Nutjobs Continue to Rule GOP

[trish]

The U.S. failed to ratify the UN Disabilities Act (based on the American Disabilities Act signed by Bush the father in 1990). Conservative home schoolers (you know, the crazies who withdraw their children from real schools that teach science and civics) are deathly afraid the UN treaty would require them to make their homes wheelchair accessible! They also fear black helicopters and UN erosion of American sovereignty. As a result of a massive call-in campaign by home schoolers, and the predispositions of their numbskull representatives, the treaty failed to get the required votes to be be ratified by the U.S.

Just how backward can the GOP get??? We'll have to wait and see.

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/...s/?ref=opinion

http://thehill.com/video/senate/2712...ap-in-the-face

[Ben]

Noam Chomsky, from 2011, on the state of American politics. Particularly the outlandish nature of the Republican Party.

[Ben]

Covert Operations

The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.

by Jane Mayer August 30, 2010

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...0fa_fact_mayer

[Prospero]

I posted that story more than a year ago here. The poisonous influence of the Koch brothers on US politics is a long and well established fact.

[robertlouis]

I posted that story more than a year ago here. The poisonous influence of the Koch brothers on US politics is a long and well established fact.

Fair enough. But are the Koch brothers "nutjobs" or, more likely, a sinister force using their money and influence to get the credulous and hopeless on the right of American politics to swamp reason in the GoP through the medium of the Tea Party? If so, the evidence of last month suggests that they need to find a new way of using their money if they want to succeed.

[Ben]

Sheldon Adelson: ‘I’m Basically a Social Liberal’

By Alicia Mundy

Isaac Brekken for The Wall Street Journal

Sheldon Adelson with his wife, Miriam Adelson, at his office at the Venetian on Monday, Nov. 19, 2012 in Las Vegas.

In a three-hour interview with The Wall Street Journal, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson excoriated President Barack Obama, Democrats and unions, as one would expect of a top donor to conservatives and Republican causes in the 2012 election.
But the billionaire, sitting with his wife Miriam, an Israel-born physician, shared political beliefs that may leave some surprised.
“Look, I’m basically a social liberal, I know nobody will believe that,” Mr. Adelson said, as Dr. Adelson nodded.
“Number one, I’m supporting stem-cell research,” he said, pointing to a chart of the new Adelson medical research foundation that is funding some stem-cell based science.
“I’m pro choice,” he said. Republicans are pro-life, but he and his wife are not pro-life in politics, he said.
“You can take your own religious beliefs …and live your life with your own beliefs. But to make it a portion of the government’s policies?” He shook his head.
“Abortion shouldn’t be brought up as a political issue,” he said.
Mr. Adelson continued on his list of liberal leanings.
On immigration: “I’m pro-Dream Act, I’m pro the Dream Act. My parents were immigrants to this country,” he said. “What are we going to do ? Listen, I’m sure a lot of my parents generation …..snuck onto the ship and they came into the country.
“So – people will do anything to leave massacres and to leave the economic conditions – they can’t put food on their own table.
“There has been in our history a lot of illegal immigration. Do I approve of it? No, but it’s here.
“It would be inhumane to send those people back , to send 12 million people out of this country to disrupt a whole potpourri of family issues” over what happens to the children.
“I mean it’s all ridiculous. So we’ve got to find a way, find a route for those people to get legal citizenship,” he said.
Finally, he said casually: “And by the way I’m in favor of a socialized-like health care.”
Asked he was sure he was in the right party, he and his wife laughed.
“Look, nobody agrees with 100 % of their planks” in the GOP platform, he and Dr. Adelson both said.
His interest in health care comes from his wife, and Israel’s national medical-care system, he said, as well as his Judaism.
“I think that to take care of everybody is part of Tikkun Olam” the Hebrew motto meaning “repair the world,” he said. “And to deprive somebody for money of heath care or [medical] testing is bordering on criminal.”
But he said, “I’m against this Obamacare because it’s making the [medical] decisions based upon money.” If one goes to Israel, he said, one chooses among four or five HMO’s. “You go in there you get all your health care from cradle to grave.”
“When I learned about that [Israeli] system, to my own surprise I said, ‘Oh, I’m in favor of socialized medicine’– which is such a bad word here,” he said.
Why does he favor it? “Because everybody pays” into the system, and the doctors don’t deny the elderly health treatments like hip surgery just because they are old, he said.
He added that he used to be a Democrat—like most Jewish Americans, he noted –until he attended the 1988 Democratic convention. He said he was appalled at the self-interested politicians he says were all over the place.
He then went to the 1992 Republican convention in Houston — where, he said, people were less concerned in what they were going to get from the presidential election, and more focused on helping the country.

[Ben]

Fair enough. But are the Koch brothers "nutjobs" or, more likely, a sinister force using their money and influence to get the credulous and hopeless on the right of American politics to swamp reason in the GoP through the medium of the Tea Party? If so, the evidence of last month suggests that they need to find a new way of using their money if they want to succeed.

The likes of David Koch -- and Charles -- are simply serving their own interests. I mean, David Koch, like Sheldon Adelson, is a social liberal. David Koch supports gay marriage.
I mean, Adelson and David Koch simply want policies like free trade etc, etc. to further their own interests and their financial wealth.
It's not some sort of, well, evil undertaking, as it were.
And, too, they enjoy the game, as it were, of corporate-state-capitalism.

David Koch breaks from GOP on gay marriage, taxes, defense cuts

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80483.html

[Prospero]

Pusuing business success is not, in itself, "an evil undertaking" but the dirty tricks of the Koch brothers, their funding of lunatic right wingers and their general tampering and distortion of political processes for their own ends - including the desire to block initiatives to control climate change, to attack any organisation by workers and to try to block any legislation which might inhibit the worst excesses of capitalism are surely enough to make them truly evil and a blight on the face of the US body politic.

[Prospero]

Interesting how many leading GOP folks or supporters are suddenly mutating from their core beliefs. Koch now supports gay marriage, the high priest of the evangelical movement Pat Robertson suddenly says he no longer accepts young earth creationism, Adelson describing himself as a social liberal and Fox News put new rules in place before Rove can appear on their channel.

[Ben]

Pusuing business success is not, in itself, "an evil undertaking" but the dirty tricks of the Koch brothers, their funding of lunatic right wingers and their general tampering and distortion of political processes for their own ends - including the desire to block initiatives to control climate change, to attack any organisation by workers and to try to block any legislation which might inhibit the worst excesses of capitalism are surely enough to make them truly evil and a blight on the face of the US body politic.

"... are surely enough to make them truly evil."

Is Capitalism Always Good for Democracy? - Robert Reich