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Originally posted by kpo:
As Geezer would say...

Chart of the Day: Public Blames GOP for Fiscal Cliff by 2:1 Margin: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/12/chart-day-public-blames-
gop-fiscal-cliff-21-margin

Seriously, how can Obama lose this fight?

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Originally posted by kpo:
Ok, we'll see.

A good article: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/john-boehner-fiscal-cliff-
tea-party

There is a way Obama can lose, and that's if all parties lose (including the country, and the economy) via the austerity bomb going off. Republicans will lose either way; the only question is whether they're willing or stupid enough to lose *harder* in order to make Obama, and the country lose as well.

It's something like,

A compromise deal on the fiscal cliff:
Obama +2
GOP -1
U.S. economy + 3

No deal on the fiscal cliff:
Obama -3
GOP -5
U.S. economy -5

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Originally posted by kpo:
I don't know anything about the Federalists, but if they're like the modern GOP they suck ass.

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In 2006, William Hogeland argues Hamilton, Bradford, and Rawle intentionally pursued a course of action that would provoke "the kind of violence that would justify federal military suppression". According to Hogeland, Hamilton had been working towards this moment since the Newburgh Crisis in 1783, where he conceived of using military force to crush popular resistance to direct taxation, for the purpose of promoting national unity and enriching the creditor class at the expense of common taxpayers.

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Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:

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Originally posted by kpo:
I don't know anything about the Federalists, but if they're like the modern GOP they suck ass.

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Well, despite the name they picked, the Federalists were for the most part would be Feudalists, simply using the same kind of doublethink labelling as "Healty Forests" or "Clean Coal" or "Patriot Act", yadda yadda...

See, they didn't so much have a problem with the Feudal system per se, as they had with the fact that THEY were not in charge of it.

Hamilton was a special case of bastardy, in that he tried to stage a coup on Washington, *did* rip off most of the officers who fought in the revolution, despite that revolution being over unfair and excessive taxes, just about immediately advocated and pushed along the same bullshit, resulting in a pair of pocket revolutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion

For the record, Jefferson was sympathetic to the first, and saw such revolutions as a positive thing in that they were a check against the more outrageous abuses a government was capable of.

And the second, not only was it a completely dickheaded and malicious thing to do, it also revealed the Federalists complete lack of respect for the new Constitution, since marching the troops of one State into another was expressly UnConstitutional, a point even most history scholars overlook, and I tend to agree with Findley and Hogeland on their assessment of the matter.

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In 2006, William Hogeland argues Hamilton, Bradford, and Rawle intentionally pursued a course of action that would provoke "the kind of violence that would justify federal military suppression". According to Hogeland, Hamilton had been working towards this moment since the Newburgh Crisis in 1783, where he conceived of using military force to crush popular resistance to direct taxation, for the purpose of promoting national unity and enriching the creditor class at the expense of common taxpayers.

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In fact it was before this, as the debates raged in the Federalist/Antifederalist papers show from a historical context, all the loopholes and flaws in the new Constitution that Hamilton, Madison and Jay were saying were nothing to worry about, that no one would ever dare exploit....
They planned on exploiting before the ink was even dry, because they despised the notion of sharing power with anyone, much less mere peons - the Bill of Rights was a sop to the Antifederalists and nothing more, something to get enough of them on-side to support it, or at least stifle their dissent, and Patrick Henry would have none of it, he "smelt a rat", and it's name was Hamilton.

But the crowning horror that showed what the Federalists really *WERE*, was the reign of John Adams, and the passing of the Alien and Sedition Acts - the first, but certainly not the last (Woodrow Wilson tried this crap too) attempt to make dissent outright illegal.

Hamilton blew a gasket at this, as it pulled the mask off too blatantly and too early - not to mention he and Adams had a bitter rivalry not so much over end goals, as each of them more or less wanted to be the king behind the throne - Madison being something of an idealist and initially unaware of the Federalists true goals, was in fact horrified and outraged by this, resulting in him immediately jumping over to Jeffersons side and helping draft the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.
This also started ANOTHER pocket revolt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_and_Kentucky_Resolutions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fries%27s_Rebellion

Eventually this chain of policy would lead to the American Civil War, and the Federal supergovernment they really wanted, but while this was going on there was a spanner in the works, and its name was Aaron Burr.

Nobody really knows much about his true motivations or reasons, as he obfuscated them deliberately and what little is known paints a portrait of him as something of a schemer - most of the credit for building the Tammany Hall (originally a social club) political machine goes to him, not that I consider this any kind of a good thing, mind you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall
What is known is that he bitterly, passionately, utterly despised the Federalists and all they stood for - and Hamilton in particular after saving his ass from capture only to have Hamilton convince Washington not to commend him for it, and his friendship with fellow bad tempered bastard Andrew Jackson did him no favors amongst either party as even Jefferson hated both of them.

Jefferson himself would decline to discuss Burr, and shut him out as much as possible after the election of 1800 in large part due to various intrigues and manipulations he engaged in to swipe it out from under Jefferson, a claim much disputed but in my opinion probably true.

I think they saw him as another potential Robespierre, and while he was rigourously impartial (which won over some of the Federalists to his cause) he was also downright brutal, and an extremely convincing orator - and nobody wanted to see a Reign of Terror here, although in retrospect, I myself am not entirely sure it would not have been such a bad idea, but I digress...

Anyhows, eventually this came to the infamous duel, provoked in part by Hamilton being seriously pissed at Burr for subverting some of his own power base, and suspecting that Burr had secessionist intentions (which may have been true even then), and by Burrs notoriously bad temper and him bringing up the fact that Hamilton had been banging Maria Reynolds on the side (as if Burr had any room to talk about sleeping around..), and well, things went rodeo, in a political fashion.

Hamilton set down prior his supposed intent to "throw away" his first shot, but generally this is regarded as a backup plan to discredit Burr should the duel not go his way, and the fact that he brought a rigged pair of dueling pistols doesn't support the notion anyway - oddly enough that hidden hair trigger was quite possibly Hamiltons undoing, as it likely caused him to fire early while bringing the pistol in line, thus hitting a branch over Burrs head.
That secret (although there were rumors) remained so until 1976 when the Smithsonian x-rayed the pistols and discovered it for sure.
http://www.aaronburrassociation.org/Smithsonian.htm

Burr then shot Hamilton, and when asked later if he was aware of Hamiltons supposed intent to "throw away" his first shot, his reply was "Contemptible, if true." - not only was he dubious of the statements truth, Burr was of a mind if you were going to point a weapon at someone, you'd better mean it.
Some time after that, Jefferson had Burr hauled in for charges of Treason in regard to his moving out west and indulging in further political machinations, with Jefferson pressing the issue strongly despite a lack of evidence, but Burr was eventually aquitted.

Oddly enough for his time, and this set him apart from many of the Founders - Burr was VERY much in favor of gender equality, highly supported education for women and even submitted a bill that would have allowed them to vote, and he was also very much anti-slavery, two moral positions which had him at odds with many so-called better men - although Burr himself was no paragon of virtue.

Whenever anyone brings up the old saw about what might have happened if this or that Despot was killed before they came to real power, every single time the image that comes to MY mind is Aaron Burrs fateful shot, and what atrocities it probably prevented.
What Hamilton Has Wrought
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo151.html

See, the Federalist-Whig-Republicans... and most ESPECIALLY later on the Straussian Neocons, they have ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS, wanted a variation on NeoFeudalism, and around 1930 discovered they had a taste for Fascism as well, which is prettymuch the same thing dressed in shiny colors.
If pressed to the wall and forced to answer instead of evade the question, most Republicans will admit this fondness, too bad about (getting caught at) that final solution thing, yeah, right.

Worth noting here that ole Adolph took his cue directly from those self-same Founding Fathers and THEIR treatment of the Native Americans, so how on earth could anyone think their spiritual and political ancestors would not be capable of doing the exact same thing all over again - once again using the excuse of immigration, as Adams did, to justify their initial forays.

So if you follow the political chain of history behind this push for NeoFeudoFascism all the way back, it's one unbroken line all the way back to the original Federalists, most specifically Hamilton.

He would have VERY much approved of the reign of Shrub, if THAT tells you anything.

-Frem

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Originally posted by kpo:
As Geezer would say...

Chart of the Day: Public Blames GOP for Fiscal Cliff by 2:1 Margin: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/12/chart-day-public-blames-
gop-fiscal-cliff-21-margin

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Originally posted by KPO:
That the public's perception that the GOP is the problem is the result of liberal 'propaganda'.

It's not personal. It's just war.

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