...after the mess the Democrats and Obama have made of every aspect of our nation over the last 4 years, I imagine it’ll swing GOP again.

Yes, after that huge terrorist attack that occurred on Obama’s watch, the largest terrorist attack in American history, we need change.

Oh, wait…the biggest terrorist attack in American history occurred under a Republican president.

But surely after the world economy collapsed and imploded in an orgy of fraud during Obama’s presidency, we must have change.

Oh, wait…the world economy imploded during Republican rule.

But after all the massive corruption in government, with all those White House officials sent to prison for committing all those crimes, we’ve got to have change.

Oh, wait…all the massive corruption in government and all the White House officials sent to prison occurred under Nixon and Reagan and Bush, not the Democratic presidents.

In fact, there is not one single measure by which America improved under Republican rule.

Republicans destroyed defense readiness (every brigade in the U.S. army was combat-ready under Clinton, under Bush, none were because of the force drawdowns for Iraq and Afghanistan). Republicans destroyed the fiscal integrity of the U.S. treasury. Republicans made Americans poorer, sicker, more unemployed. Republicans have wrecked U.S. science research, Republicans have destroyed the regulatory agencies like the SEC necessary for the correct functioning of the American economy.

Every single measure of prosperity has declined under Republican presidents and skyrocketed under Democratic presidents.

Time for a change indeed. Time to try every self-identified conservative for treason and deport ‘em all to Somalia, where their dreams of a libertarian paradise with no regulations and no taxes can finally be realized.

Democrats like Obama are also insane when they declare a spending freeze except for the U.S. military-industrial complex, which gets an 8% spending boost at a time when America faces no credible threats anywhere in the world and has no meangingul enemies anywhere on the planet.

Spending 200 billion a year to send the U.S. army into Afghanistan to fight 100 Al Qaeda is insane.

Spending 700 billion over next 5 years on a massive Navy shipbuilding program when supersonic torpedoes like the shkval and stealthed radar-invisible pop-up cruise missiles make all of America’s carrier groups giant floating targets that will sink straight to the bottom in the first 5 minutes of any naval engagement is insane.

Spending 323 billion so far (and the cost continues to climb, now 158 million dollars per plane, twice the estimate of just 2 years ago, but wait another 2 years and the cost will probably double again) on the air force’s useless and wildly overpriced F-35 joint strike fighter in a world where UAVs that can vastly outclimb and out-accelerate any manned fighter by using G forces that would turn a human pilot to pulp is insane.

The entire deficit of the United States could be zeroed out tomorrow if we cut our futile pointless bloated 1.3 trillion dollar per year military budget by 80%.

Whatever deficit America runs today is optional. We could get rid of it tomorrow by cutting military spending, and we wouldn’t even hurt our defense posture, because most of our defense spending is wasted on weapons that don’t even work.

Over the past 30 years, the Republicans have controlled the Presidency for 20 of them. Over the past 30 years, the GOP controlled the Congress 12 years plus several years of divided control. From 1980-2006, the GOP dominated every facet of our political system. It has started to come back towards the Democrats again since then, but after the mess the Democrats and Obama have made of every aspect of our nation over the last 4 years, I imagine it’ll swing GOP again.

Texas Dem alludes to this, allusion being a fine liberal tradition. It comes with the complicated nature of our political presentation to the American people, which is sorely lacking in the face of the Republican Party’s plain talk about secession, violence and watering the tree of liberty with John Cole’s blood.

Let me get this right: demographics is the only arrow in the quiver, Doug J? This from a guy who last week ripped a big deep bloody one in Andrew Breitbart’s racist motherfucking anti-American ass last week.

The fascist Republican Party is the most dangerous, murderous organization on the face of the earth. Osama Bin Laden studies them for tactical advantage.

What do you think, you’re running an intellectual salon here to counter filth who are going to kill you?

They want the insolvency of the U.S. Government.

Think about that. Not as a debating point on the effing internet, but as a mortal threat to this country and your life.

I don’t want the enemy of my country marginalized. I want them dead.

They’d kill us if they could.

Supply-side economics transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party. It allowed them to promise lower taxes, lower deficits and, in effect, unchanged spending. Why should people not like this combination? Who does not like a free lunch?

Isn’t it past time to throw the phrase “free lunch” under the bus?

The only thing that is likely to stop it is a demographic trend that may marginalize the Republican party.

True, but before we reach that point (and it will probably take another decade at least), the GOP will likely have destroyed the country’s finances. And don’t underestimate the possibility of political violence or even civil war. There are some elements of the right that will not surrender the power they have over us without a fight.

But they have in terms of their economic way of thinking, i.e., many Democrats and independents think Keynesian economics are ruinous, Reagan & Greenspan set us free, deficits don’t matter (until Democrats control the budget), etc.

[E]very twenty years or so the working class gets prosperous enough to vote republican.

A concise encapsulation, to which I would only add:

...with invariably disastrous results.

The stupid in this country burns hotter than 1,000 suns. You cannot extinguish it with reason. People need to get burned – there is simply no other way they can learn.

The problem is that the first-burned are going to be the most combustible and least-able to recover. The granny whose Social Security is in danger will be quite happy to be told that the ni99ers did us in, and don’t deserve what they’re getting ‘free’ from the ‘rest of us,’ and that, if only we punish ‘them,’ the rest of us, including the captains of industry, get off Scott-free (the irony of saying ‘Scott-free’ when talking of race is noted).

Then the poor of all races will be thrown to the dogs, (I wonder if ‘under the bus’ and the connection with Greyhound—‘the dog—is another irony or just a coincidence). Eventually, when enough people are beggared, ruined, and ground down, there will be a movement resembling the New Deal, but the corporations will fight even harder than they did last time, so it may be even more of an eruption, something more nearly a revolution, than then. And, recalling the labor unrest of the 10s, 20s, & 30s, that may be quite violent.

If enough people put a stop to it now, it may not reach that level, but I doubt it can be stopped.

Then again, I’m an optimist.

Ed

The conservative machine gets better and better at it. They were unfortunate to have someone like G.W.Bush as their spokesman (although a person like him might be the inevitable, but also perfect figurehead for this kind of ideology). They called the organization to drown campaigns in corporate millions “Citizens United”. They’ve got a theory, no matter how silly, for every possible political development. They’ve got the bigger loudspeakers, the better organization, more money and the more active supporters.

Those radical conservatives (a small minority, I hope) who want to destroy the credit of the US federal government may succeed. If so, that would be the end of the US era of global dominance.

In other words, a long enough stretch of right-wing fiscal policy would result in extinguishing a major grievance of the radical Left…

The irony is making my head hurt.

OT: Booman has a new post of (old) video of Netanyahu admitting to sabotaging the Oslo accords and lying to Clinton.

No one cares. That came out a week or so ago and there wasn’t even a yawn—it apparently never happened and I’d guess you and Booman are antisemitic for mentioning it.

And by claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves, they could fool the public into not demanding spending be paid for

There’s a third term too, I’d say. They believe that tax cuts pay for themselves; they believe in spending money on things like the military and prisons; but they actually do have an unexpressed solution to how to balance less money coming in with more money going out, and it’s that the undeserving poor get too many free goodies and should get cut off. In other words, tax cuts would pay for themselves if not for all the lazy bastards out there.

Conservatives think their taxes are too high because there are leeches and moochers who aren’t pay their fair share, and if they shaped up, the whole enterprise could continue: low taxes, services for the deserving, no services for the undeserving, and tough, strong soldiers and cops. That’s the Tea Party ethos and its sometimes-spoken racial dimension: they can claim to hate that undeserving people get too much help, and it’s just a coincidence that they imagine those undeserving people to have black and Mexican faces.