referred to in your link may have been heard here recently.

I think the Boston Tea Party was a result of the Governor of Massachusetts not letting the consigned tea cargoes leave the Port of Boston. Tea was being sold through consignees, and two of the Governor’s sons were incidentally consignees.

There was a tax on that tea, but for some reason the East India company was going to be able to sell it for less than competitors. The competitors felt that this was an unfair advantage to the royal-backed tea merchants and would drive these competitors out of business.

The argument about “taxation without representation”, while of its own merit, was not the real motivation behind the protest. In fact, it was a bit of fig leaf for the competing merchants’ real desire–not to be underpriced out of business.

I’m not sure Schoolhouse Rock did history any favors with this one.

Interesting article:

The Real Boston Tea Party was Against the Wal-Mart of the 1770s
Thom Hartmann
Posted April 15, 2009

The real Boston Tea Party was a protest against huge corporate tax cuts for the British East India Company, the largest trans-national corporation then in existence. This corporate tax cut threatened to decimate small Colonial businesses by helping the BEIC pull a Wal-Mart against small entrepreneurial tea shops, and individuals began a revolt that kicked-off a series of events that ended in the creation of The United States of America.

…

That is how I tell the story of the Boston Tea Party, now that I have read a first-person account of it. While striving to understand my nation’s struggles against corporations, in a rare book store I came upon a first edition of “Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773,” and I jumped at the chance to buy it. Because the identities of the Boston Tea Party participants were hidden (other than Samuel Adams) and all were sworn to secrecy for the next 50 years, this account is the only first-person account of the event by a participant that exists. As I read, I began to understand the true causes of the American Revolution.

I learned that the Boston Tea Party resembled in many ways the growing modern-day protests against transnational corporations and small-town efforts to protect themselves from chain-store retailers or factory farms. The Tea Party’s participants thought of themselves as protesters against the actions of the multinational East India Company.

Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against “taxation without representation,” akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation that, by the 1760s, dominated trade from China to India to the Caribbean, and controlled nearly all commerce to and from North America, with subsidies and special dispensation from the British crown.

Hewes notes: “The [East India] Company received permission to transport tea, free of all duty, from Great Britain to America…” allowing it to wipe out New England–based tea wholesalers and mom-and-pop stores and take over the tea business in all of America. “Hence,” wrote, “it was no longer the small vessels of private merchants, who went to vend tea for their own account in the ports of the colonies, but, on the contrary, ships of an enormous burthen, that transported immense quantities of this commodity … The colonies were now arrived at the decisive moment when they must cast the dye, and determine their course … ”

and it goes on