Let Us Hope They Have a Gun or Something
If you’re like me, and Lord help you if you are, you are probably wondering how they plan on stopping that.
I mean, let’s face it, That’s a mighty tall order there. I’d be more willing to try to get a drink out of a firehose than find the fools in the GOP and line them up in a row. The only shot I’d have at doing it is waiting for them to need to be watered and sneak up on them with a circus tent. Even that sounds kinda risky since so many of them need watering once a week.
The Chamber means the Tea Partiers. They think the Tea Partiers are fools because they not only want people to starve like the Chamber does, they also want people to not be gay when they starve.
I operate under the “you broke it; you bought it” theory here. The Chamber endorsed some of these fools.
To me, this is kinda like standing at the picnic table in Texas in July and saying, “Okay, no ants on this table, dammit,” and expecting the ants to pay heed.
Hey, Chamber of Commerce, you don’t have a “ticket,” Honey. You have a mess. A helluva mess.
Thanks to Brian for the heads up.
They need to be specific. Real specific.
1No fools-Well that eliminates all the incumbents and about 110% of the hopefuls in the GOP
2Perhaps the GOP will ‘eat their own’. This will be a war of money on the part of all those conservative foundations. I should only hope they spend themselves into oblivion.
3Yall got some splaining to do… is CoC a mouthpiece for the GOP??? If so, I’ll spend the day looking in my navel to figure out how I missed that one….
4@Micr:
Local Chambers are made up of local people with local politics. They reflect the community, insofar as the community is involved in the process.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is as ReiKKKwing as the WSJ, the Unification Church and John Birch. That’s not up for argument.
Dear Ms. Juanita Jean:
I have a theory for testing for suspected Teabagist politics. I take the test subject and hold them underwater in a bathtub* until the water turns teacolored or “brown” if you need that graphic. If, after 20 or 30 minutes the water is still clear, I apologize to their next of kin.
* The same bathtub that Grover Norquist wants to use strangle gummint in.
5@ Micr: What rock you been hiding under?
From the NY Times, reporting on 2012 campaign spending: The USCOC engaged in “record spending in the midterm elections that supports Republicans more than 90 percent of the time.” “Records show that the chamber spent at least $35 million on the races. It backed two Democrats and 38 Republicans in House races, but no Democrats and 12 Republicans for the Senate, where some veterans found themselves on the other end of chamber attack ads.”
According to the Center for Media and Democracy (and Matt Stoller), the USCOC is “a powerful business lobbying group in the United States that “has become a fully functional part of the partisan Republican machine” since CEO and president Thomas J. Donohue took office in 1997.”
6Not a problem for wingnuts. Just re-define fools and they are good to go.
7Actually it should be fairly easy to find the fools in the GOP and line them up in a row. Just look to see who’s running for office.
If you choose candidates from a barrel of fools, you’ll get fools.
8“No fools on our ticket”
9Well thats going to fail.
Chamber of the Wealthy has been rethuglican oriented at least since Ronnie Raygun was considered god. They have backed every tax cut and entitlement for the wealthy and have been against social spending for at least that long.
10@John in Lafayette; @democommie; @e platypus onion; others:
11I apologize for my ignorance. I guess I don’t get out much.
Meh. Just another group that, having lain down with dogs, is surprised that it has fleas.
12@John in Lafayette
“December 27, 2013 at 10:14 am
@ Micr: What rock you been hiding under?”
That’s a bit rough, John. Not everyone knows about the spiderweb of GOP ties.
@Micr No need to apologize. We all learn something new everyday. Now you know and that’s a good thing! 🙂
13It strikes me that if the C of C has stated there will be no fools in the GOP, then the ones already there are some deranged category even lower than “fool” and perhaps we need a new category. I nominate “stools.” It’s an icky word to begin with, is a cross between stupid and fools, and has great scope for visuals. This might include all the entertaining clowns of TX, ie Duck PJ man and all the others. Not that TX has ALL of them, you understand, but the state is ripe and rich with ’em…
14While working for a arson investigator as his “Office Manager” (I was the only employee a good percentage of the time, lovely title) two suited fellows walked in. They said they were from the USCOC (this was at least 15 years ago) and wanted to talk to the owner and let him know he was oh so special and they wanted to ‘invite’ him to join. I took one look at them, their syrupy smiles, got the shivers and they had a jolly old time selling my boss to join. He was a repub, so’s I guess they got his name from the roster and were making the rounds. At the time he didn’t join, but I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere down the road his ego got the better of him and he joined. This was a person who avidly listened to the Rosh and was quite bigoted.
This is a vivid memory ’cause I thought, the what? The U S Chamber of Commerce? Never heard of it. Sounds like a scam. Little did I know.
15Not to pile on,but the CofC in 08 or10 were bringing in record amounts of foreign campaign cash,putting it in their general fund and buying attack ads against Obama and Dems. Foreign campaign contributions are supposed to be illegal,but the CofC got around this by mixing it with American contributions and then it couldn’t be proven to be illegal.
16It will get even harder for the poor things if they include political bullies like Chris Christie in their definition.
Reminds me an old thing- Go, lemmings, GO!
17TheChamber of Commerce may end up wandering in the desert for centuries and without a lick of luck!
18I believe the US Chamber of Commerce defines “fool” as “someone who clearly and accurately describes the true Republican agenda to voters and still expects to be elected.”
What the US Chamber of Commerce is looking for is better liars.
19Chamber of Commerce, call me. I’ve just invented a fool detector. It’s $5.95 for the device, and $500,000 per fool detected. (Similar to what Tea Party members cost you once they got elected. More expensive once you realized they’re fools.)
20Ah, Rick, you’re of the W.C. Fields persuasion
21that there’s a sucker born every minute.
Can’t disagree, but would add that maybe sucker=fool, so Chambers of Commerce have a built-in Catch 22. Hope those fool detectors sell like hot cakes.
At both the state and federal levels, the big Chamber of Commerce organizations have always been attacked by other business organizations that have taken more conservative stances, such as the state manufacturers associations and small business outfits like the NFIB – National Federation of Independent Business.
Why? The dirty secret is that it’s more about membership – dues money and contributions – than it ever has been about political principles. This I know from first-hand experience as a business member of these groups for many years. They have a lot of field peons who work for peanuts in the hopes that they’ll rise to high executive positions which pay extraordinary salaries. Piss on politics and principles. It’s about paychecks and bonuses and perks and rounds of golf and swanky receptions with business members and politicians alike. Living the high life that pays for houses in nice neighborhoods and employer-leased high-end SUVs.
Do not look on these business groups as a unified bloc, but more as a bunch of greedy rivals who would gladly leave a competitor broken and bleeding in some back alley.
Politics for these “professionals,” then, is only a means to an end. The individuals and companies most motivated to finance these groups are those with agendas that are as much personal as they are business. In other words, big bucks come from the Johnny Gotrocks entrepreneurs at the right fringe of the political spectrum – more concerned that their personal wealth and privilege be protected at all costs. Damn their employees – damn the government that extracts taxes for the public good – damn society except as it enhances their prestige.
Up until recent years, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had a reputation as a moderately conservative lobby, until the recession put declining dues and contributions pressure on them and all other business advocacy organizations. That’s when competition for money became really cutthroat, as these groups began to muscle each other for the biggest dip into what was left of their company members’ pocketbooks. The Chamber became the biggest target for cannibalization by the other groups if it could be redefined as “not true-blue conservatives.” In panic, the USCC lobbyists lurched far to the right. Their behavior almost mimics John Boehner’s in this year’s government shutdown, frightened about being squeezed out of their traditional position of leadership and the hog trough.
And like Boehner, they are coming to realize the error of their ways. There is no truer sign that the Republicans are in danger of being marginalized in 2014 than pragmatic business owners who are starting to become concerned that no amount of money will achieve their goals if they belong to an ineffectual minority of reactionaries. Such exclusionary political behavior has turned the great middle ground of American voters against them. Customers these moderates may continue to be, but friends of business they are no longer.
22Have they considered calling in an exterminator? Works for other pests.
23LynnN, think of these particular pests as penicillin resistant. They believe in abstinence only sex education, even the limited birth control that would limit the spread of disease is wrong according to them, and their religion trumps science. So expect this particularly virulent strain of gohmert STDs to continue breeding and spreading.
24@Micr, don’t feel bad. It all depends on where you are. In our rural county, the CoC is all about community. One recent executive director was hired after finishing working on Gov. Kitzhaber’s successful campaign for Governor of OR. She’s since moved on to another rural CoC. Board members are of mixed political persuasion, and national party politics are not front and center. It’s all about economic viability of our struggling small towns. Too bad the national organization and their lobbying arm have forgotten why they exist.
25If I may paraphrase PG Wodehouse:
“If you put all the fools in the Republican party end to end, they’d stretch from Texas to DC.”
“Farther than that– some of them are pretty tall.”
26“If you put all the fools in the Republican party end to end, they’d stretch from Texas to DC.”
I think that there’s a solution that would warm my heart and my hovel.
If you de-barked ’em, ran ’em through a shredder and then dried them down to about 11% or so of water content, they’d prolly burn about as well as meadow muffins or buffalo chips (they’d smell worse, though).
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