What could they impeach Obama for?

Seriously.  Is it just because people said Bush should be impeached for lying about WMDs, wiretapping American citizens, politicizing the DOJ, and sanctioning torture?  Because those are things he did that qualify as high crimes and misdemeanors.  People weren’t calling to have him impeached because Gore and Kerry werent’ sworn in.  I can’t figure out why they want impeachment, except that they lost the election and don’t understand that that doesn’t mean a crime was commited.

Is it b/c they managed to get Clinton impeached over a blowjob?

Is it just b/c they are the sorest losers ever?

Or do they just want to lynch the black man?

The Boston Tea Party is probably one of the most misunderstood events in American history.

It wasn’t JUST about taxation without representation. It was also about an international corporation (the British East India Company) engaging in predatory pricing, dumping subsidized merchandise that would ruin local, colonial merchants.

It would be like local Main Street merchants breaking into a Wal-Mart that was about to open and burning all the merchandise to tell them to GTFO of their town. Somehow, I don’t think the teabaggers would support that.

“Gather your armies.”

If this isn’t a death threat against Obama and other politicians, what is?

And a good portion of the Founders, at least the ones who later became the leaders of the Federalist Party, didn’t have any time for people who refused to obey taxation *with* representation. See: The Whiskey Rebellion.

It was also about an international corporation (the British East India Company) engaging in predatory pricing, dumping subsidized merchandise that would ruin local, colonial merchants.

I think Thom Hartmann made a good point a while ago that the real Boston Tea Party was over a tax cut and not a tax increase.

I think Thom Hartmann made a good point a while ago that the real Boston Tea Party was over a tax cut and not a tax increase.

As are today’s travesties.

I mean really. How many of those morans still don’t realize that the Obama Administration cut their taxes?

“How many of those morans still don’t realize that the Obama Administration cut their taxes?”

The same people believe Obama is not American, stole the election using ACORN thugs, believe all the Wall Street bailouts happened after Bush Jr., think Obama caused the oil leak, think the #1 problem America faces — besides the daily threat of death brought by swarthy terraists — is the Federal deficit, think cutting taxes is the solution to any and all economic problems, want government out of Medicare, etc., etc., etc.

(...Elvis is still alive, Ronald Reagan was the bestest president of all time, Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican, as was John F. Kennedy, there’s no global warming - in fact there’s global cooling, Franklin Roosevelt caused the Great Depression, the First Amendment establishes Protestant Christianity as the official religion of the USA while allowing liberals to be legally silenced, Jesus rode a dinosaur into Jerusalem, the earth is only 6000-years old, the Real True Christians will be raptured any minute now…)

The facts have nothing at all to do with what they believe.  It’s a feature, not a bug…

what is this i don’t even

I keep waiting for Ben Franklin or George Washington to say “Dude.  The Feds have machine guns, grenades, tear gas, predator drones, missiles, bombs, fighter planes, pencil nukes, etc.  We have…muskets.”

Of course, he’d be even more mad if Ben Franklin pointed out that General Washington fought only when the odds were greatly in Washington’s favor, and the decisive battle of the Revolution was won with the help of the French fleet.

The part that confuses me most about this is that he says that taxes can be raised “without representation.”  I guess if Congress doesn’t always vote they way you personally believe it should vote, then it obviously doesn’t represent you.  In fact, all this could have been avoided had the Congress simply consulted Rick Barber on every decision since he turned 18 and just decided to go with whatever he said.

Some of us warned you two years ago that the Republicans were mainstreaming the crazie and extremists.  Now it has come to full fruit and it is going to get a lot uglier.

Oh man oh man oh man.  And I still haven’t recovered from Demon Sheep.

Technically impeaching Bush would have been very hard because the ensuing trial would have dragged on for years and only the wiretapping would have been solid evidence and even then the Patriot act excused much of it.  This is why no president has successfully been impeached yet, Johnson failed, Clinton failed because neither of them were removed from office.  They both were voted to be impeached which set the trial in congress and both failed to get the votes because neither really had solid evidence to oust them and it would have simply put the VP into power who would have been even more upset at them. 

This whole argument plays well into uninformed voters who were solidly right and hate the current president.  I have to imagine if he is a moderate district in the slightest he just blew his chance but most likely he’s running in a fairly red district and thus gets to be as crazy as he pleases.

The weird thing about this is how he talks about tyranny but is essentially arguing for the right to not only avoid paying taxes, but to run your entire business under the table so you can screw your workers.

The impeachment of Johnson would not have put the VP into power, as the Vice Presidency under Johnson was vacant as there was no position procedure in place at the time to fill a vacant Vice Presidency.

Ben Wade of Ohio, Speaker of the House, would have become President. He was a Republican, yes, but a large number of Republicans preferred to wait until 1868 to elect Grant. They didn’t want Wade to get in the way.

My personal opinion is that Johnson was very guilty of impeachable offenses, but innocent of the particular offense they charged him with. They should have gone with other charges besides some ex post facto B.S. about firing a War Secretary without the approval of Congress. Of all the harm to our country that Andrew Johnson did, that was the least of it!

Correction:

Ben Wade wasn’t Speaker, but President pro tempore of the Senate. Got my line of succession confused there for a minute.

The next time someone acts like the original Constitution was written by the finger of God himself instead of a series of political compromises driven by historical forces, just remind them that the people who forged it forgot to write in a provision to fill a vacant Vice Presidency!

And how can the IRS “force us to buy healthcare and cram it down our throats”?

Ben Wade wasn’t Speaker, but President pro tempore of the Senate. Got my line of succession confused there for a minute.

It would have also been political suicide as it would have completely sidestepped democracy.  Nobody wanted that enviable position.  Which is the same issue with impeachment in general, regardless of what “good reasons” or intent the congress justifies in attempting to impeach it always comes off as a purely political attack.  It is better to simply elect a new president using democracy. 

There have been presidents who have thrown Senators from the windows of the White House and were never even thought to be impeached.  The president would quite literally have to murder somebody in the streets to even thought to be impeached and not have the congressional party that did it crushed in the next electoral cycle.

JCfromNC: the only think you’re being is generous.

#10

I keep waiting for Ben Franklin or George Washington to say “Dude.  The Feds have machine guns, grenades, tear gas, predator drones, missiles, bombs, fighter planes, pencil nukes, etc.  We have…muskets.”

Blue Jean, yeah. Because arming yourself against the government worked so well for the Branch Davidians, not to mention the Black Panthers and MOVE in Philly.

I was waiting for the twist ending, where it turned out the Framers were conducting an intervention. “Ok, Rick, we’ve heard you out ... now there are some nice elementary school civics teachers waiting outside to give you the help you need.”

I saw this in the gym last night - no sound but it did have cc.  (Chris Matthews doing a service by showing and calling out truly crazy, huh.)  Amazing and horrifying all at once.  However, if the wife of an open sepratist can be nominalted by the GOP for VP, could we really think this would be far behind?

Your last paragraph pretty much summarizes my opinion of the bulk of the T-partiers.  The others are preditors riding them in like the demon horses of the four horsemen or amoral me-firsters/I’ve-got-miners.

It seems fairly obvious to me that a vocal group of Republicans have gotten the idea that any Democratic president needs to be impeached, simply for being a Democrat.

No doubt, but presidenting while black is clearly a major additional offense.

God damn, I hope I don’t end up having to once again rally to the defense of a Democorporacrat president I don’t even like… one viewing of THAT movie was quite enough, thank you.

And how can the IRS “force us to buy healthcare and cram it down our throats”?

Some people with throat problems are begging the IRS to cram something down their throats.

Sorry to repeat myself, but a large proportion of Americans consider the President to be a sort of Fisher King: if he is weak, America will be seen as weak by our countless enemies.  If he is immoral, our morals are weakened.  If he is black…!

I can’t figure out why they want impeachment, except that they lost the election and don’t understand that that doesn’t mean a crime was commited.

Well, considering that Obama and the Democrats bend over backwards to make sure that Republicans don’t get their fee-fees hurt while calling it “bipartisanship” or “compromise”, maybe the Republicans have started to believe that it’s a crime to do anything that they don’t like.

The colonists never actually *paid* the taxes levied on tea, anyway (or sugar or molasses, for that matter)—75% of the tea the colonists drank was contraband. It was really about the British government running up huge debts and *trying* to make the colonists pay it off without their having any say in the matter, not about money actually paid out of pocket, because the colonists never paid an ounce of attention to Britain’s taxes and price regulations and trade embargoes and shit.

I love how the Founding Fathers are portrayed as Rambos or steel nerved cowboys. Now that we act like characters in movies it has become increasingly difficult, especially for right wing nuts, to separate reality from fiction.

f you’re so dumb that you’re motivated to change your nation by virtue of a narrative constructed for four year olds who can’t pay attention because it’s the middle of July and they really want into that box of sparklers…

Best thing I’ve read all day!

This idea that it’s no business of the government knowing what goes on in the country in areas like rate of employment intrigues me. Does this constitute proof of extraterrestrial life? Because that certainly isn’t Earth logic.

Sam Adams was a tax collector.

Just saying.

@34 - In right-wing fantasy land, the only proper business of government is killing or imprisoning the subject of the two-minutes hate.  That would include brown people, gay people, female people, non-fundagelical christianist people (especially atheist or Muslim people), non-English-speaking people, socialist people, poor people, and disabled people.  So, yeah, by right-wing logic, knowing the economic situation isn’t actually a proper use of government since it doesn’t involve killing or imprisoning the ‘lesser people.’

First, you need to learn not to candy-coat it.

Second, people like this shit-for-brains (you started it) forget that corporations are also a creation of government. Without government, corporations don’t exist, in part because they have unlimited liability, which currently they are shielded from by legal (aka - government supplied) incorporation. It’d be fun to watch companies survive if shareholders were actually on the hook for the liabilities (civil or criminal) of the companies they hold shares in. Without the government’s “market manipulation” in this area, they’re toast.

Of course I’m just a “communist” that actually believes that the government has a role to play in markets so ignore me.

PS:

Ben Franklin, Communist:

“The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People’s Money out of their Pockets, tho’ only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors’ Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell’d to pay by some Law.

  All Property, indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.”

Scathew, please provide a cite or link for that ASAP.

Sorry to repeat myself, but a large proportion of Americans consider the President to be a sort of Fisher King: if he is weak, America will be seen as weak by our countless enemies.  If he is immoral, our morals are weakened.  If he is black…!

America will be seen as a thug running around the ghetto, pulling out a gun to threaten anyone who annoys it, and doing random drive-bys that murder the guilty and innocent alike?

They may have a point.

@Phoenician in a time of Romans

One of many:

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html

Lovely.  Thank you.

Glad to be of service. Always a fun one to drop on your local Libertarians!

Scathew, that’s totally awesome! Thanks.

@23,

LOLsob, atheist. I’m afraid you’re giving him too much credit.  After all, if he doesn’t understand “No taxation without representation” (which every kid who ever watched Schoolhouse Rock knows), then how can he remember anything about MOVE and the Branch Davidians?  Much less the Whisky Rebellion?*

*Another tax fight, but this one was between George Washington and American citizens who didn’t want to pay taxes, even though they had representation.  George “gathered the armies” there all right; he crushed them like eggshells.  Not exactly the message Rick’s going for, though.