gyre wrote:Have you guys been watching the naacp vs teabagger argument?
So far they are both losing at the same time.
One of the teabaggers called it naacp's 'March To Irrelevancy'.
Well, I believe it comes across as looking really bad for the NAACP only because it makes them look less like anything related to having anything to do with P of C and more to do with being minions of the DNC.
First of all, there is really no such thing as "the" tea party movement. It is not centrally organized with a hierarchy as much as certain people have WANTED to make it so and place themselves somewhere at the top of that hierarchy. They are generally unaffiliated groups of people sick of our current government that has suddenly decided that it is the role of government to "take care" of people.
So you have a Congress that is making extremely unpopular decisions. Decisions their constituents do NOT want. For example, we wanted more affordable health care, we did NOT want government controlled health care. The people feel that their elected representatives are not listening to them. So they reach back into our history and find the Boston Tea Party as an icon that represents a moment in time when the people were fed up with their government and use that as they rallying point.
And that pretty much is the only thing the groups have in common. There could be 20 different "tea party" movements in a city, each one with its own group of people and not coordinated in any way.
For the NAACP to say that it is a "white supremacist" organization is at first laughable because being "white" has nothing to do with it. But then one begins to see how scared the Democrats are. When they start seeing black candidates for office showing up in places like the Palm Beach, Florida House district and the South Carolina Senate race, they have to find some way of scaring black voters away from these candidates so they come out with the "white supremacist" crap.
People were just kind of going "huh"?
It is so desperate and so off the wall and so tangential to the real movement's aims (which is to simply get incumbents fired) that it suddenly made the NAACP look really stupid and nothing more than doing what they are told by the DNC.
It is not so much a "march to irrelevancy" as that takes time. This was a rocket shot to irrelevancy and nothing the NAACP says in the political arena can be taken seriously anymore other than to be taken as if it were issued from the DNC. They can no longer be seen as an independent body. They are seen as acting to keep their demographic in the "correct" party. If you don't think they way you are "supposed" to think, then they whip out the "white supremacist" label. It was a REALLY stupid thing to do because it was just so over the top they they have now lost all influence on the issue. It is obviously a "last ditch" move because there really is nowhere else to go from there. They threw "the big one".
Now I also don't like the "teabagger" meme either because the tea party movement is something I feel is a great thing. Getting rank and file people involved and discussing politics is great, particularly when it is the average everyday people who have been uninvolved for so long. People are really pissed off at a nanny government who believes it has some mandate to "redistribute" our paychecks for us without our consent.
The Democrats mistook a disaffection for Republicans as affection for them. Obama won by no larger margin than Bush did over Kerry. The only reason Obama was elected wasn't because so many people voted for him, it was because so many Republicans stayed home or voted but did not cast a vote for McCain. The "Tea Party" movement is against the establishment Republicans, too.
Government is "helping" us to death. Everything it touches turns to shit. The passage if the new financial "reform" bill is going to cost us even more jobs and make our banking costs go even higher. Government health care reform is going to result in less care at higher cost. Rather than opening the market up and allowing more competition which would bring costs down, they decided to control it even more which is already resulting in higher costs.
Unlike the 1930's when corporate "robber barons" were seen as the cause of the problem, the majority of the people see government as responsible for this recession and do not believe that more government manipulation is going to fix it. Just last week that fucking idiot Barney Frank (Failure-MA) was calling for even MORE of the same sort of loans that got us into this mess to begin with. The man is absolutely idiotic.
This transcends political parties. It is a role of government issue. People are sick of government "helping" us into the poor house.
The first step has to come with government first admitting to itself that no matter what it does, there are still some really fucking stupid people out there that are going to make self-destructive choices and there is nothing it can do about it. If people have no money, simply giving them money does not fix the problem if they use it in casinos and strip clubs. They do not address the issue of why they have no money. They have no money because they make idiotic decisions. Government should not be in the business of protecting people from themselves. If you use your welfare card in a casino, the answer is not to spend millions of dollars figuring out how to prevent them from being used in casinos and strip clubs, the answer is to cut off the fucking welfare to those individuals because they ARE going to find another way to waste the fucking money. It is what they do. Just accept that.
Stop wasting money subsidizing idiots. Stop feeling sorry for idiots.
Look, I have a friend who had a sales position at a vendor for bleeding edge tech gear here in Silicon Valley. His company was bought by another company and he was made redundant and let go in the course of the merger. He sat at home for months collecting unemployment because as he put it, the check didn't cover everything but he didn't have to dig too far into his pocket to make up the difference needed for rent and bills. Then his benefits ran out when the Republicans decided they wanted the Democrats to say how they wanted to fund continuing unemployment benefits and the Democrats refused to say. He found another job within two weeks. He has now started his own company, already has a guy on board, and is selling equipment and professional services. He could have done that three months ago but the weekly checks enabled him to sit on his ass. He told me last week that he now feels he SHOULD have done it three months ago. Business apparently isn't all that bad in his line of work.
For some people, the specter of failure is a great motivator. For others, nothing motivates them and they just want to blame other people and be "taken care of" by their neighbors. FUCK THEM. We are tired of "helping"" them so much. It doesn't do any good. Giving them free stuff simply enables a lifestyle where you expect more free stuff.
Your job is not your neighbor's responsibility. It is YOUR responsibility.
Anyway, back on the topic, it is not a "march to irrelevance" it was a great big all in one jump to irrelevance. Nobody is going to pay much attention to anything the NAACP has to say as speaking for people of color. It is clear they are only speaking for the Democratic Party.
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