Who’s political platform and agenda is Obama fullfilling ????? 

 The Communist party’s !!!!! 

I  read whatever I can find about Obama and his agenda…..  I go to the socialist and communist websites, so don’t accuse me of lying just because you think I HATE OBAMA..  or because of his race….

 But people said it doesn’t matter !!!!!

But, This is straight from a Marxist website !!

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/9094/1/376/

By Joel Wendland

I don’t remember what the world was like before Ronald Reagan.   My first political memory is of the day John Hinkley shot him. That was March 30, 1981. I was eight.

Reagan recovered. Just about five months later, he fired his own shots in what would be the opening of an almost 30-year war on the US and global working class by firing some 17,000 air traffic controllers in the late summer of 1981. Ironically, PATCO, the union he had broken with this action, had endorsed Reagan in the 1980 campaign – a symptom of the backward nature of much of the US labor movement at the time. With these actions, Reagan led the ultra right to an ascendancy that transformed the social landscape in this country for decades.

We have come a long way since those days. The election of Barack Obama marked a watershed in American history. We are now on the threshold of some major social, political and economic changes that could finally bring the Reagan-Bush era to a much-needed end.

But such a claim will have to await history’s judgment. I think we all agree that this election, as important and barrier-shattering as it was, and the united struggle we waged for the outcome itself was not enough to ensure anything like a final victory for a pro-labor or democratic agenda. But it gave us hope.

We also knew, because of the very nature of the broad multi-class alliance that brought President Obama into office and powered a huge landslide for the Democrats in Congress, that winning passage of that agenda would be fraught with contradictions, setbacks and missed opportunities. But before we allow the reality of the process to get us down or become cynical about our participation in that election struggle, let’s remember a few of the victories already won in the past few months.

For example:

    •    the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
    •    a massive land conservation law
    •    a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq
    •    the stimulus package
    •    children’s health insurance program expansion (which added 3 million kids to the health care rolls and prevented the recession from worsening the number of uninsured – so far)
    •    the administration’s commitment to regulating global warming-causing carbon pollution
    •    new big investments in education and the green economy
    •    new investments in aid for college students
    •    the opening of new fronts in protecting the environment from corporate greed
    •    landmark rulings, appointments and rules regarding workers rights and civil rights
    •    Obama’s decision to halt missile defense
    •    re-opening of dialogue with Bush’s “axis of evil”: Cuba, North Korea, Iran and others

– to name a few.

In addition to these partial victories, we can be optimistic about some other potential advances:

    •    health reform with a public insurance program
    •    a renewed push for jobs and economic revival
    •    marriage equality
    •    the Employee Free Choice Act
    •    a deescalation in Afghanistan
    •    Wall Street reform
    •    a hate crimes bill that includes protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,
    •    credit card reform
    •    student loan reform
    •    an employment non-discrimination bill
    •    education reforms
    •    an end to the unfair “don’t ask, don’t tell” exclusion of gay people from the military
    •    a meaningful peace process in the Middle East

Each of these things is now on the agenda.

I have no doubt that these victories, even the imperfect ones and potential future ones, signal new possibilities for the labor-led democratic movement and its allies in the struggles for a just economy, environmental protections, civil rights and especially for peace.

Why do I say this is a watershed moment? In the Reagan years, labor creaked along, hobbled by disunity and the social conservatism that infected its leadership. Both on domestic and foreign policy issues, labor’s leadership too often stood behind Reagan’s anti-communism and the anti-working-class cultural values he pushed, i.e., the values of unrestrained “free-market” capitalism.

In the international arena, Reagan’s support for extremist thugs in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere is well-known. At home, his tax policies shifted the burden of the federal debt and overseas military interventions onto the backs of workers.

Reagan opened an era in which he both with his words and his policies brutalized workers, the poor, the mentally ill, women and African American people other minorities and the environment. His administration declared open warfare on “government” as the cause of people’s problems, shifting the focus from corporate greed and intense exploitation. Indeed, the 1988 movie Wall Street captured much of the ethos of the Reagan era when Michael Douglas, playing the Wall Street wolf Gordon Gekko said, “Greed is good.” The maxim that what is good for business is good for everyone ruled the day.

In the intervening period, the size of the organized working class shrank from close to 30 percent of the work force in 1980 to about 10 percent today. While profits and productivity steadily climbed upward over the course of that time, wage growth for working families slowed, and in the past eight years it has gone into reverse. The vaunted myth of social mobility in America became little more than a pipe dream for most people.

Meanwhile, Reagan and his followers slashed anti-poverty programs. They downsized programs that provide educational opportunities, health care, food and shelter for the poor and unemployed. They promoted trade and economic policies that dismantled the manufacturing sector of the economy and opened the modern era of globalized exploitation.

The threat of nuclear war intensified. The Reaganites funneled more and more of the country’s resources to military contractors who reaped bigger and bigger profits at the expense of peace and a humane economy.

War itself became a mainstay. Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Iraq II, Afghanistan, a global war on terror and a war on drugs became intimate parts of our lives. Thousands of working-class Americans and many hundreds of thousands in other countries were sacrificed to the right-wing agenda.

Right-wing extremism grew. Fanatical anti-government groups crawled out of the woodwork to set fire to parts of the country when the Clinton administration tried to march the country in another direction.

But in 1995 a new movement began to take shape.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War mentality, trade-union conservatism and anti-communism no longer seemed meaningful for most working-class Americans. A new class-struggle orientation emerged in the labor movement with the election of the John Sweeney group to the leadership of the AFL-CIO that year, as Scott Marshall, the Communist Party’s labor commission chair describes in our latest podcast.

While disunity of the people’s movement in the 2000 election coupled with the well-financed Bush campaign and the thievery that took place in Florida blocked a victory for the working class in that election, the need for unity and a comprehensive progressive agenda became even more urgent and necessary.

That struggle for unity centered on the anti-people policies of the Bush administration. Although it did not achieve its goals in 2004, ultimately this proved to be a winning tactic, culminating in the victories of 2008. Labor leaders and activists, this time, refused to embrace Bush’s wars. The head of the Michigan State Federation of Labor, for example, in 2003 linked opposition to the war in Iraq with defeating Bush, calling it a necessary step toward electing a labor ally to the White House. As a result of coalescing around a progressive and pro-peace agenda, today labor is more unified, more militant and ready to fight for democratic rights, peace and equality than ever before.

Before he left office disgraced, George W. Bush presided over the collapse of the Reagan-Bush economy. I characterize the economy this way not only because Reagan-Bush policies caused its collapse, but also because both ultra-right ideology and the structure of the economy as it developed over the past 30 years was essentially the handiwork of Reagan and his Republican disciples.

The crisis not only exposed the bankruptcy of right-wing ideology and policies, it also signaled a deep crisis in capitalism. Most Americans now no longer accept the Republican dogma that the government, public programs and taxes are inefficient and wasteful and the main cause of America’s problems. No longer do we blindly accept their slogans that private enterprise alone can achieve the common good, or that unregulated capitalism promotes a better society.

Republican ideology, in fact, made us laugh (and cry) during the 2008 election campaign as comedic representations of it propelled shows like Saturday Night Live and The Colbert Report to new heights in viewer ratings.

Today, capitalism itself is on the ropes. Discussions of socialism have appeared in several major media outlets. Other alternatives to the inhumane and greedy logic of capitalism dominated by ultra-right policies circulate widely. Michael Moore’s movie Capitalism: A Love Story opened as a major box office success, even if pro-capitalist media critics failed to appreciate his scathing critique of Wall Street and the system they dominate.

A majority of people now also demand a “public option” in health care that provides “real” competition for the private insurers. This fact reveals a profound rejection of the Reaganite theory of the beneficent private market.

Soon we could hear demands for a public option in auto and transportation, a public option in housing, a public option in banking and credit, a public option in energy and all of those other areas of our economy in which corporate greed and corruption have stolen the people’s resources or exploit workers.

This new moment also signals a shift in the political priorities of the labor and democratic movement. From fighting to defend ourselves against Reagan-Bush policies, we have begun to take the offense in the effort to build a more just and democratic society.

Here I would like to get a little theoretical. I think we have to view the working-class struggle as operating on two planes. First, we are involved in the day-to-day struggle for limited reforms as represented in the legislative and electoral arenas. It is a fight that requires a common commitment to unity with the centrist political forces on many issues. But this level of struggle isn’t the horizon of our larger push for a democratic society.

It is on that second plane that we fight for the long-term health of our movement – the unity, strategic militancy and global alliances of our class. The era of Bush and Reagan taught us valuable lessons about this dimension of the fight. We often failed to accomplish the immediate goals of our struggles in those days, but in the process we scored some victories on a higher plane: the development of an increasingly broader unity of labor and democratic forces, the coalition that swept Barack Obama into office in 2008.

This united movement alone, composed of a majority of American workers together with their democratic, multi-class allies, can win in the political struggle for immediate reforms and in the ideological struggle against the brutality of capitalism and for a just and democratic society. Maintaining and building this unity is our constant task.

We can accomplish this both in the realm of ideas and in the political movement itself.

First, we can promote and deepen a nationwide community of shared values that links the quality of our individual lives to a shared understanding of the common good. Here, we can take this idea far beyond the basic notion that government can beneficially provide basic services and resources, or that it should be the ally of working families rather than big business. We can start to argue that we, the working-class people of this country, have the right and the responsibility to claim control of our everyday existence in our workplaces and our communities to make the changes we need.

Second, rather than promoting cynicism and division, we can adopt a practical but visionary stance that finds opportunities for social progress through unity and movement building in each of the struggles we face.

Third, we can and should view the struggle for immediate reform as inseparably linked – rather than a barrier – to the longer fight that for more fundamental, systemic change upon which true democracy, equality and liberty depend.

Finally, with his words and deeds, President Obama has consistently shown himself to be the strongest ally of the labor and democratic movement. He is not our enemy. And in the fight for reforms and deeper social change, let us save our strongest rhetorical jabs and critical barbs for the slaveholder mentality that still dominates among Reagan’s ideological heirs, whether they be leaders of the Republican Party, bankers and big business lobbyists or military generals.

Those are the people who eagerly wait in the wings, yearning for the opportunity to return to power and restore Reagan’s eroded legacy, the legacy of a pro-big-business, anti-people Republican president who started us on the path to economic devastation. Those are the ones our movement must continue to isolate, expose and discredit, that is if we’re to have a future.

Secret service agents join the commotion

At about 2:30 on the afternoon of Monday, March 31, 1981, as I was in the stairwell of my high school skipping an afternoon class, the word began to circulate that Ronald Reagan had been shot.

Slowly (these were pre-Internet days), the story began to emerge that the President had survived and that (the real tragedy in this story) the press secretary, a police officer and a secret service agent had been shot.

The reaction among my peers: “Huh.”

Unlike John Lennon, who had been assassinated 112 days before on Monday, December 8, 1980, Reagan was no hero to the youth of the time. This was not a Kennedy or King moment in history.

(And now you know why we don’t like Mondays.)

Reagan’s would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr., was delusional and creepy. He had not acted out of political fervour or a desire for change. He had watched one movie too many times and was trying to impress an actress. And he had botched the entire plot, wounding bystanders and only hitting the President by accident (Reagan was hit by the sixth shot that ricocheted off his limousine). Pathetic.

But then, our generation was used to disappointment. Our parents split up, our teachers were alcoholics, our prospects were uncertain as the economy teetered toward recession and it turned out no one really wanted to give peace a chance.

And, because we didn’t think love-ins/bed-ins/sit-ins could change the world, we were labelled the Lost Generation, the Me Generation and later, Generation X.

All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.

Inaugural Address, West Front of the U.S. Capitol, January 20, 1981

Proud Reagan Conservative by PhraseCatcher
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While perusing the Internet, I saw an article by Iwan Morgan, who is the author of The Age of Deficits: Presidents and unbalanced Budgets from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush. The author asserted in this article that, “The deficit explosion on his watch was a nasty surprise for Ronald Reagan not a deliberate strategy to reduce government.  In his rosy interpretation of Laffer curve theory, the personal tax cuts he promoted in 1981 would deliver higher not lower revenues through their boost to economic growth.” The first sentence is an interesting interpretation, since many leftists believe that Reagan deliberately created deficits to make it more difficult for Democrats in Congress to increase spending. I’m agnostic on that issue, but Morgan definitely errs (or is grossly incomplete) in the second sentence. The Reagan Administration did not employ dynamic scoring when predicting the revenue impact of its tax rate reductions. It is true that the White House failed to predict the drop in revenues, particularly in 1982, but that happened because of both the second stage of the 1980-82 double-dip recession and the unexpected drop in inflation (the Congressional Budget Office also failed to predict both of these events, so Reagan’s forecasters were hardly alone in their mistake). Moreover, Morgain’s dismissal of the Laffer Curve is unwarranted. While several GOP politicians exaggerated the relationship between tax rates, taxable income, and tax revenue, this does not mean it does not exist. The table below, which is based on data from the IRS’s Statistics of Income, shows what happened to tax collections from upper-income taxpayers between 1980 and 1988. Supply siders can be criticized for many things, especially their apparent disregard for the importance of limiting the size of government, but the IRS figures clearly show that lower tax rates were followed by more rich people, more taxable income, and more tax revenue. For those keeping score at home, that’s a perfect batting average for supply-side economics.

UPDATE: Snopes has now indirectly confirmed that the letter is correctly attributed.

Here’s the latest in chain email warfare I received the other day. First, let’s get the premise out of the way.

This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organization and causes all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body, he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now.

He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president.

When a 95 year old hero of the “the Greatest Generation” stands up and speaks out like this, I think we owe it to him to send his words to as many Americans as we can. Please pass it on.

Whether or not the actual Harold Estes wrote this is not yet verified, but that’s not really the point. Some idiot obviously did write it, and although its infamy as a public screed in the form of a chain email originated in Florida rather than Hawaii; and even though the exact same out of context misquotes appeared in a Pat Boone tirade in WorldNetDaily, let’s just assume that it did originate from the source claimed in the preamble above.

The author clearly does have a political bone in his body contrary to the claim. And just because he is a member of “the greatest generation” and served in WWII, that does not give the dittoheads who pass this crap on a reason to do so. Guess who else was a WWII vet? Holocaust museum shooter and neo-NaziJames von Brunn. Thankfully, I don’t see many people passing on his rants.

Dear President Obama,

My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don’t believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.

More set up, folks. I think the key point here is that the author claims only to be “pretty much” mentally alert. Good thing we have that caveat.

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos’n Mate. Now I live in a “rest home” located on the western end of Pearl Harbor, allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.

One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.

That’s not really a benefit of age. Five year olds don’t have this issue either. Come to think of it, neither do I.

So here goes..

I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.

Uh oh, looks like this guy must have just watched 2012.

I can’t figure out what country you are the president of.

That would be the United States of America. And now we know what he meant by only “pretty much” mentally alert.

Now comes the Pat Boone rehash:

You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:

“We’re no longer a Christian nation”

Well, Obama never exactly said this. He did say, in 2006:

“Given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.“

One little word does wonders for actual meaning doesnt it? Not to mention the entire context of a quote. And demographically speaking, it’s not untrue. In fact the only thing possibly wrong with Obama’s statement is that we cannot “no longer” be what we never were.

See, it’s not like he said something like:

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion“

Because, you know, that would just be a silly statement that happened to be part of a treaty begun under George Washington’s administration, signed by John Adams, and voted unanimously by the Senate after being read aloud on the floor and published in major newspapers without complaint.

Does our nation have moral roots that come partly from Christianity? Sure. But we are a nation of laws, not a theocracy. That would be what those of us with 100% mental alertness call “entirely different”.

“America is arrogant” – (Your wife even announced to the world, “America is mean-spirited.”

Again, this is not something Obama said. What he did say, during a townhall in France, was:

“In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what’s bad.

On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth.”

Yeah, real scathing anti-American sentiment there. If you live in an alternate reality devoid of context, history, or objectivity.

Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of our war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and
hopelessness.)

Let’s test Mr. Pretty Much Mentally Alert’s math skills. A generation is roughly 25 years. 23 generations takes us back to before Columbus. Fail.

I’d say shame on the both of you, but I don’t think you like America, nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.

I’ve seen several occassions on which Obama has expressed gratefulness and humilty over the position he has attained. But it’s absolutely a true statement that to be without shame is dangerous for the man in the White House. Perhaps he should have written his letter to our last president, the one who couldn’t think of a single mistake he ever made.

After 9/11 you said,” America hasn’t lived up to her ideals.”

Another fake quote. Firstly, it seems “after 9/11″ means eight years after. And still, it’s not very close to the actual quote from a speech in Cairo:

“And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter our principles. 9/11 was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.

So America will defend itself respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened. The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.”

That’s not a condemnation of, nor an apology for America. It’s an affirmation. To think otherwise is simply ignorant.

Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn’t mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around, because we stand for freedom.

Now it starts to get even more confusing. Apparently casualty numbers from selected wars (all 23 generations worth!) have some bearing on… well… some sort of argument. And interestingly, the author seems to include Confederate soldiers in his figures for the civil war. I think I can safely say that Obama was probably not talking about the ideal of seceding from the Union. Sorry. I guess you win a point there. Or something.

But since you ask, perhaps he was refering to the whole suspending habeas corpus thing, effectively slashing the bill of rights, and then torturing those we detained. Just a guess.

I don’t think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination.

Quite an egalitarian ideal there. Downright socialist.

You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.

What does race have to do with anything? Does this guy realize that more than just white people can vote now?

Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man. Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don’t, I’ll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue.

And so start the veiled threats. Since there is no question this fellow wouldn’t be voting for Obama in the next election, the only conclusion is that he must be referring to something else.

You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their
people like slaves.

Oh really. Having already established that he has no understanding of what the president is elected to do (i.e preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States), the author now claims enough credibility to opine on what the president is elected not to do. I mean we all know Bush Sr didn’t apologize for barfing on the Japanese Prime Minister, and Dick Cheney didn’t apologize for dressing like he was about to shoot somebody in the face while remembering the horrors of Auschwitz. Because that’s what Americans do.

At least he has precedence on his side. Here is Eisenhower not bowing to Pope John XXIII:


He’s just checking out his wrinkle free skin and admiring his mental alertness. Pretty much.

And here’s W after Pope Benedict XVI apparently advised him to XYZPDQ:


Decidedly not bowing.

Oh, here’s Nixon admiring Hirohito’s kicks. He can’t possibly be bowing to the Japanese leader who bombed Pearl Harbor, can he? Of course not.

Here’s Eisenhower again, after Charles de Gaulle just disappeared a quarter from his hand!! Not photographed is when he reproduced it from behind Ike’s ear.


I tell you, that Eisenhower was a man who loved not to bow. A real American he was.

Then of course, there’s W again, playing kissy face and holding hands with Saudi King Abdulluh. They make a cute couple:

And though only a presidential special envoy for Reagan, here’s Donald Rumsfeld either giving Saddam Hussein a stink palm or shaking his hand in the course of making a deal to supply him with weapons of mass destruction for use against Iran.

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more.

He probably thinks he’s the President of the United States. That could be because he is, or it could be for some other reason. And since when is jumping to conclusions a good thing?

You mean you don’t want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that
black college professor in Massachusetts, who was putting up a fight?

Yeah, that’s the same thing. And as a matter of fact, yes, that’s exactly what he wants you to not do. By the way, you forgot the ‘in his own house’ part. Funny how there are people on Harold Estes’ side of the political spectrum who claim to stockpile ammunition in the event of just such a scenario.

You don’t mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don’t want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.

Firstly, saying a department acted stupidly is not the same as calling police stupid. And I believe that issue was resolved quite amicably. Secondly, the definition of terrorist is not “Muslim fanatic”. No really. Look it up.

One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you’re the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job.

You mean like Dick Cheney and W? Oh, I guess you don’t. And, wow, why don’t you just call him ‘boy’? Haven’t we already covered the job part?

When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him.

Unlike the troops Bush-Cheney dithered about until Obama was finally about to grant them. And as the author should know, completing the mission requires a strategy, not just a number. War is not magic, and 40,000 women can’t have a baby in ten minutes anymore than the presence of 40,000 troops can automatically complete a mission that isn’t effectively defined. And that is what has been missing the past eight years. Furthermore, didn’t you just admit that Obama was Commander-in-Chief (of the country you can’t identify)? Then, that is where the decision rests, unless I missed a military coup somewhere.

But if you’re not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you’re thinking of.

See Iraq, invasion of.

You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president.

Finally, the first reasonable thing said throughout that entire rant. Hmm, I wonder what challenge(s) he refers to? Oh, it must be all the ones the last guy completely screwed up and left for the rest of us. Thanks for the reminder

You’re not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy.

Sooo, you want the economy to fail?

That’s not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now.

Sooo, we aren’t living up to our ideals or something. But didn’t you just… yeah, nevermind

And I sure as hell don’t want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.

And it’s back to the subtle violent rhetoric. As if there is any question this guy doesn’t already see the President as “the enemy”. The corollary of course, is that this guy is an enemy of the President and an enemy of America. See, most people get the benefit of the doubt for simply being misinformed, wrong, or stupid; but this guy has intentionally phrased his rhetoric as part of “the final battle”. Maybe, like Sarah Palin or Roland Emmerich, he believes the rapture or the Mayans are upon us one way or the other. But the fact is it’s dangerous to talk of the President as an enemy using war imagery in a country with a long history of political violence and civil unrest. And passing it along will make you culpable when one of the idiots out there does decide to act.

We must make it clear to any country that is tempted to use violence to undermine democratic governments, destabilize our friends, thwart efforts to promote democratic governments, or disrupt our lives that it has nothing to gain, and much to lose.

Message to the Congress Transmitting Proposed Legislation To
Combat International Terrorism, April 26, 1984

America’s neocons have made much use of “Less Qualified Minorities”. Less Qualified Minorities were used as customers for the sale of the illegal drug – cocaine. America’s government, via the secret CIA,  was engaged in drug running to help the Reagan neocons finance a beloved war in the jungles of South America. The Reagan neocons were killing their own people in order to get their “jollies” in the jungles of South America.

Although Reagan sold his contraband in minority neighborhoods, retail sales of the contraband were not restricted to minority neighborhoods. There have been stories of suburbanites driving their sleek long limousines into the city and queuing-up to purchase the illicit drug originally provided by the Reagan neocons.

And now the current neocons want to bathe the Republican party in the aura of cocaine. How low can they go? No other American political party has come close to the criminal type behavior of the neocons. And the current neocons, who have yet to display competence in a major task, wants to put their indelible mark on the Republican party.

A fool and his country are soon parted

     Following previous blogs written here, I have had responses posted and others who called or emailed with opinions either agreeing or disagreeing with me on whether we are better off forming a third political party.  Those that disagree with the concept are mainly Republicans who claim a third-party will cause power from the GOP to dwindle giving the Democrats a stronghold.  They contend that conservatives,  constitutionalists and Libertarians should work within the Republican party if they are to retake control of Congress.  And of course, I get to hear that the forming of a third-party “is impossible.”

     For those who come up with the last argument above, I ask them if they know who the first Republican president was.  Most cannot answer correctly that it was Abraham Lincoln.  Prior to his election, we had the Whigs and the Democrats.  In the mid 1800’s, many felt the Whigs were “out of touch” with mainstream America.  Hmm, sound familiar?  Only today, we have TWO political parties who are out of touch.  Many around 1850 believed another party could not be formed however the Republicans started out on a grass-roots level, won some elections, and eventually trickled up to the emergence of our first GOP president in 1861.   Our country was in turmoil with bickering between Northern states and Southern states and the talk of succession occurred until it finally happened shortly after Lincoln’s inauguration. Unfortunately many Americans today do not see turmoil in our political structure to the point where our Constitution is being challenged and threatened.  Since the Civil War and World War II, our country has not seen the threat of tyranny of this magnitude.  Unfortunately the perpetrators, many within our government, are waging war against liberty quietly and slowly so as to avoid detection by the average American.  Ah yes, I can hear many now claiming I am merely waging a conspiracy theory.

     The bottom line is this: we have many Americans…Republicans, Democrats and Independents who are fed up with liberalism and believe in core conservative values, Sovereignty and uphold the Constitution.  However, many Democrats and Republicans are hesitant to vote for candidates in the other’s party even if that candidate held the same core values as they do.  And Independents are fed up with both parties which is why their numbers are so strong today.  By forming a third-party that embraces core conservative values, these so-called “gun-toting, bible thumping” people from all three political factions can come together to support candidates that reflect conservative values.  Ronald Reagan struggled with the concept of a third-party before running for president but decided he could make enough change within the GOP to get the job done.  Unfortunately the GOP in Congress today is made up of members from a wide spectrum on the political scale and getting the Republican leadership to return to core values could take years and many Americans are losing patience to wait that long.

     The Gallup Poll has consistently run surveys on the number of Americans who are conservative vs. liberal.  The numbers have increased throughout 2009 that show nearly 50% consider themselves conservative while 19-20% consider themselves liberal.  Over 70% of the conservative group indicate they are also Republican.  We can only assume that the remainder are either Democrat or Independent.  With numbers at or over 50%, wouldn’t it make sense for conservatives to look elsewhere other than their current party leadership?

Just yesterday we told you of how Terre Haute arch-conservative and anti-choice attorney Jim Bopp was leading the way to dismantle state laws like the one in place in Indiana against automated political calls just in time to go on a shadowy teabagging attack against Indiana’s five Democratic Congressmen.

James Bopp

Well Bopp’s been busy. Apparently his party just isn’t far right enough and now he wants to codify things with a Goebbels-esque purity test to make sure that only the most staunchly conservative Republicans receive any party support. msnbc.com reports:

This comes on the heels of a rift in the party that was exposed in the once-obscure special election in Upstate New York’s 23rd Congressional District, in which national conservative leaders, including Sarah Palin, clashed with national establishment Republicans. The so-called GOP civil war threatens to derail moderate Republican candidacies in heated 2010 Republican primaries already underway. Florida’s Senate race is perhaps the best and most prominent example.

The “Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates” outlines 10 conservative principles the group of signees wants potential candidates to abide by. The principles include support for:

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

“President Ronald Reagan believed, as a result, that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent,” the resolution states.

But if a candidate disagrees with three of the above, then the group wants the RNC to withhold financial assistance and an endorsement from that candidate.

It’s not yet clear that the resolution will actually be formally introduced.

RNC Committeeman Jim Bopp, Jr., is the author of this resolution and general counsel to the National Right to Life.

Bopp actually thinks this will help build a stronger Republican party. Bopp is gifted at wrapping his ideas up in a cool brand to sell it. He rebranded robo-calls as “Artificial Intelligence Calls” to the U. S. Senate. To sell this to his party he puts Reagan’s face on it.

“The goal of the resolution is to take a position … towards reclaiming the Republican Party’s conservative bona fides,” Bopp said, adding that there are some Republicans who favor the bailouts, spending, etc.

Another goal is to “demonstrate that we are open to diverse views,” he said, “but you have to agree with us most of the time.”

When asked if Ronald Reagan — who raised taxes and increased the deficit during his presidency — would be considered a conservative nowadays, Bopp responded, “I don’t know any conservative who doesn’t think that Reagan’s presidency was a conservative presidency.

Keith Olbermann does a lovely job on last night’s Countdown breaking down how unReagan these proposals are. View it here.

When Democrats gain in strength, guys like Bopp see it as a reason to take over the party because obviously the country wants their brand of leadership. He wrote this resolution in order to defund moderates to avoid primary fights, which he obviously sees as the only reason they will lose elections. It couldn’t be because their party is perceived as too far right and too incompetent. Nah.

We at ALO hope this resolution is a resounding success.

]]> http://pennsylvaniaforchange.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/real-americans-vs-real-americans/ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:05:41 +0000 Cats r Flyfishn http://pennsylvaniaforchange.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/real-americans-vs-real-americans/

That’s right, you read that correctly.  We live in a strongly divided nation.  One where Americans hate other Americans.  Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist, bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma killing 169 Americans which included seniors and little children and he felt no remorse.

In took weeks of sorting through debris to find the victims. In all, 168 people were killed in the explosion, which included 19 children. One nurse was also killed during the rescue operation.

Recently, Scott Roeder, believed it was perfectly acceptable to walk into a church and shoot another American because he hated him.  Mr. Roeder did not know the man he killed.  He never even met this man until he faced him with a gun.   Jim David Adkisson walked into a church in Tennessee and started shooting because he hated liberals.  Mr. Adkisson was encouraged to hate liberals by the authors of books that he read.

The media gives us Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly.  All of these people preach the hatred of other Americans, especially liberal Americans.  Some have even gone as far as suggesting that Supreme Court Justices be murdered and promoted the poisoning of the Speaker of the House.  This isn’t just freedom of speech.  This is promoting violence.  This is pitting Americans against Americans and it isn’t humor or funny.

Where did all this hate other Americans begin?  It started with Ronald Reagan and his designating liberal as a dirty word and lying about poor people on welfare driving Cadillacs.  Yes indeed, Ronald Reagan loved to divide this nation into the conservatives that were real Americans and that other group known as the liberals.  Reagan preached that the 11th commandment was to never speak ill of another Republican but it was certainly acceptable to trash non-Republicans.   What is really disturbing about Reagan’s words is that he was President of the United States which includes every American and not just Republicans.  Rush Limbaugh is an admirer of Ronald Reagan and Rush is always telling Americans to hate other Americans.  He even went as far as stating that he hopes America fails at a time when Americans need to pull together.  Ann Coulter has gone as far as stating that college liberals should be beaten up and pushed around.

“When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.”

Many Americans are out of work, lack health insurance and are at risk of losing their homes, yet the media keeps tearing this country apart by providing the disciples of hate a platform from which they can preach their hate.

It seems like the real enemy is within our own nation.  When we pledge allegiance to America, we say “one nation…, indivisable… “.  Our military fights and defends this one nation.  If can’t learn to live together and accept each other, then we will become our own worst enemies.

“We can agree to disagree without being disagreeable.” – Barack Obama

or: I’ll trade you civil liberties circa 1980, for the right to beat your wife circa 1920

or: If Glenn Beck were a decade, which one would he be?

For almost a year now, and even further back possibly, I have been fascinated with politics and punditry. I have become a self-proclaimed politico and I follow politics and media pretty closely, as closely as my tenuous hold on sanity will allow. In following politics my liberal mind has always been perplexed by the conservative party line of ‘returning to traditional American values’ and trying to recapture the ‘lost spirit of what it is to be an American’. In recent months it as been the loud ram’s horn call of Glenn Beck, and his ever growing audacity matched only by his ever growing audience, that has caused me to pontificate further on this subject. For the past few weeks this idea of lost values and traditional American fundamentals has led me to research where we might have gone wrong. Is there a specific time and place, a particular era that the GOP and other right-leaning hard-liners would want us to return to? If I can put my finger on the ethos that these guiding principles existed in, can we get back there? I delve in to this quagmire of American history to try and find “Glenn’s America”, so that he and others can stop preaching in general broad strokes and say, “we need to get back to what we believed in 19XX (or 18XX as it may be).”

When examining the general party ideas of what I understand to be the GOP’s fundamental idealogical structure I take my understanding from some 25 years on this planet, though you can’t count the first 16. I think that until you turn 17 and start trying to find yourself and begin to shape your views and identity in preparation for voting and contributing to society you are more of a blank slate in terms of personal free thought; up until this point you do not question a source but only try to fit in to the general parameters of ‘normal’ life as to not rock the boat and interfere with the indoctrination that American public schools instill in our youth. My true views have been shaped in my most recent years and as such I have adopted a view of the world quite different from my parents’, a direct result of informing myself for the first time in my life. In my home growing up as a small boy liberal leaders and democratic ideals warranted venom and crass, lewd criticism. The views I set forth will be of my own creation, independent of those I was raised on, either despite or in spite of them, I cannot tell. A crazy person isn’t crazy if he knows he’s crazy. Indeed.

The GOP seems to feel that gays should not marry, and are sinful. This makes no sense to me as sinful is a religious idea, not a political one; though it seems one position is quite often the result of the other. Gun rights should be protected at all costs to personal safety and public responsibility. Abortion is a no-no, ‘nuff said. They want smaller government, tax cuts, reform to let states decide things, though not gay marriage rights or any of the other items I just mentioned. They are for fiscal responsibility. GOP feels that a free market should regulate itself, again smaller government. They claim to fight for the middle class but public programs and universal anything is bad, that’s more government. They hate the environment as far as I can tell. Campaign finance reform (yeah right), education in America (no child left behind has gone so well after all). Prayer in school is ok, capital punishment and the death penalty are pretty much thumbs up, and the Ten Commandments should be at the steps of a courthouse flying the confederate flag. I am pretty close on this, right? So, basically it is a small government that has an abridged copy of the constitution, a cliff’s notes of the Bill of Rights, and a bible as it’s guiding principles. Hmmm, ok.

So, in American history, where can we find this utopia we strive for every day? This shangri-la we lost so long ago would obviously be the one saving grace for this country of godless sodomites. If we could only return to this point in time then everything would be fine. As far as I can tell it is the GOP that can save us if you believe the rhetoric. The liberals and the liberal media have scattered us across the nation and we are divided along partisan lines and are all doomed unless we jump on the Republican band wagon like some lifeboat after the Titanic sank. This is what self proclaimed “libertarian” Glenn Beck would like you to believe. I will give him credit for criticizing the government as a whole, even in the Bush days, though not in such inflammatory terms, but in reality he is like a Liber-publican. So, let’s take a step, Glenn, in to the way back machine and start a search for the time in American history you would like us to return to, as well as all of the Republican nay-sayers.

I want to start by saying that I am skipping the nineties completely being that he wasn’t happy with Clinton either, and it is far too close to the 21st century and the liberal progress this country has made; there is no way anyone wants to get back to how we were in the nineties, not even me and I loved my teen years in the nineties. And I am going to come back to the eighties later, they were too soon as well, but I will look at them briefly. We are sending our way back machine to a time when I think this country went bat-shit crazy and we were in maybe the most turmoil as a nation than anyone today can recall. I want to start out in the era that good old Glenn was born in, and that many of our current figure heads today, that make our decisions, can remember very ‘fondly’…the sixties.

Well I start here, in this decade of utter unrest by trying to illustrate that this can’t possibly be the America Glenn wants back. This cannot be the period in American history we want to recapture. This was a time that the late Strom Thurman must have hated with more zeal than any other period in history. It is hard to decide where to start. The sixties started out innocent enough, Kennedy beat Nixon and became the President, what followed was the Bay of Pigs incident, rumors about Marilyn, the meager beginning of Vietnam, the cuban missile crisis, then the man is assassinated. Further Vietnam BS, Malcolm X is killed, the Compton Cafeteria Riots in San Fran, then Nixon and all his Vietnam BS and his ‘secret plan to end the war’, the massive inflation crisis, MLK Jr. is killed, Bobby Kennedy is killed, the Stonewall riots of ’69, oh and a little thing who was named Manson did some killing. Great decade.

The sixties were a time of massive riots in the black and gay communities. Civil rights on all fronts tore the fabric of this country apart from women liberation, blacks, gays, even the Chicano revolution in this country. Outside of that was the acid wave of the sixties, a complete change in television, film, art, and especially music. The counterculture as it came to be known galvanized this country after the death of JFK, I think. The nice, homely manners of the 50’s were gone in a big way and now came very free thinkers, revolutionaries, protests exploded, demonstrations, inflation choked the middle class as they tried to compete with the changes in the landscape. The sixties were an ugly, hate-filled time, the emerging civil rights movement after the death of JFK was really the catalyst for it all. There is no way we want to return to the sixties as a country. America was in a violent turmoil and unsure of it’s identity and where the road we were on was going to lead us and people were strung out or scared for their lives, or both. I don’t think Glenn wants that back, so let’s move on.

How about we take a step forward and find Glenn in the seventies as a small boy, maybe these are the innocent and moral times he wants back…but I doubt it. Well in the seventies music really got good including the first ‘rap’ song, movies got weird, TV got lewd, and the country just got fucked up worse. This country started watching shows like All In The Family and the Brady bunch, dealing with some of the issues of the day. Vietnam choked the first few years while a little thing called Watergate slipped by the news press during Nixon’s re-election campaign and then killed him by ’74. It was the most embarrassing and shocking scandal in American political history, which in my opinion was the death of politics. I think that Nixon and his escalation of the doomed Vietnam war and his scandal killed the American political system. Outside of the US revolution was abundant across the world. Woodstock was a shining beacon of what drugs and music and mud can do for young people, a complete change from how we started the decade on the campus of Kent State where the National Guard gunned down peaceful protestors of the war on a college campus; unthinkable today, one would hope. The draft was the height of outrage, an unbelievable moment when Ali fought the draft and Elvis went in. Protest and anti-war sentiment was as widespread in this country as pant legs were flared. The Cold War ramped up a bit and this country got really scared, really fast. Our involvement in a few revolutions and military coupes as well as an assassination or two was a continuation of poor foreign affairs decisions. The middle east started down the road to where we are today with Israel, Egypt, Syria, the Soviet Union, and Afghanistan, all starting to kick each others asses.

The seventies brought women’s rights to the forefront as the sixties had civil rights for minorities eclipsing women’s rights to some extent. Vietnam ended finally, well our involvement, leaving the North to just wait for us to leave and drop Saigon to it’s knees and claim the country unified again. A sad end to a war we should have not been in and an end that was mostly our fault. Oh and lest I forget the massive recession we were in mixed with oil crises a couple of times resulting in rationing and further middle class stresses that included a very high unemployment rate. Then of course there was Jonestown, about 900 dead there. Idi Amin started his tyrannical, violent rule of Uganda as well. Is this the era we should return to? Hatred, war, violence, and tragedy pock marked this era. The seventies hold within their years scandal, racism, and fear-mongering, of the most epic scale one can imagine. There is no way we want to return to the moral or political views of this era. The seventies were the time for change for sure, but it came at great expense on the heels of a decade of radical change and upheaval. The 70’s continued the massive crime rate spikes that the sixties brought and the country still sat on the edge of it’s seat every day as nothing seemed to get better. Surely we don’t want the seventies back.

Ok, the eighties might be better, the days of Reagan and Bush, this might be the most likely time we want to return to. The eighties would be the most formidable years of Beck’s life; the decade of excess. The eighties brought the yuppie, and with it, all the coke, parties, and BMW’s we could handle. We saw great multinational growth and wall street was glamorous, they were kings then, still total scum, but they had better PR people then. Of course Reagan declared a War on Drugs, the Cold War raged to a massive scale. Sure, communism fell apart as did the Berlin Wall, but we saw the further mishandling of the middle east that is the source of our problems and involvement there today, can’t argue with that. Reagan put a major black eye on his presidency with the discovery of the Iran-Contra debacle that Oliver North was the mastermind behind. This country saw massive economic growth against the backdrop of very complicated and protracted battles all over the world including Asia, the middle east, central and south america, and ever Ireland with ‘the troubles’ brewing. (Only badass Irish would call a modern, religious civil war ‘the troubles’, an understatement to say the least)

The eighties, I think were a time of thinking that we could not be beaten, being the short attention span of Americans forgetting the seventies. We were coked out of our minds, living beyond our means, and we were kicking Commie ass. But the eighties, world wide, were complicated, painful growth, some democratic, but on the whole we saw massive famine and destruction abroad as the industrialized countries were making head way. The middle class of nations was being evaporated as the gap between rich and poor nations grew drastically. Domestic issues were tough though, as it seemed we were trying to use our power for good as a people with things like LiveAid and becoming more aware of issues in Africa and other countries, the eighties saw the rise of the religious right. They really got fired up on the gay issue and the discovery of AIDS, ‘the gay plague’. This country grew in many way, a decent decade I guess, I don’t really remember much of it but it seemed like a lot of people were having a lot of fun, safer fun.

Glenn probably liked the eighties, he used to be a liberal and an alcoholic, he draws a fine parallel between the two in a Katie Couric interview you should look up on YouTube, and this might have been his favorite time. Old enough to enjoy and understand it, he probably had a great time. Conservatives in power, strides made internationally, excess and money everywhere. The eighties were a wild party time, a decade that seemed to be a release of the past twenty years of hard work, growing pains, and controversial conflict. The 60’s and 70’s were going to lead inevitably to a time when we finally just cut loose and took a deep breath after so much bloodshed, upheaval, and serious talk. It was the decade we all remembered fondly on VH1. Music was weird, movies were great, TV was filled with classics we all watched, and standup comedians were making it big; the country was having a good laugh, a bump, and some beer. Not too bad.

I discount the nineties entirely so let’s jump back to a more general era I don’t think we can reasonably go back to, the 50’s to the 30’s. This was another era of massive wars, depression, civil rights injustice, bigotry, no women’s liberation, industrialization, organized crime, et al. These were times when blacks were openly hung from gallows, women were expected to be barefoot and pregnant in front of the stove, except when they were making tanks for the troops overseas for next to nothing wages. A time where minorities were rightfully scared at night of police or white boys out for a joyride. The prohibition, crime in the streets, Bonnie and Clyde, the Tommy gun, the B.A.R., saloons, speakeasy’s, and rampant bank robberies and crooked cops on the beat. This was a different time for this country and I don’t think we can agree with many of the ideals that were held to in this time and apply it today, the role of women alone is too much inequality to bare, let alone the rest.

OK, let’s take a big jump to my favorite era, the old west. You know the times, I’m talking post manifest destiny, pre-FBI. A time of no gun laws, showdowns in the streets, legal prostitutes, and riding in to town on a horse. Tombstone, San Francisco, Indian and cowboys. A time where gold was rushing and crazy white drunks ran amok and contracted TB and polio. Yes, when there were still a few Indians around, you had ranchers with thousands of acres, cattle drives, train robberies, and the men of storied legend lived and died by Winchester, Colt, and Smith&Wesson. I like to think I lived in the times with a town sheriff, shitty beer, floozies, and general martial law over most of the country. A time where you could shoot a man in the street in broad daylight in front of 50 people, and they might actually clap and then go about their day. The good times.

I think this might not be far enough back though. When I hear Glenn speak, he talks about the founding father’s principles. The true foundation of the country as he sees it with the men who earned America through blood, sweat, and tears. Jefferson’s America. OK, well let’s first examine the fact that we are talking late 1700’s and early 1800’s. These are pre-electric, pre-phone times. We are talking Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere, plantations, etc. If this is the time Glenn thinks we need to get back to I want to highlight a couple of things. First off, slavery was alive and well…need I say more? Secondly, this country treated women like shit, there were no civil rights, and it was unindustrialized. This country was populated and run by rich, white land owners, and then there was everybody else. I don’t want anyone to romanticize this era. This country was created, founded, and declared on the bodies of millions of natives and the death and suffering of minority races of people removed from their homes and treated worse than dogs in the time period.

America has never been truly righteous. We revolted for selfish reasons, nothing simpler than that. We turned against the imperialism of the Queen and her rule and declared our independence; the worst “dear John” letter ever. Up to that point we had slaughtered, tricked, infected, raped, and pillaged our way to the Mississippi and thought very highly of white skin and could kill a black man for any reason at any time, or sell them, whatever struck our fancy. What I am about to say is going to piss off the right, but if I could meet George Washington I think I would take the opportunity to shake his hand and then slap the wooden teeth out of his head. These were racist white bigots with an knack for the written word and hard on for ‘freedom’ by their definition as it applied to them as an emerging nation of first class citizens at the top of the shit pile. All due respect, but their ideas and principles were fundamentally offensive and their beliefs of equality were for themselves and those they agreed with. How many minorities or women were running around enjoying their freedom of speech or right to bare arms…or even read? I rest my case.

So maybe Glenn does have a time in mind. Maybe he wants the scandalous, violent 70’s, or the civil unrest and inequality of the 60’s. The old west certainly had smaller/non-existent national government, and the 40’s sure were good times to be a gangster, Nixon would have done well, that’s for sure. The eighties surely had the best coke, and some unprecedented growth, outside of post-industrialized America (without all of these pesky labor laws we got). Maybe he wants the great depression era, maybe to live amongst the greatest generation, or rub elbows with white men who raped their slaves on their plantation as a matter of principle and patriotism. The history of America is short, embarrassing, and seemingly without a lesson learned throughout. Glenn, I dare you and your constituents to point out that shining beacon in American history that is so much better than now, ‘cause I must have missed it. All those moments have led up to now, and I’ll be damned if where we are isn’t a hell of a lot better than where we were; you can pry this progress from my cold dead hands, pal.

Conservatives are the backbone of America.  Their respect for the Constitution of the United States, their respect for the laws of America, their respect for the President of the United States of America (whether they agree with his political views or not), their battles for equal rights for all humans, and their Christian ethics, including a sense of love and respect for all life are the epitome of exemplars of good old fashioned Americanism to which we should all aspire.  As long as we remember that ‘aspiration’ actually means butt sweat.

Out in Missouri, the Lafayette County Republicans are extremely disturbed that a Democratic candidate, and an African-American at that, defeated serial adulterer and all-around asshole John McCain.  Do they accept the electoral defeat in a democratic way?  Do they play the part of the loyal opposition?  Do they try (as Democrats did (to their regret) under W’s reign) to work with the new occupant of the White House in a constructive manner?

Well, this is from Missouri, so I guess I’ll just have to show you (from the website of the Lafayette County Republicans):

From the website:

“A Citizens Guide to Revolution of a corrupt government.
1. Starve the Beast. [keep your money]
2. Vote out incumbents.
3. If steps, 1 & 2 fail?

PREPARE FOR WAR–LIVE FREE OR DIE!”

The first sentence is grammatically scrambled.  I’m not sure what they mean.  Do they want a revolution in order to install a corrupt government?  Do they think that the Obama administration is corrupt and must be spun?  Do they assume that if anyone accepts the Obama administration as legitimate, we must not qualify as citizens?

Then the billboard exhorts Americans to, I guess, break the law by not paying their taxes.  Because the cure for a deficit is tax cuts (or just not paying your taxes).  Odd that when Clinton was in office, and he began to pay the public debt down, that he was a ‘free-spending, tax and spend liberal.”  Bush (the W one) gave a massive tax cut to the wealthy (the top 1% got almost a quarter of the tax cut (like they needed it)), pushed through a Medicare drug plan paid for by borrowing, and involved us in two wars (with no plans to actually, you know, pay for them) and doubled the national debt, made the federal government larger (without paying for it), and was the darling of the ’starve the beast-ers’.

It also exhorts them to ‘throw the bums out.’  Wow.  An actual democratic idea.  Well, it was probably a mistake.

And if their people lose the election?  Foment rebellion and start a civil war.  [update]  As The Spanish Inquisitor points out in the first comment below, that could be treason, right? [/update] 

Holy batshit, fatman!  These idiots are, um, idiots?

But that’s just the teabagging, Palin-worshipping, Beckasskiss, Limbaughite wing of the GOP (by wing, I mean majority (52% of Republicans do not think that Barrack Obama is legitimately President of the United States)).  I’m sure that the conservative Christians are much, much more civil.

After all, this evening I saw (on a beautiful vintage BMW Bavaria (and it is not funny that a car built during my life can be called vintage)) a bumper asking for a prayer for Obama.  Yes, the one that you and I have been reading about here, here and here (and all over the web):   “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8.”

Of course, Psalm 109:8 is one of those perfect examples of Christian love and respect for life:  an imprecatory prayer.  A prayer for someone to die.  Asking that loving Abrahamic God to hurry someones death.

Christian radical conservative asshats are, of course, allowed to say this.  They are allowed to put it on teddy bears (just what little  Becky Sue needs to help her sleep), t-shirts and bumper stickers.  It is (I’m not a lawyer, so if I have this wrong, let me know), as far as I can tell, protected speech.  [update]  The billboard, as SI points out, is fomenting armed rebellion against the legal government of the United States which would appear to him (and me) to be treason.[/update] 

Does anyone in the GOP, or the radical Christian right, realize that they have a pot of gasoline sitting on a lit burner, and are trying to figure out how to increase the gas flow?  They are creating a sense of fear so deep that in some areas, ammunition for long guns and handguns is becoming scarce.  They are terrifying their followers, intentionally, in order to create a culture in which violence is the only answer.   A medical doctor in Kansas,  law enforcement officers in Pittsburg and Florida, visitors to the Holocaust Museum, and, I am sure, others, have been killed by frightened conservatives scared out of the fucking minds by conspiracy-mongers. 

Conservative respect for the Constitution means that if you lose an election, the winner is illegitimate (anyone here ever read about the Civil War?).  Respect for the laws of America means that if you disagree with a law, you can ignore it (county clerks have been told that in Iowa.  Respect for the President of the United States of America applies only if the President is Republican — a Democrat is, by definition, a usurper.  They seek to deny equal rights for all humans based on a bronze-age definition of what being a Jew meant.  Christian ethics, the ‘culture of life’, means treating women as chattel, as breeding machines. 

The radical Christian right and the radical neoconservative political right have banded together and seek to force their narrow, bigoted, racist and misogynistic view of ‘morality’ on each and every one of us. They seek, literally, a Christian version of the theocratic ‘democracy’ of Iran.  And if they cannot achieve it by the ballot, they are quite happy with providing philosophical scriptural cover to those who would help them achieve it by assassination, coup, or outright civil war.  Conservatives, religious or political, are not the backbone of America.  They are trying to break the back of America.

And they claim that liberals like me don’t respect America.

I believe that part of our troubles are because back over the years, the leadership of the opposing party has step-by-step taken us away from the constitutional principle that we are a federation of sovereign States, and they have tried to reduce the States to administrative districts of an all-powerful Federal Government. And the Federal Government has tried to do things that the Federal Government is not able to do.

Remarks at a Republican Fundraising Reception in
Whippany, New Jersey, October 15, 1981

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The following is an interesting article and I wonder how long Dr. Hunt can remain at NIH once the powers that be get wind of this article.

Dr. Hunt is a social and cultural anthropologist.  He has had nearly 30 years experience in planning, conducting, and managing research in the field of youth studies, and drug and alcohol research. Currently Dr. Hunt is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Scientific Analysis and the Principal Investigator on three National Institutes on Health projects. He is also a writer for American Thinker.

Another Failed Presidency
An article from American Thinker by Geoffrey P. Hunt

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.  In the modern era, we’ve seen several failed presidencies–led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ.  Failed presidents have one strong common trait– they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party.  Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.

But, Barack Obama is failing.  Failing big.  Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed.  Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months?  His poll ratings are in free fall.  In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage.  This truly is unbelievable.  What’s going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn’t have a narrative.  No, not a narrative about himself.  He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else.  But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn’t connect with us.  He doesn’t have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us.  All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are.  Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don’t align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and Reagan.

But not this president. It’s not so much that he’s a phony, knows nothing about economics, and is historically illiterate and woefully small minded for the size of the task–all contributory of course.  It’s that he’s not one of us.  And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper.  Moreover, he doesn’t command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don’t add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don’t make sense and don’t correspond with our experience.

In the meantime, while we’ve been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he’s dissed just about every one of us–financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job.  Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: “For those of you I offended, I apologize.  For those of you who were not offended, you just didn’t give me enough time; if only I’d had a second term, I could have offended you too.”

Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state–staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive.  An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year.  With a new Congress, there’s always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them.  The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.

Margaret Thatcher: “The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”

“When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.” – James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

“The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates.” – Tacitus

“A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn’t own.” – Unknown

The President’s Manifest Destiny and America’s Expansion

Sunday, November 22, 2009. Okay, all you naysayers, you Reagan Republican rednecked trouble-making tea party-conservatives who thought President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would just be a waste of your hard-earned money. You can now crawl back to your backwoods hillbilly trailer estates and eat a heapin’ helpin’ o’ good ol’ crow pie, baked up by James Carville. The miracle of all miracles has occurred. Not only is the stimulus package (which was wrought by the heroic efforts of Democrats fighting against progress-stifling Republicans) creating some amazing jobs all over the United States map, it’s actually causing that very map to bust at the borders of every state!

Take for instance, Ohio. Before Obama’s magical Recovery Act of 2009, there were a mere 13 congressional districts of record. Oh, what an unlucky number was that. Something had to change. Obama and Congress, with a mere stroke or two of the pen, turned this Midwestern state’s formerly-saturnine economy into a Mercury-hot, employment monster—and it gets even better. There has been so much hustle and bustle that only a few months after the Act’s passage, there are at least 29 known congressional districts in the Buckeye State, and it’s probably still growing. Do not be at all surprised to see two or three more districts pop up this week alone, along with dozens of Obama-created jobs.

Ah, but you say, Ohio’s fortune must be detrimental to its neighbors—it has to be encroaching like a cancer into bordering states. Not the case. States next to Ohio are experiencing similar proliferation. For instance, Pennsylvania added five districts, going from 36 to 41! Not since the days of William Penn has there been this much excitement in the Keystone State. They’re so happy, everybody now just calls that proud land “Obamamania,” as in, Allentown, Obamamania, Pittsburgh, Obamamania, and so forth. That the state is really a commonwealth fits in perfectly, because Obama is into a “common wealth” for everyone. Spread it around!

What does “Della wear”? Whatever she wants. She has buckets of cash streaming in as her districts quintupled from one to five! And not to be outdone in apparel, the state named after a shirt, New Jersey, has added 18 districts to its existing 15. Lawmakers there are considering changing the name of the state to “New Jersey and Pants.”

West Virginia, originally at six, just added seven districts. That’s enough for several more scenic summits in the Mountain State. Maryland jumped from eight to 23! Proud Mary keep on rollin’! New York indeed lives up to its “New” moniker with their eleven newbies.

One of the most heart-warming tales is the explosion going on in Oklahoma. Under the oppressive administration of President George W. Bush, a Texan sports fanatic who clearly loved the Texas Longhorns and hated the University of Oklahoma, the Sooner state was held to five measly districts. Obama comes along, and like an Oklahoma linebacker flattening a Texas tailback, bam, there are 51 districts—maybe more! According to The Oklahoman, stimulus money “includes $11.6 million to Oklahoma’s 25th Congressional District and $10 million to its 51st District.” Oklahoma has mushroomed to ten times its 2008 size. Word has it the state is considering renaming itself “Okl-Obama.”

Perhaps the best success story is Puerto Rico. In a matter of weeks, really, they went from an island territory with, of course, no districts, to an actual state. They now have 99 districts. They are now the most populous state in the Union! While you’re cutting out that 51^st star to sew onto your American flag, you’d better cut out two—Guam now has six districts. Not only is Obama expanding the country, he’s doing it in sub-tropical regions. That’s change we can all believe it.

Best yet, Obama and his chivalrous crusaders are meek and unwilling to take any credit. As soon as word got out of all these new districts created by their stimulus package, they erased it from their public website. “Please, please, no accolades—the people deserve the credit. They picked up their brooms and whisked away those old conservative cobwebs,” said one White House spokesman.

Good thing we have these guys running the country. Now that the Senate has voted to continue the health care debate, we can expect even more miracles, such as cures for diseases before the diseases even exist!

Yes, America is changing. Believe it!

–CB

See Grant Bosse announce his candidacy for the Stimulus-created New Hampshire “00^th” District:

http://www.nowhampshire.com/2009/11/20/bosse-enters-race-for-gop-nod-in-new-hampshire’s-satirical-00th-district/

Read Watchdog.org’s take on all this bustle:

http://watchdog.org/2009/11/17/your-guide-to-the-stimulus-district-by-phantom-district/

(source : http://antimperialista.blogia.com/ 22/11/09, traduction Futur Rouge)

La DEA et ses prédécesseurs, les organismes fédéraux d’exécution des lois sur les drogues, ont toujours été infiltrés et, à des degrés divers, dirigé par les agences de renseignement des États-Unis. La raison est assez simple: le gouvernement américain. Des USA a protèer ses alliés trafiquants de drogue, notamment le crime organisé, depuis que le trafic de drogue a été criminalisé pour la première fois en 1914. » ( Douglas Valentine (double opération)

Selon des documents déclassifiés par le gouvernement des États-Unis, le gouvernement Reagan-Bush (le père) dans les années 80, utilisait le trafic de drogue comme un mode de financement de la lutte anticommuniste dans les différentes régions de la planète.

Il ya 30 ans, à la mi-1979, le Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) au Nicaragua, prend le pouvoir après 45 ans de dictature de Somoza. A partir de ce moment, l’oligarchie nicaraguayenne, a commencer à voir comment ses privilèges étaient réduits en faveur du peuple, fâché, pour cette raison il a décidé de s’allier avec le gouvernement américain, dont les multinationales voyaient d’un mauvais œil leur bénéfices se réduirent au profit des droit des travailleurs, grâce à des mesures du nouveau gouvernement progressiste. Les deux décident de former un groupe de guérilleros anticommuniste, qui plus tard serait connue sous le nom de « Contras », avec l’objectif de déloger du pouvoir le FSLN.

En plus des fonds approuvés par le Congrès américain et des dons privés, d’autres méthodes ont été utilisés pour financer la guérillas anti-sandiniste, dont été la vente clandestine d’armes à l’Iran et le trafic de drogue (en particulier la cocaïne et l’héroïne). Pour développer ce dernier projet, ils ont décidé de compter sur la coopération, entre autres, du criminel du Cartel de Medellin : Pablo Escobar Gaviria.

Pablo Escobar a organisé dans le Yucatan (Mexique), une structure complète pour passer de la cocaïne vers les États-Unis, qui incluait l’acquisition d’un ranch de 16000 acres. De là, avec la collaboration de la Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) qui étais parfaitement infiltrés dans le DEA (supposée organisation qui combat le trafic de drogues), des centaines de vols transportant de la drogue d’Amérique du Sud, est venu en Amérique, inonder les rues (en particulier les rues des bidonvilles) de de cocaïne et de crack. Selon un rapport de 410 pages de l’inspecteur général de la CIA Frederick Hitz (1990-1998), récemment déclassifiés, entre 1984 et 1986, l’agence d’espionnage a organisé de 50 à 100 vols d’avions de ce Cartel vers les terminaux des aéroports des États-Unis Amérique du Nord, vols qui n’ont pas été inspectées par le Service des douanes de ce pays dans le cadre d’un accord entre la CIA et les trafiquants de drogue colombiens.

Selon les déclarations de Michael Tolliver (l’un des pilotes qui a transféré à plusieurs reprises, des armes des États-Unis vers l’Amérique centrale et des expéditions de drogue d’Amérique centrale vers les Etats-Unis), dans l’émission de CBS “West 57th CBS Nouvelles», 6 Avril 1987: «Dans la base militaire de Homestead, en Floride, l’armée américaine avait des boîtes avec de la marijuana comme si c’était la nourriture.

L’un des principaux protagonistes de l’histoire est l’agent de la CIA Barry Seal, qui en 1984 a été arrêté à Fort Lauderdale, en Floride pour le blanchiment d’argent et du trafic de drogue. Seal a négocié un accord avec la justice, qui comprenait sa conversion en tant qu’informateur au DEA et de témoigner contre ses anciens employeurs. En plein scandale « Iran-Contra », Seal a déclaré que la CIA a participé au financement des Contras avec les bénéfices du trafic de drogue. Peu après ces déclarations, Seal a été tué (19 Février 1986) à Baton Rouge, Louisiane. Il est estimé que Seal a introduit aux États-Unis plus de milliard de dollars de cocaïne, avec l’aide de la CIA, des services de douanes et d’autres autorités politiques. Le témoignage de Seal pourrait avoir aidé à l’emprisonnement de hauts fonctionnaires de l’administration Reagan-Bush.

Steven Carr, un mercenaire recruté par la CIA pour conseiller la «Contra» après avoir été arrêté avec d’autres mercenaires au Costa Rica, pour avoir violé la neutralité du pays dans le conflit du Nicaragua et la possession d’explosifs, fatigué de ne pas obtenir l’aide de ses supérieurs de l’Agence, se mit à parler à la presse, qui a raconté comment il a effectué la fourniture d’armes aux Contras par la CIA et comment il a transporté de la drogue vers les États-Unis pour y être vendues , et obtenir des fonds pour financer la lutte contre la guérilla sandiniste. Quelques jours avant le début de la commission d’enquête du Sénat (Décembre 1986), sur l’affaire Iran-Contra, dans laquelle il était appelé à témoigner pour ses déclarations, Carr est trouvé mort dans son appartement.

En Décembre 1986 c’est précisément une déclaration secrète (des années plus tard déclassifiés), du directeur de la CIA, William Casey (1981-1987), qui curieusement est décédé d’une crise cardiaque, peu avant le début des audiences au Sénat de l’affaire « Iran-Contra », dans laquelle il pouvait être aussi appelés à témoigner:

“Colby (son prédécesseur) m’a dit que le produit de la cocaïne serait lavée par Al Carone, la mafia de New York et Robert Vesco et ensuite utilisées dans la lutte anticommuniste par Colby lui-même. Après avoir parlé avec Carone j’ai pris la décision de déplacé la cocaïne entreposés à l’aéroport Mena en Arkansas, parce que la CIA avait déjà utilisé cet aéroport à plusieurs reprises. Dans ces circonstances, la cocaïne a été l’instrument. Le piège consistait était d’ignorer la loi et d’éviter d’être découvert. Ces efforts ont aidé Bill Clinton (gouverneur de l’Arkansas à l’époque) et William Weld.

Les conclusions du Rapport Kerry, préparé par la Sous-comission sénatorial sur les stupéfiants, le terrorisme et les opérations internationales, à la tête de laquelle était alors sénateur américain John Kerry (candidat démocrate à la présidentielle en 2004) et publié le 13 avril 1989, après deux ans et demi de recherche, ne laissait aucun doute. Selon ce rapport, le Département d’État des États-Unis a effectué des paiements à «quatre entreprises qui ont été possédées et exploités par des trafiquants de stupéfiants», en outre, la CIA a fourni la couverture légale dans le commerce de la drogue en échange de quoi, les trafiquants de drogue effectuaient la “fourniture d’une assistance aux Contras, y compris des liquidités, des armes, des avions, des pilotes, l’appui aérien et d’autres matériaux sur une base volontaire pour les trafiquants.” Le rapport Kerry déclencha un scandale sans précédent : la coopération du gouvernement Américain, dans l’introduction et la vente de tonnes de cocaïne aux États-Unis, de la part des narcotrafiquants colombiens,, qui, mandaté, prévoyaient une part importante des bénéfices pour financer la lutte contre la guérilla communiste des “contras”, les grands médias américains, notamment le New York Times, Washington Post et du Los Angeles Times ont simplement fait l’écho de cette dénonciation scandaleuse du Sénat, en consacrant à peine quelques lignes, dans les profondeurs de leurs pages.

Cette sombre alliance entre les puissances qui gouvernent les Etats-Unis, l’oligarchie nicaraguayenne et les trafiquants de drogue, a été forgée pour écarter du pouvoir le FSLN au Nicaragua, car les mesures progressistes mises en œuvre par lui depuis son arrivée au pouvoir en 1979 ( plus juste répartition des richesses dans le pays, reconnaissance des droits des travailleurs, etc) a conduit à réduire considérablement les avantages économiques de l’oligarchie et des multinationales Yankees au Nicaragua, qui, avec ancienne dictature Somoza (1934-1979) a décimé les pays à volonté.

Cette «sombre alliance», financé et parrainé par Washington a conduit à une guerre sanglante qui a duré presque 10 ans, et tué plus de 60.000 personnes (en plus des milliers de mutilés à vie) et a coulé l’économie nicaraguayenne (en plus de l’embargo brutal américain et la poursuite des actes de sabotage par la “Contra” contre les grandes entreprises d’importance stratégique pour le pays). Cette évolution, conjuguée à l’appauvrissement de la population et aux millions de dollars dépensés par Washington dans la campagne électorale du candidat de l’opposition, Violeta Chamorro, a fait que les sandinistes ont perdu le pouvoir lors des élections de Février 1990.

Nous ne devons pas oublier l’épidémie de «crack» dans les années 80, aux États-Unis, qui a emporté la vie de milliers de personnes, notamment au sein de la communauté noire. Tels ont été les effets dévastateurs du crack dans la population afro-américaine, non seulement les effets nocifs de cette drogue sur la santé, mais aussi par la violence causée par les combats entre gangs de rue pour le contrôle de la distribution, qui ont mené quelques leaders de la communauté noire à parler d’un plan gauche de purification ethnique, de la part des autorités des États-Unis..

Le Nicaragua est un exemple de la façon dont les États-Unis ont utilisé et continuent d’utiliser le trafic de drogue pour financer une politique criminelle visant à piller les richesses des autres peuples. L’alliance entre Álvaro Uribe, l’actuel président de la Colombie, avec des liens avérés avec le trafic de drogue, et les pouvoirs des États-Unis, est une autre preuve.

«Les opprimés n’ont pas d’avions ou de bateaux. La presse et le gouvernement culpabilisent les opprimés pour la drogue, mais le commerce international des drogues exige des flottes d’avions de fret, des pistes d’atterrissage dans plusieurs pays, des réseaux internationaux, de grandes quantités d’argent pour les investissements, des réseaux de blanchiment d’argent, et des contacts de haut niveau pour sortir le corps pour les douanes et le DEA. “Malcolm X, 1966.

I was a kid for most of the fabulous Sixties, but by the very end of the decade I was in high school, and by the time the Seventies began I was at university. So I missed some of the good parts—the free speech movement, the early days of the civil rights movement, the free love movement—and what I remember best about the years of 1968 through 1974 was how tense everybody was, all the time.

Divisive politics—hardhats versus hippies—were on everybody’s mind, and back then the stakes were high. Tens of thousands of mostly blue-collar kids went off to fight a war without the support of the citizens they were serving; many of those kids never got the chance to grow up. Other kids, smart enough or at least well-off enough to go to college, used student deferments to postpone or avoid the draft. From that latter group, here and there sprang up groups such as SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the Weathermen. Most of the men and women in these organizations were not terrorists of the Bill Ayers-Bernadine Dohrn variety, but they were passionate in their opposition to the Viet Nam War, vehemently “anti-establishment,” and united in their hatred of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, who inherited the mess President Kennedy made when he diddled with the balance of power in Southeast Asia.

I shared none of these deep emotions, and I did not understand them. I’d flee the campus scene if a large demonstration was in the offing. I never chanted “hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today.” I didn’t feel the visceral, soul-draining hatred of Richard Nixon that ate at the gut of so many of my contemporaries even unto today. For me, politics was somewhere between a sport and an intellectual challenge: I watched, I listened, I formed opinions, I mouthed off—but I did not dwell in a house of doom. It seemed to me that the United States had weathered centuries of good interrupted by bad, very bad, times and would therefore continue as at always had, an imperfect union ruled by imperfect law imperfectly administered at times but with built-in mechanisms for righting wrongs.

When the Sixties finally wound down in the mid-Seventies, with Nixon “in exile in San Clemente” and President Carter presiding over eighteen percent inflation rates, I’d occasionally wonder why Nixon was still a punching bag, but occasional wonder was about it. When Reagan ran for president I was skeptical and a little embarrassed to tell the truth that an actor could aspire to “the highest office in the land.” So I was at least prepared for the spew of venom that drenched him and Nancy Reagan after the election. In 1980 it seemed as if the end of days were at hand. The country was being governed by an “out-of-touch” “Teflon” old geezer and his shrew of a wife. Reagan delegated too much. As old as he was, he nevertheless provided fresh meat for the Sixties squad—Nixon’s history, now let’s hate Reagan. Reagan’s “morning in America” became “mourning in America,” for many a clever leftie.

George Bush was elected on Reagan’s coattails and suffered much of the same irrational emotional response. His notion of a “kinder, gentler nation” was ridiculed; his ideas about community service—“A Thousand Points of Light”—mocked or ignored by the left, who prefigured their portmanteau “[GW] BushHitler” with “ReaganBush,” as if the two administrations were a monolith of fat-cat politics out to get the little guy. By this time I was working and living in a community that prides itself on politics so left-of-center that it once declared Linda Jenness its patron saint. So President Clinton’s election was greeted with joy in the streets, and sweetness and light obtained until nasty Congressional Republicans took out their “contract on America.” Newt Gingrich was evil incarnate, and forget about monsters like Henry Hyde, Bob Barr and other Republicans in the House and Senate who ganged up on the president to impeach him for—well, you know what for.

The eight years of BushHitler that followed President Clinton’s two terms in many ways brought me back to the Sixties, more so certainly than any of the preceding decades. Bush was stupid. Bush was evil. Bush was crooked. Bush was a cokehead. Bush was Cheney’s puppet. Bush knew about 9/11 and did nothing to prevent it. Bush suspended our civil liberties. Bush wanted to know what library books you were checking out. Bush wanted to avenge his daddy in Iraq. Bush dodged the draft. On and on and on…if you could say it, think it, or make it up, about George Bush it was probably true…after all, he was a traitor to his class: in spite of two Ivy degrees, he’d somehow avoided drinking the Kool-Aid of socially acceptable leftism, so that was strike one. And he espoused bourgeois values of home, hard work and religion so that was strike two. No matter that he wore none of them on his sleeve. And he pretty much didn’t give a damn about America’s enemies, excepting for wanting them stopped. Strike three. The pulsating, consuming, ice-hot hatred lavished on Richard Nixon at long last had a new prince of darkness on which its practitioners could fixate.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not wrap my mind around the genuine emotional investment of the haters. Many of them were colleagues, some friends. In other areas of life they seemed like good people, stable and kind, but mention the B(H)-word and they’d start foaming at the mouth. Although I did not understand them, I did not doubt the sincerity or the depths of their emotions. These people really and truly thought one man and his gang of political cronies were using the United States as their piggy bank and plaything. I didn’t get it.

But now of course I do, and I owe all of them an apology. For what I had been reading as hatred for forty years was something else entirely: terror. These people weren’t eaten up on the inside from hatred; they were terrified for the future of their country. Afraid of the fragility of their American way of life. Anxious that their Constitution was imperiled. I am sorry that I didn’t understand these people. Ces’t moi.

Double Dip Recession: Reagan & Obama

Typical of great statesmen, Ronald Reagan took no credit for our nation’s recovery during his tenure. He was called “The Great Communicator” because he almost single-handedly restored the nation’s confidence. Indeed, what we’re experiencing now is, first and foremost, a crisis of confidence. “I wasn’t a great communicator,” Reagan said in his farewell address, “but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation – from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries.”

He added, “There were two great triumphs … that I’m proudest of. One is the economic recovery, in which the people of America created – and filled – 19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of our morale. America is respected again in the world and looked to for leadership.” Fast forward to today; one of the most basic strategies in a successful magic trick is the use of misdirection and diversion. A great magician amazes by doing the obviously impossible and the audience applauds, delighted to be fooled, misdirected to look left when the real action is on the right, and cannot explain the inexplicable.

Last week, Obama said that he’s worried that spending too much money to help revive the economy could undermine a fragile U.S. recovery and throw the economy into a double-dip recession. Isn’t this like a guy shooting his neighbor and then saying, “Hey, buddy, you’re bleeding.” Yeah, comments like that give me confidence in the quality of Ivy League education. In fact, “Double Dip”, is a perfect nickname for this dolt. Let me get this straight – Obama says that if he keeps doing what he’s been doing, bad things will happen? But he’s going to keep doing it anyway because he wants universal health care and cap and tax. Obama’s comments and his direction is as sturdy as pushing on a string.

First, what does double dip Recession Mean? When gross domestic product (GDP) growth slides back to negative after a quarter or two of positive growth. A double-dip recession refers to a recession followed by a short-lived recovery, followed by another recession. The causes for a double-dip recession vary but often include a slowdown in the demand for goods and services because of layoffs and spending cutbacks from the previous downturn. A double-dip (or even triple-dip) is a worst-case scenario. Fear that the economy will move back into a deeper and longer recession makes recovery even more difficult.

Well, before we can have a double dip recession we’d need to have the upside first, don’t we? Look at it like an upside down bell curve or the letter ‘U’. Have we bottomed out and improved? Are we in a U shaped recession? Without bad government policies/stimulus, which has caused rising unemployment and weak corporate profitability, it would have been V shaped. We would be in a W-shaped recession if the stimulus had any nominal effect and it created brief GDP growth, fell back, and then rose again – thus a double-dip recession. Right now, let’s just call it an L-shaped downturn. When Bush was POTUS, Obama said we were in recession when the GDP was still growing and now that they’re in power, Obama is saying we are out of it even though quarterly GDP continues to shrink.

Obama is foreshadowing the fact that he wants to spend money to ‘boost’ the economy, but at the same time cover his butt in the event of creating too much red ink. Too late. To start, when the stimulus money disappears, the programs that have begun won’t be able to sustain themselves when the states affected don’t have the funds to continue these ludicrous plans. In ten short months, Obama had presided over the biggest spending binge in world history. The U.S. national deficit has risen to $1.4 trillion since Obama took office ($1,412,442,058,575) and the national debt is now $12 trillion according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt. With our mounting national debt and budget deficits, it is reasonable to assume that near-term future interest rates on new and refinanced debt will double or triple. There is no indication that Obama’s Road to Damascus conversion from big spender to debt reducer is anything more then rhetoric tailored to the comfort-sounding, albeit, misleading sound bite of the day.

Housing prices have been propped up, banks and auto companies have been bailed out, regulations have been increased, anti-capitalist measures installed, debt covenants have been violated, unemployment insurance has been extended, money supply has grown exponentially. In addition, there’s the cap-and-trade bill, the healthcare bill, and a “czar” around every corner. In short, the problems that caused the great recession have been compounded. Real output must then necessarily decline. How can anyone logically assert that we are in the beginning of a recovery? Until small business recovers, this economy will not.

Unless lawmakers make big changes, the interest Americans will have to pay to keep the country running over the next decade will reach unheard-of levels. In Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09), the U. S. Government spent $383 Billion of your money on interest payments to the holders of the National Debt. In 2015 alone, the estimated interest due – $533 billion – is equal to a third of the federal income taxes expected to be paid that year. And, as more money goes to interest, creditors may become concerned that the country can’t pay down its principal and lawmakers will be less able to pay for other national spending priorities. Less debt means less pressure on interest rates; more debt means greater pressure on interest rates.

Your money is spent through Appropriations Bills passed by The U.S. Senate and signed by the President. The Government does not have any money, it takes your money from you and, borrows more, then spends it on the appropriated bills. The bailouts of 2008 and 2009 are purely deficit spending. Expect to see enormous deficits in the foreseeable future, leading to much more debt; and interest payments on that debt will soon surpass social spending and become the largest item in the federal budget. Basic economics says that the President and Democrat Congress are doing the exact opposite of what should be done to shorten a recession (such as cut taxes across the board – personal, corporate, and capital gains – and slash government spending). In fact, this administration will bankrupt our economy if this spending spree continues on course.

Despite Bush’s bank lending plan that was proposed to restore economic confidence, the Democrats had “Plan B,” and no sooner was Obama sworn-in to office than they implemented their $4 trillion “recovery plan,” none of which is recoverable because that greatest transfer of wealth in history has nothing to do with recovery and everything to do with the socialization of the U.S. economy, Obama’s ultimate agenda. Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” is in sharp contrast to Reagan’s massive tax reductions, deregulation and anti-inflation monetary policies. Obama is a clear and present danger to the U.S. and its Constitution and the American people. The overreaching authoritative hand of the federal government doesn’t do anything well. It’s inefficient, slow, prone to fraud, and ineffective.

Effect on Business & Consumers

Frozen credit lines. High unemployment. Foreclosures. Contrary to what Team Obama says, the economy is still contracting. At the very least, the business community and investors are NOT jumping back into the economy with both feet; they are still watching to see what legislative and regulatory monstrosities come out of Washington. With unemployment soaring and tax receipts slumping, the deficit will continue to rise. And, forgotten in all this is the job killer of rising taxation. The Bush tax cuts are set to expire next year and everyone’s marginal tax-rate are set to go up 10%. This does not account for what Charlie Rangle will push through Ways and Means or the impact of the “tax” on energy because of cap and trade or the number of taxes hidden in the health care bill or the impact on small businesses that create 70% or more of the new jobs.

Do the math yourself. What the business owner keeps is dependent on what they have to generate in new business and its correlating profit margins – let alone having excess revenue to hire, particularly if the business-to-business market and consumer markets are soft and interest rates have to go up, which is almost inevitable. The Fed has artificially depressed short-term rates to this point, but they can’t keep it up forever. When those rates balloon upward, massive defaults will follow, which will have a rather nasty effect on currently inflated equity prices. And any increase in interest rates will increase the debt service payments on small business and individuals.

When interest rates rise, consumers, businesses and the economy are affected in several ways. Consumers are less likely to purchase products such as automobiles, mortgages and other consumer goods. Higher interest rates means consumers must pay higher finance charges. Two-thirds of economic activity is based on consumer spending and when consumers stop spending the economy slows. Many companies too need to borrow money and accumulate hefty debt loads if they want to continue to do business. When interest rates increase, the cost of borrowing money increases as well, this cuts into the profits of a company. A decrease in profits will cause the price of a company’s stock to decrease and rebuilding of inventories, one of the main drivers of the economy’s recovery, is hampered when business can’t borrow or its profits fall.

A lot of consumers have credit products too such as credit cards and mortgage loans that have variable rates. When interest rates increase, or resets kick in, a consumer’s monthly payments will increase in order to accommodate the higher amount of interest that needs to be paid monthly. If the payments on a mortgage increase substantially, many consumers will not be able to make the payments, leading to delinquency and foreclosure. Also, if consumers cannot make credit card payments, credit card companies will probably have to write-off a number of accounts as bad debts. In order to stop the losses, many credit card issuers will lower consumer credit card limits as well as the limits on home equity accounts. This will further curtail consumer’s ability to spend and throw the economy further into a downward spiral.

From a small business’s point of view, no material change would make one want to hire more staff or take any risk. The Democrats are simply too hostile to business. Credit markets have dried-up, more inflation on the horizon, the crippling energy costs, and consumers less disposable income – those still with jobs anyway – all are barriers to any recovery. Globalization and export of jobs have economic consequences too; The national help desk for Bright House Networks is in the Philippines, Honeywell has hired foreigners to build-out war machine, Verizon DSL help-desk is now in India, Taiwan, etc., Hewlett Packard support is located all over the world and Neilson Media fired 3,500 Americans in lieu of foreigners. Now Nestle’s Water plant has cut 40% of it’s work force and Danka has been sold-out to foreign interests as well.

Add that to the loss of farm produce in California to save the Delta Smelt, a minnow, and the possibility of staring food shortages in the eye and we have real consequences of a left-wing economy facing us. OPEC too is talking about moving away from the US dollar as the currency oil is traded in. The natural effect of monetizing debt is a devaluation of the dollar, double-digit inflation and a lower standard of living. We’re seeing our dollar decline in value, yet President Training Wheels continues to print more money. What incentives are there to invest? Obama and company want the economy to falter, even collapse, so that the government can takeover all major aspects of the American financial system. Obama is now the Pinball Wizard and we are seeing a Weekend at Bernie’s act as I type; he has stolen the thorny crown as possibly the worse president since Jimmy Carter.

Obama is planning to raise all corporate taxes too. The price of everything you buy will go up to cover that tax cost. So, you will be paying those corporate taxes. With higher taxes businesses have to either raise prices or cut cost. When the economy goes into a recession, businesses lay off workers because of the lack of demand for goods and services. To spur demand, businesses will sometimes lower prices which eat into their margins. Consumers will delay spending because they will wait to see how low the prices will go. Companies and organizations will lay off more workers because they will try to cut expenses in an effort to maintain profit margins.

An economy can enter a state of deflation too, which is a constant downward spiral of prices versus inflation where there is a sustained rise in prices. The inflation-deflation debate heated up too in 1981-82 during Reagan’s on-again, off-again recession. Deflation, to us, is too much debt chasing too little income. Inflation and deflation are two sides of the same coin and both are always with us to some varying degrees. During periods of inflation, capital moves away from job-creating and during periods of deflation businesses avoid borrowing to fund future growth, knowing full well that the money they’ll pay back over time will be more than what they borrowed.

As more consumers delay spending while waiting for prices to bottom out, the economy slows even more. There will be more layoffs and more price reductions and more foreclosures. And, some leading corporate executives worry there’s no economic engine available to drive growth in 2010: Technology, construction, finance – all sectors that have powered the U.S. economy out of the doldrums in the past – are flat this year. The commercial real estate sector too is poised for a crash of its own, further dragging down the prospects of recovery of the national economy. While Obama has turned to government to solve the problems of the people, Reagan turned to the people to solve the problems of government.

Stimulus 101: Reagan versus Obama

During his 1980 Labor Day speech at New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan listed the economic failures of his opponent, President Jimmy Carter. With the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, Reagan used the moment to respond to Carter, who had accused Reagan of misusing the term “depression” to describe a recession that began in January of that year. “Let it show on the record that when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary. Well, if it’s a definition he wants, I’ll give him one. A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”

However imprecise Reagan’s macroeconomic definitions may have been, he’d made his point. Semantics don’t mean much to Americans who have lost or are about to lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. Obama says the economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Actually, it is the worst since the Reagan recession of 1982-83. Further, the 2009 market crash is not the worst since 1929, but since 1987 — also on Ronald Reagan’s watch. What did Reagan do – or, more importantly, didn’t do – in response to these “crises?” versus from what Obama is doing?

In both cases, Reagan did the exact opposite of Mr. Obama’s massive government spending infusions. As for the Reagan recession, he waited extremely patiently – to the point where he drove his advisers nearly nuts – for his huge 1981 tax cuts to take effect. He didn’t spend money because he believed spending had been out-of-control, particularly since FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, which created systemic deficits. Reagan felt that high spending, high regulation, and high taxes had sapped the American economy of its vitality, and particularly its ability to rebound from recession. The economy needed to be freed in order to perform.

Reagan’s prescription rested on four pillars: tax cuts, deregulation, reductions in the rate of government spending, and a stable, carefully managed growth of the money supply. The federal income tax reduction was the centerpiece: Reagan secured a 25% across-the-board reduction over a three-year period, beginning in October 1981. The upper income marginal tax rate was dropped from 70 percent, which Reagan believed was punitive and stifling, to 28 percent. By 1983, America had begun its longest peacetime economic expansion in history, cruising right through the 1987 market plunge.

What did Reagan do about the October 1987 crash? Basically nothing; certainly nothing like a massive government stimulus. “Some people are talking of panic,” Reagan calmly confided to his diary. “Chrmn. of Stock Exchange is acting very upset.” Those are Reagan’s only diary references to the financial crisis. With the economy freed, he was confident it would bounce back. Reagan let the economy correct itself. The Cato Institute’s Richard Rahn wrote an excellent op-ed for the Washington Times, in which he evaluates the “worst recession since the Great Depression” meme and compares the situations inherited and actions by Presidents Reagan and Obama. I urge folks to give it a read, but here are the highlights:

Even though the president, many members of Congress and many journalists keep saying we are in the worst recession since the 1930s, it is an assertion that is premature, to say the least.

At the end of World War II, from 1945 to 1946, there was a very sharp drop in U.S. output (12.1 percent) as the war economy began its transition to a civilian economy. The deepest and longest-lasting recession the United States has experienced since then began in 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president (the gross domestic product dropped 9.6 percent in the second quarter of that year) and did not end until fourth-quarter 1982, almost two years into the Reagan presidency. There were positive quarters during this almost three-year period, resulting in what is known as a double-dip recession, but GDP did not return to the 1979 level until well into 2003. Unemployment peaked at 10.6 percent in the fall of 1982.

Both President Reagan and President Obama inherited an economy suffering from a year of no growth, along with rising unemployment. (The numbers are almost identical.) But Mr. Reagan faced a far direr situation in that inflation was in the double digits and the prime interest rate was at 20 percent. In contrast, Mr. Obama inherited an economy in which inflation was falling (in fact, inflation has been close to zero for this year) and interest rates were very low.

…The Misery Index dropped by more than 10 points during the Reagan presidency, the single largest improvement during any president’s tenure in the last half-century.

…President Obama has taken the polar opposite approach to President Reagan’s to reignite the economic-growth engine. Reagan pushed for cuts in marginal tax rates to encourage people to work, save and invest in an effort to spur the supply side of the economy as well as the demand side. Mr. Obama has chosen only to greatly increase government spending in an attempt to increase demand while, at the same time, many of his new labor, environmental, energy and other regulations are impeding the supply side of the economy.

Mr. Obama had the advantage of both houses of Congress being controlled by his party, so he was able to get his stimulus package passed within a few weeks of taking office. Reagan was handicapped by having the opposition party in control of the House of Representatives, whose members both delayed (until August 1981) and reduced his tax-reduction stimulus package.

In fact, the Reagan tax cuts were not fully phased in until 1983, more than two years after he assumed office. Reagan, hobbled by an opposition Congress, was not able to get the spending-growth restraint he wanted, so substantial budget deficits occurred early in his administration, at one point reaching 6 percent of GDP. In retrospect, the Reagan deficits look small compared to the deficit of 13.5 percent of GDP this year and the Obama administration and Congressional Budget Office projections of huge deficits in the years to come.

Once Reagan’s tax cuts were largely phased in, the economy took off – it grew by 7.6 percent in 1984 alone. We are in the midst of a most interesting experiment. The administration and the CBO forecast moderate and uninterrupted economic growth between the end of this year and 2019. If they are correct, 1980-82 – not the current recession – will remain the longest sustained period without economic growth since World War II. If they are wrong, they indeed will have the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and no one to blame but themselves.

OK, but Reaganomics created huge deficits, right?

First off, know these crucial facts: The deficit under Ronald Reagan increased 35 percent, from an inherited deficit (from President Jimmy Carter) of $104 billion in 1980 to a final deficit of $141 billion in 1989. The deficit peaked at $236 billion in 1983, particularly because of the plummet in tax revenue during the recession. It began dropping steadily in 1986, continuing through the 1987 crash. (Source: Congressional Budget Office figures, “Historical Tables.”) Compare that to what’s happening now, where the direct opposite of Reaganomics is being pursued by the liberal Democratic president and congressional leadership;

President Obama inherited a record Bush deficit of $400 billion, but is generating a far worse $1.8-trillion deficit in his first year. (Source: Congressional Budget Office, March 20, 2009.) We’ve never seen anything like this. This unthinkable explosion is a direct result of the stunning government spending unleashed by Mr. Obama and the Democratic leadership in just eight weeks — an unheard of development in 233 years of American history.

So, think about this: Reagan increased the deficit by 35% in eight years, whereas Barack Obama has increased the deficit by 450% in only eight weeks. Reagan created an extra $37 billion in annual deficit. Mr. Obama has already created an extra $1.4 trillion in annual deficit. But what, exactly, caused the Reagan deficits? There were several factors: the recession of 1982-83, the Reagan defense spending – implemented to turn the screws on the Soviets – the domestic social spending by the Democratic Congress and more. Some reasons were Reagan’s fault; others were Congress’ doing – both share blame in differing degrees.

Importantly, and despite what you’ve heard, Reagan’s tax cuts didn’t create the deficit. Tax revenues actually boomed from roughly $600 billion in 1981 to $1 trillion in 1989. The primary cause of the deficit was recession and spending, mainly spending – as is always the case. It is especially the case right now under Obama, with the spending component utterly out-of-control. Wealth confiscation and redistribution by government central planners never works; unfortunately, it is that extremely destructive method that Americans elected in November 2008.

Many argue comparing the reaction of Obama and Reagan to their recessions as comparing apples to oranges. Reagan inherited an economy that consisted of double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates and double digit unemployment. His reaction was to cut taxes and put the money back into the hands of the people who earned it. People began spending. Companies began hiring and the economy responded. Obama on the other hand is increasing spending and taxes at a historic rate never seen before.

Cap and trade to increase energy bills, government control of health care estimated at over $1 trillion which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been sending out red flags. With first-time homebuyer tax credits and “cash for clunkers” car-selling schemes, government stimulus spending and bailouts, housing bust, credit crunch – all point to serious fiscal problems – and with Social Security on the verge of bankruptcy this recession will not end soon. This is why bills are being passed without being read and all of the Obama agenda has been put on fast track to keep the details from the public, with a huge assist by the state run media. Americans may well fall victim to their own lack of attentiveness.

Closing

The amounts of deficits the administration are running are unprecedented and unsustainable. More government spending, more government borrowing, more government money printing, more government tax increases. This is not a pro-growth formula which almost guarantees reduced tax revenues, which almost guarantees greater deficits, for every level of government. Credit is contracting. The banks may be getting billions in loans, but for the individual on the street, credit is frozen. Couple this with the loss of primary income streams and you have a lot of people with no money for even essential goods. Employers need to be convinced the economic recovery is here to stay.

And, we continue to lose jobs month-over-month too. And, while the statistics being released are showing a slow down, this is basically a fabrication. There are thousands of people falling off of unemployment compensation each week – none of them are reflected in the official numbers. Foreclosures continue to mount too. In addition to the foreclosures of the last 2-years, we have millions more in play right now, regardless of the mortgage programs the government institutes. Job loss plus credit contraction means there is no way millions of people will be able to make their monthly payments.

The best-case scenario is a “V”-shaped recovery – a sharp drop and a quick rebound – at some near-term point. Next best is a “U” shape, with a sharp drop, a protracted trough, and then a recovery. The worst of all possible scenarios is the “L”-shaped recession, which is a sharp drop followed by a flat line. In other words: No recovery at all. In previous recessions from the 1950’s through the early 1980’s, manufacturing led swifter recoveries. But the hiring that goes along with rebuilding industrial inventories these days just isn’t enough to move the needle in an economy less focused on making things (manufacturing). Consumer spending counts for much more economic activity today, but consumers are in no mood to go on spending sprees any time soon.

Playing politics will bad policy will lead to Obama’s underlying demise. Anybody who says the recession is over is either a liar or ill-informed and anybody who believes them is a moron. The natural effect of monetizing debt is a devaluation of the dollar, double-digit inflation and a lower standard of living. Obama’s economic policies will cause a redistribution of wealth, but instead of raising the standard of living for the poor it will decrease the standard of living for the wealthy with no effect on the poor, except the poor will become more dependent on government handouts as the government takes more and more of what wealth is created by the shrinking private sector. Obama will undoubtedly continue to ascribe blame for the recession to the Bush administration for as long as possible. The National Debt is now $12 Trillion.

And finally, as Reagan proved, the best “stimulus” is one that relies on letting free individuals and entrepreneurs stimulate the economy through their own earnings and economic activity and not government intrusion. Reagan implemented massive tax reductions, deregulation and anti-inflation monetary policies, which brought inflation down to 3.2 percent by 1983 and unleashed a historic period of economic growth. Of course, behind all the policy implementation was the most important element of the recovery: Ronald Reagan was a man of character and substance, as evidenced by his historic re-election in 1984; Obama lacks both.

Double dip? Gee, I hardly noticed the first one.

Note: Economists generally agree that annual deficits should not exceed 3% of the GDP, and that is the level Obama had vowed to reach by the end of his first term in 2013. However, factors such as subsequent spending, tax cuts and unexpectedly low revenues have pushed the forecast of Obama’s deficit to 4.6% of the GDP by then. Currently, the 2009 deficit is 10% of the GDP which is the highest level since the end of World War II when it was 21.5%. If you are wondering who holds the most US debt, here is a list compiled by CNBC.

15: Luxembourg – $104.2 Billion
14: Depository Institutions – $107.3 Billion (commercial banks, savings banks, credit unions)
13: Russia – $119.9 Billion
12: Insurance Companies – 126.4 Billion
11: Brazil – 139.8 Billion
10: Caribbean Banking Centers – 189.7 Billion
9: Oil Exporters – $191 Billion
8: United Kingdom – $214 Billion
7: Pension Funds – $465.4 Billion
6: State and local governments – $522.7 Billion
5: Other Investors – $629.7 Billion (“other” refers to individuals, government sponsored enterprises, brokers and dealers, bank personal trusts, estates, corporate and non-corporate businesses)
4: Japan – $711.8 Billion
3: China – $776.4 Billion
2: Mutual Funds – $769.1 Billion
1: Federal Reserve and Intergovernmental Holdings – 4.785 Trillion

Lately I have been thinking what a moron I am to have not been recording my Politics in the Media class lectures because Professor Robert Sahr is phenomenal. He brings up such great points of discussion and carries great knowledge that is always leaving me great thoughts to ponder. One particular point he brings up quite often is the charge of liberal bias. I think it is a great insight into how media is portrayed. Here is a collection of his notes and sources discussing similar issues in the news.

The CHARGE of “Liberal Bias” (very important conservative strategy in recent decades)

Why many people believe national media has liberal bias:  There appear to be two main reason:

• It is widely stated and seldom rebutted, e.g.,Rush Limbaugh always says “liberal media”
• We see what we look for:  if we expect a certain kind of bias we are more likely to believe we find evidence of it than if we do not expect it

Note that most media analysts reject the “liberal bias” view, arguing there may be a conservative bias, or at least a “mainstream bias,”and many      analysts are not themselves liberal

Evidence that challenges or undercuts “liberal bias” charge

To prove liberal bias, almost always conservative point to the fact that polls show that more journalists identify themselves as liberal (or at least Democratic) than conservative (or Republican).  This is true, but focusing only on this point ignores important evidence in a different direction.

1.  Endorsements: With only four exceptions (1964, 1992, 2004, 2008) since records began be kept in the 1930s, more newspapers – often many more – endorse Republicans than Democrats for President (see below)

2.  Talk show hosts and political columnists: Many more (about 70%) are conservative than liberal

2.  Media ownership:

Owners/executives are usually politically conservative

Increasing sharp concentration of ownership, with decreasing number of companies controlling media

So, even if journalists are politically liberal, they would have to challenge the views of owners/executives, who control       their advancement

4.  Actual Coverage (most important): Regardless of whether journalists are politically liberal as individuals, what counts is the actual coverage of conservative and non-conservative presidents, candidates, etc.

Compare media treatment of Presidents G.H.W Bush (initially positive) and Clinton (initially negative)

Compare media treatment of Presidents Carter (consistently negative and Reagan (generally positive)

Compare media treatment of Presidents George W. Bush (generally positive) and Clinton (almost uniformly negative)

An effect of the constant charge of “liberal bias” is that it challenges national journalists to be tough on non-conservative presidents, maybe to go easier on conservatives.

One reason for constant emphasis on “liberal press” and President Clinton as “liberal” appears to be to push journalists in this direction (note, though, that the Wall Street Journal and other analysis suggested that Clinton is not a liberal but instead a relatively middle of the road Democrat).

Is there, despite all these points, a liberal bias among national media?

The following analysis from Media Matters critiques the MSNBC survey. Although Media Matters admittedly is liberal, their analysis contains useful points in relation to sample (the small number of all journalists), the data about overall contributions to parties by media organizations, the non-inclusion of data from publishers (who) are very likely to be conservative and Republican) and editors (almost as conservative, having been selected by publishers), and similar points.

The following are useful links to past pieces regarding media bias.

• Scoops, Impact or Glory: What Motivates Reporters? By Byron Calame, Public Editor. Published: December 3, 2006. The New York Times.
• Let This Leak Go. By Richard Cohen, Op-Ed Columnist. Published: October 13, 2005. The Washington Post.
• The Runaway Train That Hit Scooter Libby. By Cohen, Op-Ed Columnist. Published: June 19, 2007. The Washington Post.

I’ve written two essays attempting to disprove “military Keynesianism” – the idea that military spending is the best stimulus. See this and this.

In response, a reader challenged me to prove that anyone would advocate military spending or war as a fiscal stimulus.

In fact, the concept of military Keynesianism is so widespread that there are some half million web pages discussing the topic.

And many leading economists and political pundits sing its praises.

For example, Martin Feldstein – chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, an economics professor at Harvard, and a member of The Wall Street Journal’s board of contributors – wrote an op-ed in the Journal last December entitled “Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus”.

And as the Cato Institute notes:

Bill Kristol agrees. Noting that the military was “spending all kinds of money already,” Mr. Kristol wondered aloud, “If you’re buying 2,000 Humvees a month, why not buy 3,000? If you’re refurbishing two military bases, why not refurbish five?”

***

This is not the first time that defense spending has been endorsed as a way to jump-start the economy. Nearly five decades ago, economic advisers to President Kennedy urged him to increase military spending as an economic stimulus…

Similar arguments are heard today. The members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation have been particularly outspoken in their support for the Virginia-class submarine, and they haven’t been shy about pointing to the jobs that the program provides in their home state. The Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey program wins support on similar grounds. Despite serious concerns about crew safety and comfort, the V-22 program employs workers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Texas, and a number of other states.

Professors of political economy Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler write:

Theories of Military Keynesianism and the Military-Industrial Complex became popular after the Second World War, and perhaps for a good reason. The prospect of military demobilization, particularly in the United States, seemed alarming. The U.S. elite remembered vividly how soaring military spending had pulled the world out of the Great Depression, and it feared that falling military budgets would reverse this process. If that were to happen, the expectation was that business would tumble,unemployment would soar, and the legitimacy of free-market capitalism would again be called into question.

Seeking to avert this prospect, in 1950 the U.S. National Security Council drafted a top-secret document, NSC-68. The document, which was declassified only in 1977, explicitly called on the government to use higher military spending as a way of preventing such an outcome.
Are they right about NSC-68?

Well, PhD economist Robert Higgs confirms the importance of NSC-68:

Previously administration officials had encountered stiff resistance from Congress to their pleas for a substantial buildup along the lines laid out in NSC-68, a landmark document of April 1950. The authors of this internal government report took a Manichaean view of America’s rivalry with the Soviet Union, espoused a permanent role for the United States as world policeman, and envisioned U.S. military expenditures amounting to perhaps 20 percent of GNP. But congressional acceptance of the recommended measures seemed highly unlikely in the absence of a crisis. In 1950 “the fear that [the North Korean] invasion was just the first step in a broad offensive by the Soviets proved highly useful when it came to persuading Congress to increase the defense budget.” As Secretary of State Dean Acheson said afterwards, “Korea saved us.” The buildup reached its peak in 1953, when the stalemated belligerents in Korea agreed to a truce.

And Chalmers Johnson – Professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, and former CIA consultant - writes:

This is military Keynesianism — the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption.

This ideology goes back to the first years of the cold war. During the late 1940s, the US was haunted by economic anxieties. The great depression of the 1930s had been overcome only by the war production boom of the second world war. With peace and demobilisation, there was a pervasive fear that the depression would return. During 1949, alarmed by the Soviet Union’s detonation of an atomic bomb, the looming Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, a domestic recession, and the lowering of the Iron Curtain around the USSR’s European satellites, the US sought to draft basic strategy for the emerging cold war. The result was the militaristic National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze, then head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. Dated 14 April 1950 and signed by President Harry S Truman on 30 September 1950, it laid out the basic public economic policies that the US pursues to the present day.

In its conclusions, NSC-68 asserted: “One of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living”.

With this understanding, US strategists began to build up a massive munitions industry, both to counter the military might of the Soviet Union (which they consistently overstated) and also to maintain full employment, as well as ward off a possible return of the depression. The result was that, under Pentagon leadership, entire new industries were created to manufacture large aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and surveillance and communications satellites. This led to what President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address of 6 February 1961: “The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience” — the military-industrial complex.

By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in US manufacturing. From 1947 to 1990, the combined US military budgets amounted to $8.7 trillion. Even though the Soviet Union no longer exists, US reliance on military Keynesianism has, if anything, ratcheted up, thanks to the massive vested interests that have become entrenched around the military establishment. Global research (Micheal Chussodovsky)

From alternet:Reagan was inspirational, but to claim he defeated Communism is a disservice to the millions of Eastern Europeans who struggled against great odds for their freedom.

“It was not the military might of NATO, but the power of nonviolent action by ordinary citizens which brought down the system. The popular uprising against the repressive system that had ruled their country for much of the previous four decades — along with comparable movements, which came to the fore that year in Poland, Hungary and East Germany — marks a great triumph of the human spirit.

These movements were largely led by democratic socialists who mobilized workers, church people, intellectuals, and others to face down the tanks with their bare hands. Yet here in the United States, we are told that it was a result of President Reagan’s militarism and the supposed inherent superiority of capitalism. It is this false narrative that has played such a major role in shifting discourse to the right in subsequent decades and has been used to discredit those struggling for a more just and egalitarian economic system and a more sane and less imperialistic foreign policy.

President Reagan’s verbal support for democracy had little credibility in many of these countries. For example, while he denounced Poland’s martial law regime, he was a strong supporter of the more repressive martial law regime then in power in NATO ally Turkey and scores of other dictatorships. In challenging left-wing governments in the Third World, Reagan gave little credence to nonviolent action and instead backed insurgents with ties to U.S.-backed dictatorships and — in the case of Afghanistan — even Islamic fundamentalists.While Reagan was certainly capable of inspirational leadership and personal charm, to claim that he is responsible for the downfall of Communism and the end of the Cold War is a disservice to the millions of Eastern Europeans and others who struggled against great odds for their freedom. For it was not American militarism, but massive nonviolent action — including strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, and other forms of noncooperation — which finally brought down these Communist regimes. Indeed, the Charter 77 movement in Czechoslovakia and the Solidarity movement in Poland emerged during the period of U.S.-Soviet détente prior to Reagan taking office.”

(Emphasis mine)

see: http://www.alternet.org/world/144069

Yes, in America, freedom seems like the air around us: It’s there; it’s sweet, though we rarely give it a thought. Yet as the air fills our lungs, freedom fills our souls. It gives breath to our laughter and joy. It gives voice to our songs. It gives us strength as we race for our dreams.

Radio Address to the Nation on the Celebration of Thanksgiving Day
November 19, 1988

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By Jim Chandley

Nicholas Kristof writes in today’s New York Times about the arguments being raised against healthcare reform today and how little they differ from the attacks on Social Security and Medicare before each became laws in 1935 and 1965.

It’s about time someone drew this comparison in such a well thought out manner.

I have been raising the topic in conversation for some time.  Long before he became President, Ronald Reagan made a record financed by the AMA about the evils of socialized medicine.  Famously used in Michael Moore’s Sicko, this record was the first of many forays into voyeurism for the young politician.  It was at best a compilation of all the worst fears that people could possibly have about socialized medicine (which was not even a topic on the table).

Today, the right is playing the same game and the public has had the same reaction.  The status quo is treated not as one of many possibilities, but as the only acceptable way to proceed.  I applaud Mr. Kristof’s piece, where is the rest of the middle-ground media on this one?