[Sushi]

Please go look at the pictures before responding to the thread. This issue isn't about taxes.

To be fair, the images are not exactly representative. Someone found all of the craziest/funniest signs they could.

More to the point, though, the tea parties got BANDWAGON'D!. They actually did start out as being grass roots, about taxes, and in protest of excessive government spending. Unfortunately, a lot of people who were angry at Washington for whatever reason ("Obama is a Communist Muslim reincarnation of Hitler! And he eats puppies!") jumped on the bandwagon. Sadly, though, crazy people make more entertaining news than those who are outraged in a civilized and sane way.  They stole the spotlight and made it so that the tea parties got all the wrong kind of attention.

[Janos]

The history of the Tea Parties is surreal. After a rant by CNBC's Santelli a serious of blogs were up in matter of hours, with surprisingly similar content. After years of berating and belittling protesters as silly, Fox News decides to jump in, cover the protests, give out half a million dollars in ads for them. Santelli says he's proud of creating them... The protest have nothing to do with taxes - pretty much everyone getting less than 250 000/year is getting a tax cut; there were no protests during Bush years; the protests are aimed at liberal muslim communists etc.

This pretty much sums it out:
http://exiledonline.com/exposing-the-familiar-rightwing-pr-machine-is-cnbcs-rick-santelli-sucking-koch/

Grassroots my ass.

[JCDNWarrior]

The history of the Tea Parties is surreal. After a rant by CNBC's Santelli a serious of blogs were up in matter of hours, with surprisingly similar content. After years of berating and belittling protesters as silly, Fox News decides to jump in, cover the protests, give out half a million dollars in ads for them. Santelli says he's proud of creating them... The protest have nothing to do with taxes - pretty much everyone getting less than 250 000/year is getting a tax cut; there were no protests during Bush years; the protests are aimed at liberal muslim communists etc.

This pretty much sums it out:
http://exiledonline.com/exposing-the-familiar-rightwing-pr-machine-is-cnbcs-rick-santelli-sucking-koch/

Grassroots my ass.

There were many, many protests against Bush. This goes way beyond left or right, democrat or republican, as i mentioned earlier. A simple Google search brings up a lot (a very simple search would be this --   http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=protests+against+bush&btnG=Google+zoeken&meta=&aq=f&oq=  )
The thing is that the people behind bush, behind obama, are in charge for quite a while now, and are the ones making the rules; using the 2 - party system to their advantage.

Fox News is and stays a neo-conservative news channel, which i have no respect for at all, but since it's their turn to be critical about the administration, they attempt to hijack and take over these movements. Like how i felt Keith Olbermann was amazing against Bush, now he's soft and apologetic about Obama. I don't have respect for people, especially in the media, that only attack the 'other camp', and when 'their' camp is in power, they're happy.

As mentioned, it's divide and conquer. But both the people in the media and in politics that are on the 'left' and 'right', work for the same people, which have interest by this infight of left versus right, black versus white.

But that's not how things should be, i think. This way we can never fix things and improve our lives, our future.

- JC

[blackhole]

Personally I think the entire country is dumber then a doornail.

[Janos]

The history of the Tea Parties is surreal. After a rant by CNBC's Santelli a serious of blogs were up in matter of hours, with surprisingly similar content. After years of berating and belittling protesters as silly, Fox News decides to jump in, cover the protests, give out half a million dollars in ads for them. Santelli says he's proud of creating them... The protest have nothing to do with taxes - pretty much everyone getting less than 250 000/year is getting a tax cut; there were no protests during Bush years; the protests are aimed at liberal muslim communists etc.

This pretty much sums it out:
http://exiledonline.com/exposing-the-familiar-rightwing-pr-machine-is-cnbcs-rick-santelli-sucking-koch/

Grassroots my ass.

There were many, many protests against Bush. This goes way beyond left or right, democrat or republican, as i mentioned earlier. A simple Google search brings up a lot (a very simple search would be this --   http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=protests+against+bush&btnG=Google+zoeken&meta=&aq=f&oq=  )
The thing is that the people behind bush, behind obama, are in charge for quite a while now, and are the ones making the rules; using the 2 - party system to their advantage.

Fox News is and stays a neo-conservative news channel, which i have no respect for at all, but since it's their turn to be critical about the administration, they attempt to hijack and take over these movements. Like how i felt Keith Olbermann was amazing against Bush, now he's soft and apologetic about Obama. I don't have respect for people, especially in the media, that only attack the 'other camp', and when 'their' camp is in power, they're happy.

As mentioned, it's divide and conquer. But both the people in the media and in politics that are on the 'left' and 'right', work for the same people, which have interest by this infight of left versus right, black versus white.

But that's not how things should be, i think. This way we can never fix things and improve our lives, our future.

- JC

You miss the point: the de-facto horn for Republican Party belittled all the opposition for Bush and then, after marketing the current tea party - by the way, they also labelled them as FNC Tea Parties.. - goes out and endorses them. After a scripted "rant"? This was never a grassroots movement, but blatant astroturfing. It's not that Fox News has a chance to be critical - by all means, they can go ahead - but they are doing it in such a blatantly hypocritical way after spending months trying to fly **** at the current administration that it stinks. It stinks to the skies. I have not seen any reporting after looking at dozens of articles that there were anything but the 30%ers there. You certainly do have proof of this statement that

There weren't protests against Bush's government's spending. They were protests, but it was the other site of the isle and against different things - these same people were not protesting against spending or deficits or any other aspect of the disastrous economy, FNC wasn't afraid of "moral hazards" which would be not letting people go homeless, and they sure as hell weren't like the protesting as a means of political dissent at all.
We were talking about astroturfing and what the protests are. They do not even aim at the common goals - one protester here demands less taxes (although he is probably getting tax cuts), another one blames evil communist muslim Obama for economical crisis, third one is your run-of-the-mill Ron Paul wacko.

You seem to dislike the Left/Right axis, but as it stands, the two-party catchall system causes that.

-JC

[Scotty]

This was never a grassroots movement, but blatant astroturfing.

I lol'd.

I don't really care for parties.  No one party embodies what I would look for.  That said, I would have voted McCain, but didn't have the opportunity (damn voting age).  He didn't get elected.  Oh well.  I may not think Obama is the better choice, but I don't go out and make everyone who didn't vote for him look like an ignorant dumbass.  These people are a disgrace.

I still like laughing at idiots, though.

[iamzack]

I don't agree with either party that much either, but I do agree with the Dems more often than the Reps.

[Scotty]

And I the reverse.  The party system just screws up any hope of anything working right correctly.

[iamzack]

Well it wasn't designed for two parties. It was meant for many little factions.

[General Battuta]

Arguably not, actually; parliamentary democracies are better suited for that.

[Janos]

Well it wasn't designed for two parties. It was meant for many little factions.

well then maybe USA should pick another system than the first past the post

like parliamentary system which is p. good fyi

[Scotty]

The democratic system works, we just managed to seriously f*ck it up.  The founding fathers never wanted a gigantic two party system, and honestly, when was the last NON Dem/Rep elected?

[iamzack]

Uhmm... Zackary Taylor. Was a whig. (Pre Civil War) But the point is moot as the Whigs became the Republicans.

[MP-Ryan]

Personally I think the entire country is dumber then a doornail.

Irony:  Someone accusing people of stupidity failing to distinguish between the words "then" and "than."

Sorry blackhole, couldn't resist

[Janos]

The democratic system works, we just managed to seriously f*ck it up.  The founding fathers never wanted a gigantic two party system, and honestly, when was the last NON Dem/Rep elected?

well maybe because they failed to see that parties are pretty much a natural continuation of politics. Why build such a system if it naturally leads to two-party system? Maybe they lacked something like historical perspective back then.

the US system is not unique; UK also has one. Actually there are many two-party systems in the world. This is not something unique or "americans are dumb" - it's built in in the system, it's completely unescapable, it will happen even if you scrapped all party affiliations tomorrow and waited for 2 election cycles.

[karajorma]

The UK doesn't quite have a two party system. It's simply that the Liberal Democrats are so useless that they've failed to capitalise on opportunities to end the current domination of the major two parties.

[Janos]

The UK doesn't quite have a two party system. It's simply that the Liberal Democrats are so useless that they've failed to capitalise on opportunities to end the current domination of the major two parties.

Torys vs. Whigs
Labour vs. Conservatives
It's always two powerful parties and maybe some little third party (Libdems) providing help, but the FPTP system is so useless that it solidifes the dominance of two large parties for pretty much forever.

It's quite different from other multiparty systems where there are often two or three parties with not as huge a lead as f.ex. the Labour has now and then several smaller.

[karajorma]

Yeah but the Lib dems had the chance 3-4 years ago to kick the Tories either out of opposition or at least put them on a par with them.

Unfortunately instead of taking the long term view of kicking the Tories when they were down they took the short term view of actually trying to win the election by beating Labour (when they had no hope).

[Janos]

Yeah but the Lib dems had the chance 3-4 years ago to kick the Tories either out of opposition or at least put them on a par with them.

Unfortunately instead of taking the long term view of kicking the Tories when they were down they took the short term view of actually trying to win the election by beating Labour (when they had no hope).

So in regards to original question: how long has British politics been dominated by two powerful parties and the rest are just filling? The parties change - this is not original to Britain - but the dualism remains.

I have for long held the idea that the British politics is dominated by two parties: one is the big opposition party and another one is a winner in election and gets all the important seats, all the positions in the positions that have actual influence, and a complete say in how the politics of the country are handled. The rest? Who cares.

[karajorma]

Like I said, it's not quite a two party system.

It is very close to one but it's not quite there. The liberal democrats hold 1/10th of the total number of seats which make them very important whenever there is a backbench rebellion. Similarly another 30 or so are held by independents.

Compare that to Congress. How many people are there in Congress who aren't from the two main parties?