I figured since I made a thread on the tea party convention, I owe fair and balanced coverage to the Coffee Party



http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/

Quote :

"MISSION: The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them."

http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6500/p/salsa/event/common/public/index.sjs?distributed_event_KEY=117


http://www.facebook.com/coffeeparty

3/7/2010 7:07:23 PM

W. T. F.

I don't think these liberals have even heard of the boston tea party

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 7:09 PM. Reason : s]

3/7/2010 7:09:29 PM

Interesting...

I don't see them sticking around, but i like the idea.

3/7/2010 7:15:20 PM

seriously... does everything have to be tit for tat.

you didn't see the republicans starting "code brown" or something like that back when Sheehan was making herself a fool.

3/7/2010 7:17:25 PM

We'll if we are going tit for tat we need some sexual innuendo to go along with their party's name. Got any ideas?

^^I don't know, the kind of liberals that like to call themselves independents I think will jump at the idea of having another excuse to meet up at coffee shops across the land

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 7:21 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2010 7:19:43 PM

Quote :

"we recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will"

Well, this is true for the concept of the federal government. As for the individuals involved in running it...

Seems like a party that someone made just to piss off and ridicule Teabaggers. That's not to say that the teabaggers don't deserve ridicule... most certainly do. But taken without that context, the Coffee Party just seems to be a useless advocate of complacency and the status quo.

3/7/2010 7:20:18 PM

Quote :

"advocate of complacency and the status quo. "

So the Coffee Partyers are conservatives... would that make Tea Partyers liberals?

Quote :

"We'll if we are going tit for tat we need some sexual innuendo to go along with their party's name. "

maybe...

they like their coffee hot and black, with a huge dong.

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 7:24 PM. Reason : ]

3/7/2010 7:22:45 PM

^Not the "traditional values" sort of status quo, but the "let's all just march in a line behind the leaders instead of critically examining anything" sort of status quo.

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 7:25 PM. Reason : for the record, I'm not on Solinari's side and would not like to be associated with anything he says]

3/7/2010 7:23:43 PM

Quote :

"we recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will"

LOLOLOLOL

Wait I thought the liberals were just telling us how the evil corporations and goldman sachs own the govmt?? It's true what they say, liberalism is a mental disorder. Schizo like woah.

3/7/2010 7:24:00 PM

Quote :

"Seems like a party that someone made just to piss off and ridicule Teabaggers. That's not to say that the teabaggers don't deserve ridicule... most certainly do. But taken without that context, the Coffee Party just seems to be a useless advocate of complacency and the status quo."

I wouldn't say being anti-obstructionist is the same thing as being pro-status quo. If anything it is likely to lead to changes that Tea Party people would probably oppose in favor of the status quo whether it be on climate change legislation, health reform, or what have you.

3/7/2010 7:24:55 PM

^^Weak trolling...

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 7:25 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2010 7:25:00 PM

I liked it better when Solinari lived in the Quad and faked committing suicide on the internet.

3/7/2010 7:26:23 PM

Yea true... saying that the federal government is a "collective expression of our good will" kumbayah bullshit is some pretty weak trolling.

I shouldn't have fallen for it

3/7/2010 7:26:49 PM

Ron Paul libertarianism (not always allowed at GOP debates), Sarah Palin tea partyism (main speaker at Tea Party Convention), and Dick Cheney Neoconservativism (a main speaker at CPAC along with Keynoter Glenn Beck) have different ideas that all fall under the broad umbrella of conservatism. It's true what they say, conservatism is a mental disorder. Schizo like woah.

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 7:34 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2010 7:27:21 PM

true story, bro.

its true, what they say....

3/7/2010 7:28:37 PM

Quote :

"We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will"

http://www.newsweek.com/id/234267

Quote :

" Watching your government at work can be an appalling spectacle. Politicians posture and bicker, and not much gets done. It's gotten so bad—or at least seems so bad—that pundits are beginning to wonder if the system is broken in some fundamental way and to cast about for a big fix. Some little fixes might help—reforming the Senate filibuster would be a start. But the nation is not about to have a constitutional convention, and we don't need one. The Founders got it right, more or less, some 220 years ago, when they created a system of checks and balances that permits the exercise of power while protecting the rights of individuals and political minorities. The problem is not the system. It's us—our "got mine" culture of entitlement. Politicians, never known for their bravery, precisely represent the people. Our leaders are paralyzed by the very thought of asking their constituents to make short-term sacrifices for long-term rewards. They cannot bring themselves to raise taxes on the middle class or cut Social Security and medical benefits for the elderly. They'd get clobbered at the polls. So any day of reckoning gets put off, and put off again, and the debts pile up. In the last 30 or so years, Americans have lived as if there is no tomorrow. They have racked up personal debt, spending more than they save and borrowing heavily. Americans have become fatter: between 1960 and 2002, the average adult male in the United States put on 25 pounds, and the average woman gained 24; between 1998 and 2006, the percentage of obese Americans in-creased by 37 percent. Some attribute these gains to factors beyond individual control, but who can deny that self-restraint and self-denial are antiquated values? (In the college hookup culture, the ethos is to have sex first and only then, maybe, get to know the other person.) It's not just in Lake Wobegon, where all children are above average. Grade inflation is so out of control in the nation's high schools that 43 percent of college-bound seniors taking the SATs have A averages—even though SAT scores have remained flat or drifted slowly downward for years. It is hard to know exactly how or when we got this self-indulgent. The '60s are partly to blame. The triumph of individual and civil rights, a wondrous fulfillment of the true meaning of the Constitution, was too often perverted into an "I got my rights" sense of victimhood. The noble push of the New Deal and the Great Society to fight poverty and illness, particularly among the very old and very young, hardened into the nonsensical defiance some tea partiers show when they shout, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" The casting off of conformity and explosion of free expression contributed to the sour and selfish "Me Decade" of the 1970s. The spurt of economic activity in the 1980s and '90s spawned a generation of Gordon Gekkos on Wall Street and profligate spenders in the shopping malls of America (financed and enabled in part by more frugal Chinese buying American debt). Politicians have never been very good at asking for sacrifice from their constituents. (And the ones who have tried have generally lost reelection.) Outside of wartime, there was never any golden age when political leaders successfully called on their people to give up what they perceived as their economic entitlements for the greater good. The last presidential candidate to call for tax increases on the middle class was Walter Mondale of Minnesota, in 1984, and he was defeated in every state but his own and the District of Columbia. But lately, politicians seem to have lost the most essential element of the art of governing—meaningful compromise. In its pure form, compromise means mutual sacrifice. On Capitol Hill, there is only getting: politicians will vote for a bill if they get something, like a tax cut for an interest group or a pork-barrel project for their district. But they are not willing to give up anything. This is especially true where the other party is concerned. Partisanship has never been worse. It was not always this way. Read Robert Caro's Master of the Senate, about the way Lyndon Johnson, Senate majority leader in the late 1950s, bullied and horse-traded to craft majorities for civil rights out of both parties and all sections of the country. Leadership requires a willingness to make the hard and sometimes un-pleasant choice. Last week an article in The New York Times depicted some U.S. Marines watching in dismay as an Afghan Army officer demanded to have an enlisted man's drink—and then drained it with a laugh. In the U.S. Marine Corps and Army, the commanding officer always eats last, after his or her troops have been fed and cared for. The reason is simple, honorable—and practical. A leader will have a better chance of getting followers to make sacrifices if he or she shows a willingness to suffer greater hardships. (In the military, it is no accident that second lieutenants—platoon commanders—have the highest casualty rates.) Politicians are not military commanders and shouldn't be expected to behave that way. Still, to get something you have to give up something. That is the true test of compromise. In a poignant op-ed piece in the Times, Sen. Evan Bayh explained why he is not seeking reelection. While acknowledging that it would be a mistake to romanticize "the Senate of yore" inhabited by his father, former senator Birch Bayh, he recalled the more human and humane world of his father, when senators from different parties would socialize together—and offer to help with each other's campaigns, even if that meant jeopardizing their party's majority. "This is unimaginable today," wrote Bayh. It's unfair to put the onus solely on President Obama to compromise. He has made some attempts, only to be stonewalled by the Republicans. But is there anything more he could do—anything immediate and concrete—to cut through the Gordian knot tying up health care? Actually, there is. Obama is well in-formed enough to know that sky-high malpractice-insurance rates and defensive medicine drive up health costs. There is debate over how much, but any doctor will attest to the costly fear of a lawsuit. Almost all objective medical experts agree that something should be done to cut back the vast jury verdicts won by clever trial lawyers in medical-malpractice cases. But the Democrats have declined to even try. Why? Because trial lawyers are among the biggest campaign contributors to the Democratic Party. If Obama were to come out squarely for medical-malpractice reform—in a real way—he would be making an important political statement: that as president he is willing to risk the political fortunes of his own party for the greater good. It would give him the moral standing, and the leverage, to call on the Republicans to match him by sacrificing their own political interests—by, for instance, supporting tax increases to help pay down the debt. At last week's summit, Obama said Republicans were overstating the costs of medical malpractice, but suggested that some remedies might be pursued at the state level. He'll have to do more than that to break through the partisan paralysis. But, as young Marines and soldiers understand, real leadership requires risks. "

3/7/2010 10:01:51 PM

Quote :

"Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"

lovely.

3/7/2010 11:13:02 PM

^^

did you mean to post that?

It seems to fly in the face of the ideologies you normally support on here...

(and the last paragraph was out of place)

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 11:40 PM. Reason : ]

3/7/2010 11:36:56 PM

How is it that no one points out the obvious fact that Medicare is provided by private doctors working in private hospitals where the government has little say in the individual provisioning of care?

If Medicare is government healthcare, then school vouchers are government education and the anti-voucher crowd should shut the fuck up.

3/8/2010 12:07:57 AM

^ ... are you kidding?

No one points that out, because that's the point of calling medicare gov. healthcare. To show people that it's ridiculous to claim that the democrats and Obama want communism, when even the more extreme of their proposals don't go further than medicare.

[Edited on March 8, 2010 at 12:10 AM. Reason : ]

3/8/2010 12:10:38 AM

Really? Even their least extreme bill went quite a bit further than medicare. Remember how I said the the administrators of medicare had little say over the individual provisioning of care? The point of the bills was to revoke this situation. Quite rightly I believe, as it makes no sense to agree to pay for any procedure regardless of use, but to suggest this was no different from medicare is, well, untrue.

That said, I wouldn't call medicare "government healthcare" for this reason. Government healthcare is what they have in Canada and Great Britain. What we have here is government health insurance.

3/8/2010 12:26:31 AM

Medicare has restrictions and regulations on what the money is used for and what procedures it'll pay for, just like the plan from the government insurance company (aka public option... which is off the table now). They were not dissimilar.

The current bill imposes regulations on insurance companies that limit their ability to prey on the ignorant, with some plans having more limits than other plans.

The current bill, and none of the bills, got between a patient and their doctor in any way that medicare, or private insurance doesn't currently already do.

[Edited on March 8, 2010 at 12:30 AM. Reason : ]

3/8/2010 12:29:25 AM

Here is all the Coffee Party events I could find in NC so far. I could have missed some, and more may yet to be scheduled.

Quote :

"Mar 13 2010 10:00 AM Coffee Party Join us to help launch the Coffee Party Movement. Join local citizens as we come together discuss ... 1155 Tunnel Road Asheville, NC 14 attendees 30 max Event Details Email the host Mar 13 2010 12:00 PM Coffee Party (Your city or neighborhood here) Join us to help launch the Coffee Party Movement. Cup A Joe near NCSU 12 noon 3100 ... 3100 Hillsborough Street Raleigh, NC 3 attendees 40 max Event Details Email the host Mar 13 2010 12:00 PM Coffee Party Join us to help launch the Coffee Party Movement. Charlotte Chapter Kick-Off 1521 Central Ave Charlotte, NC 6 attendees 75 max Event Details Email the host Mar 13 2010 12:00 PM Coffee Party Join us to help launch the Coffee Party Movement. Charlotte Chapter Kick-Off Pura Vida Worldly Art 1521 Central Ave Charlotte, NC 6 attendees 75 max Event Details Email the host Mar 13 2010 12:00 PM Coffee Party Join us to help launch the Coffee Party Movement. We will meet upstairs in the Chocolate Lounge. ... 10 South Lexington Avenue Asheville, NC 28801 (828) 252-4181 Asheville, NC 4 attendees Event Details Email the host Mar 13 2010 12:00 PM Coffee Party USA/Chapel Hill Join us to help launch the Coffee Party Movement. We will be meeting at That Coffee Place, corner ... We will be meeting at That Coffee Place, corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard at Homestead. (919) 960-6247 2805 Homestead Rd Chapel Hill, NC 27516 Contact me at 1 919 741 5113 Let's get moving! Lloyd Chapel Hill, NC 11 attendees 90 max Event Details Email the host Mar 13 2010 12:00 PM Coffee Party USA in Raleigh Please join us for a civil, respectful discussion of the ways we can engage our government and ... 3100 Hillsborough Street Raleigh, NC Event Details Email the host Mar 13 2010 12:00 PM Coffee Party Winston Salem, NC Join us to help launch the Coffee Party Movement. Panera Bread 105 Hanes Square Circle Winston Salem, NC 27103-5514 Get Directions (336) 794-2033 Winston_Salem, NC 5 attendees 10 max Event Details Email the host "

Here is the facebook group for the North Carolina branch:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Coffee-Party-North-Carolina/349191434923

3/8/2010 2:59:11 AM

Quote :

"we recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans."

So, where does the Constitution fit in? Even if the federal government is the expression of our collective will, why would that necessarily be a force of good? (We don't and shouldn't live under majority rule.)

Also, I'm pretty sure that there are many instances where the federal government is (or was) clearly an enemy of the people, or where it clearly isn't (or wasn't) an expression of our collective will.

Quote :

"let's all just march in a line behind the leaders instead of critically examining anything"

This is the feeling I get from the Coffee Party.
"Hey everyone!!! 51% of Americans want ________!!! Let's march on Washington!!"


[Edited on March 8, 2010 at 8:54 AM. Reason : ]

3/8/2010 8:53:54 AM

well then you are terrible at reading, almost everything on their site talks about democracy being the most important and they repeatedly mention the need for civil discussion on issues. virtually nothing about them says blindly follow the government.

3/8/2010 9:11:34 AM

Quote :

"everything on their site talks about democracy being the most important"

Quote :

"Hey everyone!!! 51% of Americans want ________!!! Let's march on Washington!!"

3/8/2010 9:37:23 AM

Because tea party activists don't cite polls either?

3/8/2010 9:38:16 AM

Wait, so now, by criticizing the Coffee Party, I'm necessarily defending the Tea Party?
Polarization much?


Here. I'll try anyway:
Those who don't support majority rule may cite polls because they're trying to persuade those who do support majority rule. (Hypocritical? Sure.) Policy popularity is good, but nowhere near paramount.


[Edited on March 8, 2010 at 10:25 AM. Reason : ]

3/8/2010 10:19:20 AM

Both the majority and the minority have said that polls show Americans support their position on healthcare. They can't both be right.

3/8/2010 10:33:42 AM

depends on the poll and depends on what they mean by right. most americans support some form of healthcare reform, most americans do not support the shitpile of a plan currently being pushed by the dems.

3/8/2010 10:36:24 AM

just because you title a bill "healthcare reform" doesn't mean it is.

3/8/2010 10:58:37 AM

Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003

3/8/2010 11:03:34 AM

^^^Until they learn what is in it, then those numbers change again:

The Polling Contradiction

In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the majority of Americans are opposed to President Obama's health-care reform plan—until they learn the details. Plus, a look at very unhappy mood of the electorate.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233890

Quote :

"When asked about Obama's plan (without being given any details about what the legislation includes), 49 percent opposed it and 40 percent were in favor. But after hearing key features of the legislation described, 48 percent supported the plan and 43 percent remained opposed. The NEWSWEEK Poll asked respondents about eight health-care-reform provisions that Obama and many Democrats in Congress have generally supported. It found that the majority of Americans supported five of those provisions, three by particularly large margins. Eighty-one percent agreed with the creation of a new insurance marketplace, the exchange, for individual subscribers to compare plans and buy insurance at a competitive rate. Seventy-six percent thought health insurers should be required to cover anyone who applies, including those with preexisting conditions; and 75 percent agreed with requiring most businesses to offer health insurance to their employees, with incentives for small-business owners to do so."

[Edited on March 8, 2010 at 2:54 PM. Reason : .]

3/8/2010 2:41:12 PM

48%!!!! Amazing! This is proof all americans want the plan! Nice work dems!

3/8/2010 2:48:09 PM

3/8/2010 4:32:21 PM

What a stupid fucking name for a movement

3/8/2010 5:00:38 PM

This thread.

You've got to be shitting me.

3/8/2010 5:06:35 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_dragon_tavern

Quote :

"Green Dragon Tavern was a public house used as a tavern and meeting place located on Union Street in Boston's North End. Purchased in 1764 by the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons for its 1st floor meeting rooms, the basement tavern was used by several secret groups and became known by historians as the "Headquarters of the Revolution". The Sons of Liberty, Boston Committee of Correspondence and the North End Caucus each met there. The Boston Tea Party was planned there and Paul Revere was sent from there to Lexington on his famous ride. In January 1788, a meeting of the mechanics and artisans of Boston passed a series of resolutions urging the importance of adopting the Federal Constitution pending at the time before a convention of delegates from around Massachusetts. The building was demolished in 1854. The current Green Dragon Tavern is located on 11 Marshall Street in Boston's North End. Its publicity states that it is the "headquarters of the revolution", though its relationship to the demolished original pub is not immediately apparent."

http://www.teagarden.com/library/tea_library_06.php
"It started in the Green Dragon Tavern. If a man ordered tea, he was a Tory. If he ordered coffee, he was a Patriot."

I'll grant that Coffee as a logo is pretty silly, but is it any worse than those most American of symbols the Donkey and Elephant?

3/8/2010 5:36:00 PM

it is not worse, in and of itself.

however, it is worse, in that it is transparently derivative of and, even more sadly, reactive to the tea party movement.



kind of like how its annoying when pepsi tries to glom onto some cool thing that teenagers are doing


[Edited on March 8, 2010 at 5:41 PM. Reason : s]

3/8/2010 5:40:31 PM

except that the way it started, as a statement on facebook about talking about stuff over coffee, its not the same as riding coattails of popularity

3/8/2010 5:45:31 PM

HAHA ok buddy.

jesus i guess liberals will tell themselves anything to feel better about anything.

3/8/2010 5:47:37 PM

Six one way, half a dozen the other

3/8/2010 6:25:23 PM

Latest video:

3/8/2010 8:06:07 PM

From what I was able to gather from the rather meager amount of information on their website, the Coffee Party is an activist group that promotes activism, with a fondness for identity politics. Consider me bored.

3/9/2010 9:58:02 AM

Quote :

"How is it that no one points out the obvious fact that Medicare is provided by private doctors working in private hospitals where the government has little say in the individual provisioning of care? If Medicare is government healthcare, then school vouchers are government education and the anti-voucher crowd should shut the fuck up."

Glad to see you support universal vouchers and medicare for all!

3/9/2010 10:09:54 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/us/politics/02coffee.html

Quote :

"Coffee Party, With a Taste for Civic Participation, Is Added to the Political Menu Fed up with government gridlock, but put off by the flavor of the Tea Party, people in cities across the country are offering an alternative: the Coffee Party. Growing through a Facebook page, the party pledges to “support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.” It had nearly 40,000 members as of Monday afternoon, but the numbers were growing quickly — about 11,000 people had signed on as fans since the morning. “I’m in shock, just the level of energy here,” said the founder, Annabel Park, a documentary filmmaker who lives outside Washington. “In the beginning, I was actively saying, ‘Get in touch with us, start a chapter.’ Now I can’t keep up. We have 300 requests to start a chapter that I have not been able to respond to.” The slogan is “Wake Up and Stand Up.” The mission statement declares that the federal government is “not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges we face as Americans.” Local chapters are planning meetings in cities from Washington to San Antonio to Los Angeles (where there have been four in the last month.) The party (coffeepartyusa.org) is planning nationwide coffee houses for March 13, where people can gather to decide which issues they want to take on and even which candidates they want to support. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/25/AR2010022505517.html

Quote :

"Coffee Party activists say their civic brew's a tastier choice than Tea Party's Furious at the tempest over the Tea Party -- the scattershot citizen uprising against big government and wild spending -- Annabel Park did what any American does when she feels her voice has been drowned out: She squeezed her anger into a Facebook status update. let's start a coffee party . . . smoothie party. red bull party. anything but tea. geez. ooh how about cappuccino party? that would really piss 'em off bec it sounds elitist . . . let's get together and drink cappuccino and have real political dialogue with substance and compassion. Friends replied, and more friends replied. So last month, in her Silver Spring apartment, Park started a fan page called "Join the Coffee Party Movement." Within weeks, her inbox and page wall were swamped by thousands of comments from strangers in diverse locales, such as the oil fields of west Texas and the suburbs of Chicago. I have been searching for a place of refuge like this for a long while. . . . It is not Us against the Govt. It is democracy vs corporatocracy . . . I just can't believe that the Tea Party speaks for all patriotic Americans. . . . Just sent suggestions to 50 friends . . . I think it's time we start a chapter right here in Tucson . . . The snowballing response made her the de facto coordinator of Coffee Party USA, with goals far loftier than its oopsy-daisy origin: promote civility and inclusiveness in political discourse, engage the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people, push leaders to enact the progressive change for which 52.9 percent of the country voted in 2008. "

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/view/feature/Tea-Party-vs-Coffee-Party-824

Quote :

"Tea Party vs. Coffee Party The Tea Party now has a challenger--for media attention, at least. A new organization called the Coffee Party is touting a pro-federal government, anti-obstructionist platform. On its Facebook page, the Coffee Party movement explicitly positions itself as an answer to the Tea Parties. For example: Many Americans reject the idea of working with the federal government or participating responsibly in the democratic process. For whatever reason, they have declared war on our government, and on our President. This is a destructive path. The Coffee Party doesn't just think Tea Partiers are unhelpful. The party thinks they're a threat to the democratic process, and suggests it's a civic duty to oppose them. Their mission statement announces that Coffee Partiers will "recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will." This mission includes building up a grassroots base, electing positive leaders, and "hold[ing] accountable those who obstruct them.""

http://twitter.com/coffeepartyusa

Looks like they are picking up some more media coverage. But right now I only see them as a facebook group. Yeah having 100k + members, which will soon surpass the Tea Party facebook group, is nice for them, but it doesn't count for anything until they do something.

3/9/2010 4:09:01 PM

(from Duke's large quote block

Quote :

"The Founders got it right, more or less, some 220 years ago, when they created a system of checks and balances that permits the exercise of power while protecting the rights of individuals and political minorities. The problem is not the system. It's us—our "got mine" culture of entitlement."

With regards to encompassing governing documents like the Constitution, this "blame society" attitude just doesn't seem like a valid argument.

Failure to account for an aspect of human nature/behavior does indicate a failing in the document itself. Similarly, the ease with which modern politicians completely ignore the document is a failing in the document itself.

It's the same "blame the user" mentality that people try to avoid in product and software design. Sure, the users/society might be a bunch of fucking idiots who have no idea what they're doing, but the product/document needs to account for that beforehand.

[Edited on March 9, 2010 at 6:08 PM. Reason : .]

3/9/2010 6:06:26 PM

Quote :

"Failure to account for an aspect of human nature/behavior does indicate a failing in the document itself. Similarly, the ease with which modern politicians completely ignore the document is a failing in the document itself."

are you fucking kidding me? have you never heard of a min-max problem?

3/9/2010 6:14:57 PM

^I'm not saying it's realistically possible to actually come up with a perfect governing document. It's not... But that blame society stuff is just a cop out, no matter how fucked up society might be.

3/9/2010 6:16:54 PM

Quote :

"the expression of our collective will ....we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges we face as Americans"

Quote :

"Many Americans reject the idea of working with the federal government or participating responsibly in the democratic process. .... This is a destructive path."

Quote :

"Tea Partiers are unhelpful. ....[and] a threat to the democratic process"

Okay, so what's this "democratic process"? Is that simple majority rule? Is this "code" for something?
(Lemme guess: they oppose the electoral college. )

If they like democracy so much, what is the Coffee Party's position on the two-party system?

3/11/2010 9:36:26 AM