Republican Dirty Tricks

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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We all know that the truth has a well-documented liberal bias that Conservative, so-called “free market” ideology – with its long history of failure – simply cannot abide.

With that in mind, the Reich Wing of America is doing all they can to graft their dead-end ideas onto the minds of the young in the hopes of enlisting more zombie acolytes to cheer their own demise.

Case in point: for the past three years, American children all over the country have been subjected to a curriculum originating in a book titled “The United States of Energy,” published by Scholastic with the (undoubtedly) unbiased sponsorship from the good people at the American Coal Foundation.  The book regaled the students with a litany of completely positive coal facts – sans any of the nasty down sides.

A recent NY Times article stated,

“What they do not mention are the negative effects of mining and burning coal: the removal of Appalachian mountaintops; the release of sulfur dioxide, mercury and arsenic; the toxic wastes; the mining accidents; the lung disease.”

Unfortunately, the pesky public found this sponsorship a bit egregious and suspected the people at the American Coal Foundation were merely trying to indoctrinate our impressionable youth with pro-corporate propaganda. So, after some outcry, the American Coal Foundation announced it would no longer offer our budding consumers this particular title. Read more about that incident here.

But this example isn’t the only assault Conservatives are waging against the minds of American youth.

The Koch Brother menace is now using their trust fund to corrupt institutes of higher learning in order to mold America to their liking – a nation where the rich run and own everything and everyone else knows their “place.”

The AmericaBlog has put together a detailed accounting of this latest disturbing development in the Oligarch’s assault on the American People.
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Since President Obama did something that Bush said he was “truly not that concerned about… “   – namely, bring Osama Bin Laden to justice –  Republicans have been trying to spin the event to try and keep those who authorized torture out of jail by claiming that it was these “enhanced interrogation techniques” that led to the terrorist’s whereabouts.

Never mind the fact that these claims have been denied by the war criminal Donald Rumsefeld, as well as others in the Intelligence communities… normal people (non-Republicans) know that the truth rarely, if ever, gets in the way of a CONservative’s mission to serve their dead-end, ideological agenda.

The Christian Science Monitor reported,

“Several former military interrogators refute assertions that waterboarding and other ‘enhanced’ methods provided intelligence that led the US to bin Laden. Some lament lost opportunity to grill Al Qaeda’s leader.”

In fact, it has been reported that the torture of detainees may have actually hindered and slowed the hunt for Bin Laden, not hastened it.

From The Huffington Post.:

“I think that without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden,” said an Air Force interrogator who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander and located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006.

It now appears likely that several detainees had information about a key al Qaeda courier — information that might have led authorities directly to bin Laden years ago. But subjected to physical and psychological brutality, “they gave us the bare minimum amount of information they could get away with to get the pain to stop, or to mislead us,” Alexander told The Huffington Post.

Disgracefully, the inherently cowardly Reich Wingers hold the view that waterboarding is something to crow about.
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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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The alarm is ringing and many Americans once too exhausted to face the fact that they were been hoodwinked by 30 years of misinformation and myth into believing the American Dream was within their grasp, have stopped hitting the snooze button.  They’re living in the dreams of yesteryear but the reality of today.

It’s all their fault, they’ve been told.  If only they work harder, longer hours without ever taking a vacation or day off… they’ll be able to eventually grasp the prosperity those on the upper end of the income ladder have been holding in front of them like a carrot on a stick.

But let’s face it, my fellow Americans.  We’ve been are under attack…  sometimes stealthily, sometimes overtly…  In fact, we are at war.  Class War.

Being the aggressors, Republicans know this, so they have tried desperately through their corporate protection racket propaganda outlets to redefine “Class War” to mean that horrible thing that occurs when society dare request that the rich pay their fair share of taxes.

The common retort is that the rich already pay most of the taxes, but Republicans neglect to complete the second half of that statement… which is… that the rich pay more taxes because they control the vast majority of the wealth.   Simply put, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay- a fact of modern American life that began to come to fruition with the inauguration of Reagan.

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FDR once said, “Yes, we are on the way back — not by mere chance, not by a turn of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we planned it that way, and don’t let anybody tell you differently.”

Republicans (and DINOS) would have us believe that all our economic woes are simply a result of the “natural” ebb and flow of the market, but they are not. They PLANNED IT THAT WAY.

It’s the age-old struggle. The dream of America was that “We The People” ruled ourselves, rather than an inter-generational aristocracy akin to the one we fought a revolution to escape. Republicans (& DINOS) have been putting that oppressive system back together piece by piece since America swallowed the Reaganomics Voodoo we are now dying from.

The objective of Right – which cares about America as much as it does for Mother Earth as a whole – is to return us to the economic order last seen in the Gilded Age. This was an America with incredible wealth disparities, nonexistent labor standards and a government indifferent to the plight of the average citizen. FDR reflected on that society when he said, “Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent. “

The one ironic tragedy of FDR’s New Deal was that it created economically stable middle classes who, with the aid of incessant Right Wing misinformation campaigns, were convinced their interests and the interests of billionaires were one in the same.

As memory of pre-New Deal life faded with the passing of our grandparents, many “Average Joe” Americans were thoroughly propagandized into voting Republican – and therefore voting for their own demise.
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WASHINGTON — Liberal radio talk show host, Mike Malloy, along with the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, and more than 100 other anti-war protesters were arrested outside the White House on Saturday, March 19, 2011 in demonstrations marking the eighth anniversary of the U.S.- led illegal war and occupation in Iraq.   Ironically, the demonstrations came on the same day that the U.S., French and British suddenly discovered there were human rights concerns in oil-rich Libya and started a bombing assault to establish a no-fly zone over the country where the awakened brutal dictator Gaddafi reigned unmolested for 40 years.   The attack was the largest international military action since the Iraq war began on March 19, 2003.

Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, March Forward!, Code Pink and ANSWER Coalition sponsored the rally.  Along with Mike Malloy, other speakers included Daniel Ellsberg (who was also arrested the following day protesting outside Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia), Ralph Nader and Chris Hedges.

After the rally, the protesters conducted a silent march which culminated in taking to the White House fence shouting anti-war slogans such as, “Stop the War! Expose the Lies! Free Bradley Manning!”

“Charged with 34 counts, including ‘aiding the enemy,’ Bradley Manning faces life in prison and maybe execution. He is accused of illegally downloading hundreds of thousands of secret military and State Department documents and giving it to WikiLeaks.

To many Americans, Manning is a traitor. To many Americans, Manning is a hero.

To Daniel Ellsberg, Manning is something else.

‘I was that young man; I was Bradley Manning,’ he says.”  CNN Reported (although, if you notice in the article, they couldn’t bother to get a picture from Saturday’s event, but instead chose to run one from the rally in December.)

The protesters on Saturday were arrested after ignoring orders to move away from the gates of the White House.

Click the video on top of the page for Mike Malloy’s speech at the rally, subsequent arrest, release and final commentary regarding his experience.


Daniel Ellsberg’s comments:

Ralph Nader’s comments:

Chris Hedges’ moving comments:

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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