Tea Party Letter Indicts GOP on Shutdown

Rep. James Sensenbrenner signed Tea Party letter
calling for government shutdown

Update: A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning (Stolberg, McIntire. NYT)

"More than a third of congressional Republicans told their leader on Thursday (August 2013) to shut down government rather than pay for the Obamacare health care law, according to the Associated Press."

So reads an August piece by Jennifer Jacobs in the Des Monies Register.

The corporate media is sticking to its who-is-to-blame blather, despite the fact we have known for months the GOP suicide caucus has called for a government shutdown.

The Tea Party letter calls explicitly for a government shutdown unless the Affordable Health Care Act is somehow repealed.

The Tea Party called for the shutdown; House Speaker John Boehner gave the Tea Party the shutdown; and is actively blocking an up-or-down vote on a bill ending the shutdown.

Every honest news headline should read some variation of:

Tea Party to Blame for Government Shutdown; 
John Boehner Still Blocking Vote to End Government Shutdown

"Harry Reid and his Democrats will have no incentive to compromise unless they know the Republicans are willing to take a hard stance -- even allowing the government to be shut down, if necessary -- in order to stop the catastrophically unworkable and unaffordable health care law from taking effect," the Tea Party-FreedomWorks, website says in pushing for supports for the shutdown letter.

In Wisconsin, Rep. James Sensenbrenner is the only member to have signed the August Tea Party letter.

Contempt for People Defines GOP Project

Update: See The White Man's Last Tantrum. "American pundits are missing the bigger point about the Republican shutdown of the U.S. government and the GOP’s threatened default on America’s credit. The real question is not what policy concessions the Tea Partiers may extract, but rather can a determined right-wing white minority ensure continuation of white supremacy in the United States?"

The reason Republicans lie repeatedly without shame is not just a lack of conscience.

Republicans are engaged in implementing their project to disenfranchise out-of-favor Americans, and lies are imperative.

The Project has been launched and every Republican will toe the line.

In Wisconsin—where Republicans hold sway in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government through the injection of tens of millions of dollars into the GOP—one can see clearly the GOP objectives of repressing non-favored Americans by stripping people of their rights to organize, associate, and exercise community control of their local governments.

This American GOP social engineering project is fascistic; it's not just Greece or far-off countries where fascism is consciously pursued.

Women, college students, Americans of color, unions, environmentalists, attorneys enforcing rights of citizens, and citizen groups, earned social insurance programs; all are defects in Republican society to be corrected, problems to be solved.

Shut down the government, they are taking away our country. 

Misogyny, religious fanaticism and racism are the rallying cries for The Project: Engineering American society as a Republican homeland.

That's why shutting down the government, even threatening the world economy are acceptable as the scope and mission of The Project creeps outward.

One illustration, in Madison, Wisconsin one doesn't have to travel far to see in person the contempt the Republicans have for the black and brown citizens trying to pass themselves off as good Americans. The nerve.

Locally, in my neighborhood on the Madison-Fitchburg, Wisconsin border, the Meadowood Shopping Center represents a paradigm as hard-working people at the library, community center, and other small businesses contend with the racism inflamed by former Republican Dane County Supervisor David Blaska and the staff at GOP-infested Best Cleaners who just cannot stand the sight of black children walking past their establishment.

Call in some JPM security to yell and harass those children, a frequent occurrence.

The fact is Republicans do not regard black and brown Americans as full-blooded human beings, much less full-fledged citizens of the American republic.

"So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact — I can only submit to the edict of others," said Martin Luther King.

Submitting to the GOP edict.

This is the GOP project.

As long as you are alive and breathing in GOP land, your function is to submit to GOP edicts.

Challenge this project where you see it.

It may not appear so, but the GOP project is a house of cards.

Zero Wisconsin Republicans Call for Up-or-Down Vote to End Shutdown

Paul Ryan and GOP friends posture, but will not end shutdown;
or even call for a simple Up-or-Down vote. Yes or No? And what
the hell is Paul Ryan, House Budget Chair, doing? Staring into space?

GOP: Gov shutdown is irrational and destructive, but let's keep doing it.

We're not going to be disrespected," Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Indiana.) told The Washington Examiner. "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is," notes the Huffington Post.

That's crazy.

ThinkProgress is keeping a running total of Republicans who differ from Stutzman and would vote to open government now, if Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would allow a simple Up-or-Down vote to end the shut-down.

Boehner says:  No way.

And the entire Wisconsin Republican congressional delegation is with Boehner, following the most extremist and destructive Republicans in our nation's history.

Writes John Isreal:

Seventeen House Republicans have now indicated that they would support a 'clean' continuing resolution, like the one passed by the U.S. Senate, to reopen the government. If they joined with all 200 House Democrats, it is possible that they could give majority support to such a bill without any additional Republicans — if Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) allowed an up-or-down vote.

Cowards. The list of seventeen contains not one Republican from Wisconsin.

Take Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Sherwood):

From Kate Nocera:

Wisconsin Republican Reid Ribble called the shutdown strategy “irrational” and admitted that it would cause “risk to our economy.” And yet—out of loyalty to leadership, fear of a primary opponent or some other mysterious reason—he voted with the rest of his party for the “irrational” and economy-damaging strategy at every opportunity. You get zero credit for knowing the right thing if you keep doing the wrong thing anyway.