George W. Bush Has A New Lie-Bury
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We’ve been propelled down memory lane this week as George W. Bush opened library/lie-bury, which is nothing but a Neo Con Disney Land of propaganda built to rewrite the atrocious history of (literally) the stupidest and most destructive non-winning president America has even been forced to endure by her own inability to rise up and demand true representative government… and a war criminal’s attempt to wash himself clean of his crimes.
George W. Bush was not legally-elected – either time – and we have no one but ourselves to blame for the fact that we allowed the front man for Plutocracy, and his criminal handlers, to plunge us into illegal wars, raid our treasury, murder, wound and maim millions and leave us still suffering under the weight of failed polices.
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Forget the Jobs Deficit! Obama’s Budget put CUTS to Earned Benefits on the table – AGAIN
If Barack Obama is the leader of the The Democratic Party, then the Democratic Party of the New Deal is dead.
Just a Bill Clinton’s “free trade” deals sent the American manufacturing base – and American jobs – to wage slave nations, and his media deregulation gave us the consolidated Corporate Media now making a mockery of its Constitutionally-protected role to inform the electorate, Barack Obama’s latest budget betrays traditional Democratic principles and proves his eagerness to AGAIN offer Republicans their Holy Grail – CUTS to Social Security and Medicare – programs Republicans have opposed since their inception.
One truly has to wonder if Republicans would have been able to do as much damage to these vital programs as Barack Obama stands ready to do? Not since Lyin’ Paul Ryan joined George W. Bush in his effort to privatize Social Security, has a politician been so bent on ensuring our most vulnerable citizens take in on the chin as some “bargaining chip” so the rich can continue paying their 15 percent rate on capital gains investment income – the lowest since the Great Depression.
After facing immediate backlash from normal people (non-Republicans/those tired of living in a Plutocracy), the Obama Administration released a statement, which read in part,
“The president has made clear that he is willing to compromise and do tough things to reduce the deficit, but only in the context of a package like this one that has balance and includes revenues from the wealthiest Americans and that is designed to promote economic growth.”
The statement betrays a staggering lack of understanding that even John Boehner and Paul Ryan recently publicly admitted – our real crisis is one of employment, not of the deficit. Numerous economists not under contract with the Heritage Foundation have tried to pound this truth into Obama’s head, yet he continuously plays right into the Republican faux-crisis about the deficit (a strategy known as “Two Santa Clause“) – and insist he’s doing the “tough things” by stripping the politically unconnected of vital programs. In truth, the “tough things” would be promoting policies that would actually bring our jobs home and end the employment crisis.
Calling it a “bitter disappointment,” Senator Bernie Sanders vowed to fight the President, saying, “What the president is proposing is going to hurt a lot of people.”
Senator Sanders also wrote in a New York Times letter to the editor,
“During his first run for the White House, in 2008, Mr. Obama said he would not cut Social Security. I hope he remembers that promise and keeps it.
also hope he follows up on another suggestion that he made during that campaign and gets behind my legislation to raise the cap on income subject to the payroll tax, extending the life of Social Security for generations to come without the need to cut benefits or raise taxes on the middle class.”
You can sign Bernie’s petition here… but we need more than petitions to stop Washington’s destruction of the working class. We’re going to need to wake up our neighbors to the fact that they’re being played.
Paul Ryan: Profile in Cowardice
If you’re someone who believes that a representative government should operate in the interests of the general welfare, not the profits of the few, it’s time to face facts – Republicans are unfit to govern.
Case in point is Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget, which, funny enough, looks pretty much like the 2012 budget the American People roundly rejected a few short months ago.
Keep in mind that even Mitt Romney, a man who sends American jobs to wage-slave nations, stated without a trace of irony, “The place you put your money makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is.” That being the case, it’s clear that Paul Ryan’s “heart” is dedicated to the destruction of the working class for the benefit of the few.
In a nutshell, Ryan’s latest attempt at Republican social engineering “saves” money by forcing seniors to pay exorbitantly more out of pocket for their health care, changing guaranteed Medicare into a “premium support” (voucher) program, turns Medicaid into another block grant (for states to have the “flexibility” to defund), lowers tax rates on the wealthy and their corporations, cuts domestic programs and balloons the already-bloated military budget.
Republicans Loathe Government – Except For When They Need It
If Marco Rubio’s Republican response to the President’s State of the Union Address reminded us of anything, it is that Republicans are hypocrites to the core.
In one breath Marco Rubio insists “more government isn’t going to create more opportunities. It’s going to limit them… ” and “more government isn’t going to help you get ahead. It’s going to hold you back.”
In the next breath he assures us that he and his family have benefited greatly from Social Security, Medicare, government-funded education grants and more… “It [Medicare] provided my father the care he needed to battle cancer and ultimately die with dignity. And it pays for the care my mother receives now.”
Seems Republicans are confident that America is too numb to notice that GOP ideology is nothing but a shell game in which government is “good” only when it serves the Republican’s selfish interests – all else must be, as millionaire lobbyist and oath keeper Grover Norquist said, shrunk “to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
As Jay Bookman wrote for the Atlanta Journal Constitution,
“…let’s set aside talk of Rubio’s delivery and take a serious look at the message itself. (Transcript available here.) And let’s start with the fact that in most respects, his speech was a standard, rote recitation of Republican ideology, including a familiar condemnation of President Obama as an enemy of capitalism:
“Presidents in both parties – from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle class prosperity. But President Obama? He believes it’s the cause of our problems.”
“… the idea that more taxes and more government spending is the best way to help hardworking middle class taxpayers – that’s an old idea that’s failed every time it’s been tried. More government isn’t going to help you get ahead. It’s going to hold you back.”
That is an easily disprovable assertion. Medicare is not a failure; Social Security is not a failure; the GI Bill was not a failure; Head Start is not a failure; unemployment insurance is not a failure. The student loan and Pell Grant programs are not failures. Neither is Medicaid, which among other things insures two-thirds of Americans receiving long-term nursing home care in this country.
These and other programs — almost all of them opposed by Republicans since their inception — have been of immense service to “hardworking middle-class taxpayers” and other Americans. In fact, Rubio and his family have themselves benefited greatly from those programs. As he acknowledged later in his speech, his mother and late father have relied heavily on Medicare to deal with their declining health. Rubio attended a state-financed university, including a community college and the University of Florida, and financed that college education through federal loans and the Pell Grant program.
Is the Error of Voodoo Economics Finally Over?
President Obama’s second inaugural address has right wing CONS apoplectic with the notion that the Reagan era (error) has finally come to an end.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lamented, “one thing is clear from the president’s speech: The era of liberalism is back. His unabashedly far-left-of-center inaugural speech certainly brings back memories of the Democratic Party in ages past.” Considering the fact that the American middle class was made possible by Democratic New Deal policies, we can only hope. The fact is, we’re reaching a tipping point where the Faux News propaganda isn’t loud enough to drown out the dismal reality Reaganomics voodoo has heaped on the working class… and the people are figuring out they’ve been played.
Equal pay for equal work, gay rights, Social Security, Medicare, and the notion that “our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.” These are not the radical ravings of an avowed Marxist… but quite mundane, mainstream thought. McConnell’s desperately attempt to categorize the President’s commitments to social equality and economic justice as “far-left-of-center” illustrates again just how out-of-touch the Republican party is to the working people in this nation.
For the majority of Americans, Reaganomics was a failure. Even Reagan’s own Budget Director admitted Reaganomics destroyed the economy by turning America from the most to the least upwardly mobile with the widest income gap of all industrialized nations. Stagnating wages and concentrating wealth at the top would be considered a failure if your mission was to create a society that works for all – not just billionaires.
The fact that the Republicans are STILL peddling their trickle-down voodoo speaks volumes that they simply have a different definition of “success.” Namely, the Republicans’ true constituency “succeeds” when the rich get richer and the working class are permanently ensconced as the more malleable, compliant, and easily exploitable “working poor.” Let’s face it, conquering the working majority and empowering the few was always the point of “trickle down voodoo economics” – and it still is.
Watch: Rachael Maddow Explains How Reaganomics Destroyed The Middle Class:
We have a long way to go to dig ourselves out of this greed-centered hole Republicans and DINOS put us in. The President’s speech is not policy, but it is a declaration that the mindset is shifting from voodoo to reality. The fight for a new, New Deal is just beginning.
Goodbye 2012: Another Year Living Among Plutocracy’s Useful Idiots
2012 is over. Though the people wholly rejected Romney, and thus being ruled by an outright plutocrat who made a fortune firing Americans and sending their jobs to low-wage nations, the task of reviving the working class has just begun. Let’s not forget that President Obama is the only Democratic President to have ever offered Social Security to its enemies as a bargaining chip. Fact is, despite right wing whining that the President being an avowed “Socialist,” he’s not even a liberal. From “Obamacare” to the Payroll tax cut, his policies are corporatist, not populist. This is a problem – especially when liberal policies are what’s needed to remedy the CON destruction of the American working class. Those who live and operate in the “Reality-Based Community” know this to be true, but if we take a gander to the proverbial “right,” we see that we’re living among people who are frantic about things that exist only in their minds.
The disasters of decline that plague our nation have been brought to us by the very conservative policies that the Republicans are, right now, continuing to shove down our choking throats. Republicans in he halls of power don’t work alone, though. They advance their agenda with the help of an army of useful idiot “average Joe” CONS whose purpose is to infest the internet, poison our public discourse, and waste all of our time with “issues” whose resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.
As someone who confronts these useful idiots on a daily basis, let me tell you, it’s damn tedious to have to continuously debunk the same right wing fantasies and lies again and again – especially when there’s so much legitimate work to do. There’s plenty of distressing things President Obama has actually done that these freaks could attack him for. The fact that they don’t just illustrates, once again, that CONS lack the maturity to function in a truly free society, and their leaders are unfit to hold leadership positions in a modern nation.
Wedded to Fantasy: The “Average Joe” Republican is Plutocracy’s Useful Idiot
Case in point is this ridiculous “Obama Christmas Carol” video created by an “average Joe” CON as “an animated musical look at the first 3 years of the Obama presidency with a Christmas-y twist.”
In truth, the video is a laundry list of the ridiculous fantasies CONS have wasted our time with since President Obama assumed the office he was legally elected to. Take a gander into the propagandized mind of a useful idiot of the plutocracy. (Don’t forget to “vote down” the video and tell its author that his video sucks.)
Here’s the lyrics, with fact-based rebuttals (CONS will ignore anyway):
On his first day in office, Obama gave to me
A federal spending spree.
On his second day in office, Obama gave to me
Tax-cheating cronies and a bailout of AIG
On his third day in office, Obama gave to me
Czars in the Whitehouse,
George Bush had MORE “czars” and more appointees than Obama. As usual, the Republican leadership simply tickle the inherently-cowardly and willfully-ignorant Republican brain, confident their useful idiot “average Joes” know nothing about the history of presidential advisers, and are fearful of a foreign-sounding moniker.
quantitative easing,
“Ever since the recession, Republicans have regularly denounced the Fed for taking steps to help the economy, warning that runaway inflation is just around the corner. But these predictions have been repeatedly discredited by the path inflation has actually taken.” Link.
and a free-falling currency
A free-falling currency? Where? In fact, the reason the United States lost its triple-A credit rating was a direct result of REPUBLICAN obstruction.
On his fourth day in office Obama gave to me
Government motors,
Romney and Republicans wanted to “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.“ In fact, all you have to do is look at their policies to figure out that the Republican mission is to turn America into a third world nation of Serfs and Lords. After all, they then everyone would know their “natural” place and the world would be less complex and scary for their base of racist white men.
Conservative America: Guns for All! Healthcare For Some!
It’s a generally accepted notion that what separates the sane from the insane is the ability to appreciate the consequences of one’s actions. True to form, Republicans are now tripping over themselves to offer ineffectual “thoughts” and “prayers” for the latest victims of senseless gun violence. This outpouring of concern also conveniently omits any responsibility for the part conservatives play in creating a society awash with assault weapons, and where health care is a “privilege,” (as numerous Republicans have asserted.)
With this latest gun massacre, made even more horrific by the fact that the majority of victims were innocent children mercilessly and senselessly executed by a deranged man, it’s time for America to maturely face the facts that we send our representatives to Washington to help create the type of modern society worthy of our supposed ideals. If these ideals do not include the murder of innocent children during a school day, then we must demand legislation that reflects this, and not just legislation that lines the pockets of powerful special interests and their puppets in Congress while endangering the health, safety and security of the populace as a whole.
“Freedom” means not being murdered by a madman with an assault rifle
At the Newton memorial, President Obama said that though there is no single law or set of laws that could prevent such tragedies, but “that can’t be an excuse for inaction.” He asked, “Are we prepared that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”, reflecting the tendency to adopt conservative memes about “freedom.” In truth, normal people (non-Republicans) know that real “freedom” comes from the “freedom” to function in society without being gunned down by an armed madman. “Freedom” is also being able to seek medical and/or mental health treatment for yourself, your child, or loved one, without the fear of going bankrupt. These are “freedoms” that resonate positively throughout society, as we all experience the comfort of knowing our fellow Americans have access to health care, thus making us all safer.
The bottom line is, we need strict gun control laws, universal health care, and an economy that works from the ground up, for we know that the most unequal societies are also the most violent.
We must also demand public financing of campaigns to pry the grip of the NRA and the rest of the powerful special interests from around the neck of government.
In the meantime, we must demand accountability, and that means facing up to the fact that gun violence may be a tragedy, but it is also the effect of the causes we have allowed.
Republican “Gifts” Do Nothing for Working America
What a surprise! The so-called “Party of Personal Responsibility” is taking no responsibility for their crushing defeat on Election Day. Instead, they’ve decided to try and convince themselves and their willing “average Joe” dupes that their defeat is the fault of a nation of moochers who reelected the President on the promise of more of his “gifts.”
Frightened little man Bill O’Reilly whined on election night that the President won because women and people of color “want stuff” and Mitt Romney told his major donors in a post-election conference call that President Obama enticed his voters with “gifts.”
Funny how Republicans perceive representing the interests of everyday people as underhanded pandering. They’ve spent time, money and energy for the last 30 years trying to influence the public discourse with the belief that solely representing the interests of the 1% is a patriotic imperative, but doing the same for 99% is akin to “unconstitutional handouts.”
Republican “Gifts” Do Nothing for Working America
The fact is that Republicans have a history of giving “stuff” to their constituents – the wealthy plutocrats who pull their strings. Unfortunately, for the working American, “gifts” such as subsidies, tax credits, tax loopholes and deregulation haven’t created the shared prosperity promised by trickle-down voodoo, but have helped turned America from the most to the least upwardly mobile with worse income inequality than the Roman Empire.
Their “gifts” of funneling taxpayer money to organized religion through “faith based” initiatives has also helped chip away the at the wall between church and state – an essential component in the modern conservative mission to drag us back to a time when the rich owned and controlled everything – including the economically insecure working poor who compliantly awaited their rewards in Heaven.
The American People Reject Lyin’ Romney/Ryan
Despite Citizen’s United…. despite voter suppression… despite fear mongering, race-baiting, blatant lies and CEO threats to fire workers if President Obama was re-elected… the America People rejected the same trickle down policies that destroyed the economy twice in a century and chose to move the country forward.
President Obama may not a liberal… but he’s certainly not a Plutocrat. The American electoral system is deeply corrupted by money. Republicans enable that corruption because they benefit from it. The fundamental rot in the system is money. Republicans (wholly owned) and Democrats (partially owned) are the symptom of this rot, not the disease. Public financing of campaigns would be the first step towards empowering true representatives of the people.
In the meantime, from student loan reform… credit card reform… children’s health care expansion… equal pay for equal work… repeal of don’t ask don’t tell… rescue of the auto industry… 9/11 health bill… national service expansion… health reform… and more… we’ve maintained our gains.
Watch: Rachel Maddow break down a list of President Obama’s accomplishments:
George Washing said,
“As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.”
Election day is not the end, it is the beginning. Real activists know the true work takes place every day. Let’s continue to push the President in the direction to fulfil the promise of a more egalitarian, more perfect, more liberal, union that works for all – not just the 1%.
Chris Hedges is Voting Green, But I’m Voting For Obama – Here’s Why
Normal people (non-Republicans) know that despite the incessant right wing propaganda labeling the President with the charge of “socialist,” Barack Obama is far from even being a liberal. But I’m voting for him on Election Day. Here’s why.
Why I’m Voting For President Obama
First, a little background on the letter you’re about to read: People who read this site know I’m a friend and fan of kick-ass radio host Mike Malloy (you’re not a Malloy podcast subscriber? What are you waiting for?) A week before the Presidential election, Mike read Chris Hedges’ Column titled, Why I’m Voting Green on his show… and I felt I had to respond. Mike then read my response on the Thursday, October 31st “Mike Malloy Show.” I received a few emails and requests on the RDT Facebook page for a copy of the email… so here it is:
