Republican Dirty Tricks

Archive for the ‘American Nightmares’ Category

My friends over at Americans Against the Tea Party put it best when they said, “What does it say about a movement whose brightest “stars” are the dimmest bulbs?”  It says, laugh at them, pity them, but if you want to live in a modern nation of laws which evolves with the rest of the globe, for Heaven’s sake, DON’T look to them for ideas on how to operate a functioning society, since the only thing conservatives have been successful at is proving that everything they stand for is wrong.

Let’s imagine this scenario:  You have an uncle… a loud, opinionated, uncle who’s thinly veiled racism and misogyny is only superseded by his not-so-thinly veiled hatred of gays.  He says he’s a Christian, but never misses the opportunity to cheer for war and bloviate proudly about how merciless he is.   He fights anything that has a hint of challenging his perceived position in the straight/white/male catbird seat, even if that seat came from the fact that the Liberals he hates fought for the Social Security, Medicare, etc. that allows him to live in dignity.  He regales you with factually incorrect tales of American history, despite having never read a book in his life.  He disdains “intellectuals,” and perceives science as a “liberal plot.”  For as far back as you remember – and as far back as the family tree goes – he has been wrong about everything.

You must tolerate him because, after all, he’s family.  But you certainly don’t follow his advice, and you certainly don’t look to him to shape government policy.

But in the United States today, as normal people (non-conservatives) try to undo the damage from conservative destruction and try and create a society that works for all, we are continuously met with the same old stories of the impending doom that awaits if we dare stop following CONS to hell.   This opposition at every turn weaves the old, familiar tales of the American landscape being littered with gulags and mass graves from government death panels if we… say… dare offer health care as a right like the rest of the civilized world.   We hear Paul Ryan tickle the oversized-amygdala (fear center) in the conservative brain, as he paints a picture of millions of lazy bums swinging in the cushy hammock of our social safety net which isn’t so cushy.   We’re warned that rich people will stop trickling all those fabulous jobs on us if they are forced to contribute to the society that gave them so much.

These are nothing but bald-faced lies from bald-faced liars who have ALWAYS been on the wrong side of history.

Here’s a list to remind us that we shouldn’t be pandering to an ideology that is defined by its opposition to progress.

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Among the many confirmations of government’s corrupt collusion with powerful interests, the News Corp hacking scandal and Murdoch denial reminds us that the Republican Party is not only a nest of scientifically-proven inherent cowards who lack the desire, much less the ability, to govern an evolving society populated with citizens who strive to live a decent life, rather than toil thanklessly for a handful of aristocratic overlords, it is a collection of greed-centered ghouls, ultimately motivated by a desire to save their own ass – all while deflecting blame so their privilege can continue.

As Canadian/American Keynesian economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, famously explained,

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

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In the waning days of the Bush administration, 8 years after the Supreme Court interjected itself into a state vote count to usurp the will of the people and install the losing candidate into the Presidency, many could never have imagined that Barack Obama – the person we knocked on doors for, donated parts of our dwindling paychecks to, and voted for with the hopeful assurance that he would work to restore the balance of power between working people and their well-heeled “betters” – would be offering Social Security and Medicaid to the people who have wanted to destroy it for generations.

We rested assuredly that the election of Barack Obama would prove that our system of government worked and the crimes and abuses that inevitably accompany power, greed and financial influence could be rectified through our electoral process for the sake of the General Welfare – without the pain of bloody revolution.

But we were warned. Ralph Nader, who famously called Obama an “Uncle Tom” for corporate interests, and Cynthia McKinney were widely chastised for throwing cold water on the “hope” that the system of government passed down would be enough to remedy the tyrannies our founders knew all too well – one tyranny being the subjugation of the working class by the rich who use their wealth to corrupt government into an appendage to their own affairs.

After Obama’s win, Cynthia McKinney wondered what was the “change we could believe in,”

“What kind of change are we really going to have? I wish we could assume a break from the special-interest orthodoxy that seems to have a grip on Washington, D.C. It is this special-interest orthodoxy that has led to war and occupation, civil liberties attacks, social injustice, unemployment, poor yet very costly education and healthcare.”

The tragedy and shame is that America’s inequality between rich and poor is worse than Cameroon, Ivory Coast and revolutionary Egypt and hopes for Obama to champion actual “change” don’t seem to be coming to fruition.
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We live in a world where Rupert Murdoch’s Terrorist Network, Faux News, runs a 24/7 protection racket for transnational corporations, and willfully ignorant “average Joes” sit silently glued waiting for their cue to rally for their own demise.

Still, the word is getting out. Republicans are wholly-owned subsidiaries of said transnational corporations, and, with no loyalty to country or community, have never done a single thing to benefit the working people of this nation.

Republicans are inept by design, offering the same old failed policies again and again and again.

Bob Hertbert of the New York Times noted,

“What’s up with the Republicans? Have they no sense that their policies have sent the country hurtling down the road to ruin? Are they so divorced from reality that in their delusionary state they honestly believe we need more of their tax cuts for the rich and their other forms of plutocratic irresponsibility, the very things that got us to this deplorable state?”

…The truth, of course, is that the country is hemorrhaging jobs and Americans are heading to the poorhouse by the millions. The stock markets and the value of the family home have collapsed, and there is virtual across-the-board agreement that the country is caught up in the worst economic disaster since at least World War II.

The Republican answer to this turmoil?

Tax cuts.

They need to go into rehab.

The question that I would like answered is why anyone listens to this crowd anymore. G.O.P. policies have been an absolute backbreaker for the middle class. (Forget the poor. Nobody talks about them anymore, not even the Democrats.) The G.O.P. has successfully engineered a wholesale redistribution of wealth to those already at the top of the income ladder and then, in a remarkable display of chutzpah, dared anyone to talk about class warfare.”

Read the rest of that article here.

Republican­s have no solutions because they created the problem.

The latest Republican failure is the Paul Ryan budget plan, which kills Medicare and gives American seniors a coupon to purchase health insurance on the private market.

In addition, Ryan’s budget is a concoction of fantasy and outright fiction. As Slate reported, “…economists from across the spectrum gave the accounting the smell test and called it spoiled.” Read the breakdown of Ryan’s fuzzy math here.

Of course, normal people (non-Republicans) were not surprised that the Ryan plot to usher in Republican neo-Feudalism was merely just ANOTHER ideologically-based Republican failure waiting to get its claws around the neck of a nation made weary by 30 years of other] ideologically-based Republican failures.

Watch Anthony Weiner speak to the fact that Republicans have ALWAYS opposed the social safety net that Democrats created:

In the lead up to the 2010 midterms, Chris Matthews pressed Republican strategist Todd Harris to answer the question, “what has the Republican Party done for America?”

Matthews repeatedly asked for examples, as he cited negative examples like Bush-era spending bills, Katrina, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Harris had one attempt, “The Bush administration kept the country safe,” which Matthews shot back, “Except the one big day.”

“YouTube is watching,” he told Harris. “You’re the Republican consultant. One of the best in the country. Tell me what the Republican party has done for this country in the last ten to 20 years.”

Harris was silent.

Still, the poor, dumb, people of America sent Republicans to the House – like a chicken giving Colonel Sanders the key to the Chicken Coop.

Watch the exchange here:

The Republicans have us purposefully on a race to the bottom, promising to implement more of the same policies that turned the surplus they were handed into a deficit, the US into the LEAST upwardly mobile with the widest income disparity of all industrialized nations, and crashed the economy 2x in a century.
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The last refuge of failure is myth… and myth is the only thing Republicans have to hold on to if they have any hope of not being relegated to where they belong – permanent minority status.

Since the Sunday our legally-elected President relegated Osama Bin Laden to the bottom of the sea, Republicans have had their propaganda machines running overtime to try and give credit to Bush – the man who not only let Osama Bin Laden go when cornered in Tora Bora, but… in late 2005… actually DISBANDED the CIA group (Alec Station) who’s sole focus was to catch the world’s most notorious Islamist extremist terrorist

As pathetic as it is for Reich Wingers to attempt to give Bush credit for something he doesn’t deserve is, it also speaks volumes to the fact that Republicans have absolutely nothing of their own to boast about, and are FORCED to attempt to co-opt the successes of their rivals.
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The term “plutocracy” is defined “a government or state in which the wealthy class rules.” It also applies to a form of government where a wealthy class controls government from behind the scenes, dominating the political arena, directly or indirectly.

Economist David Korten writes,

“Our curent economy is accurately described by investment advisors and marketing consultants as a “plutonomy,” a combination of the terms “plutocracy” and “economy.” It refers to an economy in which income growth is confined to those at the top of the wealth pyramid. They use the concept as a guide to framing profitable investment and marketing strategies.

The is the mirror opposite of economic democracy, which is an essential foundation of political democracy, both foundational to the Living Democracy of Earth Community.

Bringing democracy to these United States, begins with a new story that acknowledges we have never had it. In the words of Frances Moore Lappe, “To save the democracy we thought we had, we must take democracy to where it’s never been.”

In other words, in order to truly realize the dreams of our Founders and create a government of, by and for the People, we must ensure economic egalitarianism through policies that promote it. We came close with the New Deal, so vehemently opposed by the “privileged princes” of the ruling class that they actually plotted a fascist coup against Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Watch this chilling BBC documentary on the “Business Plot.” Pay special attention to the similarities of what we are up against today… including FDR’s own “Teabaggers” – “The Liberty League.”
Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

President Barack Obama was asked at the Facebook town hall about Paul Ryan’s “bold” and courageous” plan to further empower the powerful and responded, “The Republican budget that was put forward I would say is fairly radical. I wouldn’t call it particularly courageous,” explaining that the Republican budget plot would (par for the GOP course) reduce taxes for corporations and the wealthy by, among other ideologically-based initiatives, cutting funds to clean energy programs and transportation.

“I guess you could call that bold. I would call it shortsighted,” and later added, “Nothing is easier than solving a problem on the backs of people who are poor or people who don’t have lobbyists or people who don’t have clout.”

The good news for normal people (non-Republicans) about Paul Ryan’s budget is that we can finally all stop pretending the GOP has the same goal as Democrats to create a strong, economically vibrant, working class, but simply holds different ideas how to get there. If those days ever existed, they ended in the late 1890s when they sold out to the Railroads and never looked back.  Since that time, the Republican Party does not get out of bed in the morning unless they can turn the government into a mere appendage to the affairs of banksters and corporations and continue to be so wedded to the same policies that have tanked the economy twice in a century that economists like Nouriel Roubini (as well as anyone with a brain) are forced to speculate that Republicans are actively trying to tank the economy for political gain.

The GOP agenda can be boiled down to 2 words: CHEAP LABOR… and Paul Ryan’s budget plan is about ensuring the Plutocrats finally eliminate the last vestige of middle class “uppityness” – our Social Safety net. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ Liberty requires opportunity to make a living – a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.” Paul Ryan is an ideologue who admitted that his budget was not just a budget, but a “cause.” That “cause” is the subjugation of the working class to plutocratic masters.

Obama buys the Republican myth of CUTTING our way to prosperity.

A last-minute budget deal cutting billions in spending postponed the Republican threat of a government shut down until next Thursday… thus giving Obama more time to capitulate to GOP terrorist demands.

Clearly, rather than fight for Democratic ideals – say… like the ones that lifted us out of the disaster of the FIRST Republican Great Depression… The so-called leader of the Democratic Party has bought into to Republican meme that we can “CUT” our way to prosperity.  We cannot.

Look at history.  Economists attributed the economic recovery out of the first Republican Great Depression from heavy government deficit spending. From the time he was inaugurated, Franklin D. Roosevelt increased spending with programs directly geared to putting people to work and the economy recovered partially from 1933 until 1936 until he caved to a Republican Congress bloviating about an unbalanced budget, cut spending, and the nation plunged into another recession.

Watch Thom Hartmann explain how Republican polices created and prolonged the Great Depression:

Republicans believe that tax cuts for the rich and just plain CUTS for everyone else is the “remedy” for the economic disasters Republican policies create, not because it creates a vibrant economy and strong middle class, but simply because it is Republican dogma. 

The Republican answer to the problems caused by their love of deregulation will always be “more deregulation” just like their answer to the problems caused by unfunded tax-cuts for the wealthy will always be “more unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy.”

It doesn’t matter a whit to Republicans that David Stockman, the father of Republican “trickle-down” economics recently made the media rounds to tell the late, great American Middle Class something they already know – that Reaganomics was a abysmal failure.

Yet, Barack Obama capitulates to the same class war policies that got us into the mess to being with, promising nothing but more of the same widening of the gap between rich and poor.

It makes no difference that Repug policies are the lynchpin on which all the destruction is hung–their true goal is to maintain the Plutonomy. Period.

In their own private Republican apocalypse, a world where the rich run and own everything is not a problem because everyone else, as their hero Ayn Rand says, is a “parasite.”
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Poor Michele Bachmann… it’s not that she is appallingly stupid to the history she purports to be an expert of, it’s the damn liberal media that reports her appalling stupidity who deserve chastising. Much like her sister in stupidity, Sarah Palin, Bachmann has the CON victim act down pat.

The Boston Herald Reported, “Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann yesterday made her Granite State debut with historical and geographic missteps.

“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord,” she said at an event organized by the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, according to Politico.com. “And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors.”

Too bad for Bachmann, the “shot heard ’round the world” was fired in Massachusetts.”

TPM continued, “Somewhat ironically, Scott Conroy of RealClearPolitics reports that Bachmann also talked a bit about the importance of teaching children the facts and letting them draw their own conclusions. “I don’t think that our public schools are necessarily the place where one fixed set of political beliefs should be imposed on students,” she said. “I think that knowledge, facts, and information should be on the table, and let students decide what their beliefs should be.”

Bachmann’s gotten her American history wrong before. Back in January, she lauded the United States for its early commitment to diversity. “It didn’t matter the color of their skin, it didn’t matter their language, it didn’t matter their economic status,” Bachmann said of the first settlers. She also praised the founders who she said “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”

Late Update: Bachmann responded in two posts on her Facebook page:

“So I misplaced the battles Concord and Lexington by saying they were in New Hampshire. It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!

And by the way… That will be the last time I borrow President Obama’s tele-promoter!”

But, as the Minnesota Post points out, she made the same mistake the night before on the sea coast of New Hampshire: “It’s your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world, you are the state of Lexington and Concord (sic), you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard.”

Bachmann has gotten into the habit of making ignorant statements about American history.    She claimed the founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery and that John Quincy Adams was a founding father who lived to see slavery’s end..  Not surprisingly, Bachmann is the leader of the House Tea Party Caucus-  who took it’s name from the astroturf front group funded by billionaires, dedicated to manipulating “Average Joe” dupes into rallying for the agenda of said billionaires while the billionaires ride said dupes to the bank unfettered by the only institution large enough to stop them – our government of “We The People” our Founders fought and died for.

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It must be tough for anti-American Repugs having to try & pretend to operate in a constitutionally-limited democratic republic, when in their chests beat the hearts of filthy, cowardly, authoritarian dictators.

That being the case, and well aware that they were losing in the court of public opinion, Republicans rammed through legislation actively targeting the working class by inventing a new “nuclear option” to pass their union-killing bill with no quorum, no discussion and no debate.

Despite the ruse that Republicans insisted that stripping collective bargaining was a “fiscal” issue, Repugs violate the Wisconsin “Open Meetings” law and voted to destroy unions as a stand alone, non-”fiscal” bill.

Clearly, Republicans have been attacking Unions on an ideological, not “fiscal” basis. The “fiscal” excuse being trotted out all over the nation in places stupid enough to vote Republican as the excuse to hammer the last nail into the coffin of the late, great, American middle class and ram through the Republican pro-corporate, anti-worker agenda. A further irony being, if fiscal shortfalls exist around the country, they have been the result of 30 years of abysmal Republican policies.

From Slate:

Up to now, the Budget Repair Bill in Wisconsin has been frozen because all fourteen Senate Democrats will not return to the state to negotiate it. There’s no quorum — the bill, which consists of many fiscal components, can’t pass.

Republicans in the Senate are trying an end run around that now. They have called a conference committee meeting — which is open to the media — where the key fiscal component of the bill, a refinancing provision, will be stripped out. The collective bargaining component, the pay cuts, pension reform — all still there. That would allow the stripped-down bill to pass the Senate with no Democrats present.

Republicans care not about America as a whole and have no problem championing policies that have turned America from a creditor to a debtor nation and the middle class into the working poor. Republicans have no problem further empowering a handful of powerful elite who have no moral qualms about being rich people in a poor country – just as long as the Republicans themselves also get to partake in the opulence.

The American People are working harder, longer hours, and still can’t keep up with rising prices, utility bills, ballooning medical expenses, and the accelerating cost of paying for an education.

Still, the trust fund billionaire Koch Brothers yanked on their chain and their poodle Republican governors started barking in unison, well trained in obeying their masters and set out to do the business of further subjugating the people into compliant serfdom.

Teachers, nurses, cops, firefighters and other state workers did not cause the economic mess we are in – 30 years of failed Republican economic policies designed to make the rich richer and working people the working poor was the culprit.

USA Today reported “A congressionally appointed panel reported …that the financial crisis that set off the Great Recession was avoidable, casting a wide net of blame over regulators and financial giants alike.

In other words, since America swallowed the Reaganomics voodoo she is now dying from, a 30-year policy of deregulation “stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe.” This caused gaping holes in the government’s regulation of the shadow banking system and over-the-counter derivatives markets into which banksters slipped and plied their greed-centered game to the detriment of the nation. As Matt Taibbi reported in his story for Rolling Stone titled, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?“, immense corruption and malfeasance before, during and after the finance meltdown has plunged American into economic Hell – NOT unionized teachers making $35,000 a year.

The economic crisis was caused by the super wealthy who pushed for deregulation of financial markets, and by lobbied for “free-trade” deals that took the jobs of manufacturing middle class members, and service jobs of white collar workers from American demanding a living wage and gave them to Chinese and Indian workers begging for slave wages.
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