Could GOP Leaders Possibly Believe Their Own Rhetoric?
Is it possible that Republicans truly believe that President Obama is both a socialist, and a fascist, who wasn't born in the United States, and that providing affordable health-care to American families is a plot to destroy America? Could they possibly believe that Dick Cheney kept America safe, or that George Bush was protecting the American way of life? And is it possible that they consider their incendiary rhetoric simply innocent speech, and don't recognize that during this time of severe hardship they could very easily incite insurrection within the country? It's not likely. Read More »
Could Obama Fall Victim to a Change We Can't Believe in?
At this point Obama's presidency could go either way - he can either become one of the greatest presidents this country has ever known, or go down as an exciting experiment that went bad. It's all up to how he handles the expectations of Independents. Read More »
Joe Lieberman: To Hell with the American People
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has announced that if the senate includes a public option to healthcare reform he's prepared to side with the Republicans in a filibuster to prevent the bill from coming up for a vote. In other words, he's prepared to fight to block the will of the American people.
This is the same Joe Lieberman that Democrats sweat blood and treasure to support in his bid for vice president in the 2000 election; the same Joe Lieberman who signed a pledge with seven Republicans and six other Democrats not to filibuster any of Bush's judicial nominations in 2005; and the very same Joe Lieberman whose own Connecticut constituents polled 21 to 68% (a 47% margin) in favor of a public option. But he doesn't care about all of that. All he cares about is protecting his cash cow - the insurance industry. Read More »
ODE TO A BLEEDING HEART
The one factor that contributed most to the downfall of the Democratic Party during during the seventies and eighties was allowing conservative Republicans to seize control of the political rhetoric. The Democrats simply sat back and allowed themselves, their constituency and their agenda to be redefined in the eyes of the American people by conservative "spin doctors" without rebuttal. As a direct result, they've allowed the term "liberal" to become a bad word in the political lexicon. Read More »
Conservatives Waking Up in Droves
Well, it seems that the GOP is finally coming into its own. Both its numbers, and its rhetoric, reflect that its rapidly becoming more of a cult than a political party. Recent polls indicate that now only 20% of the American people will even admit to being Republican these days. That's down from 32% in November. If its current rate of decline continues, after the 2010 election there won't be enough Republicans left in Washington to throw a card party - and that's with good reason.
History doesn't lie, at least, until Republicans get a hold to it. But with their desperate attempt to regain power at any cost, this current crop of GOP 'leaders' have inadvertently betrayed their true agenda - to promote the interest of big business at the expense of the American people. Every initiative that they champion is transparently designed to do just that. Read More »
GOP 'Patriots' Strike America Once Again
My computer is still warm from my last article where I pointed out that the GOP is no longer conservative, and has become anti-American. Now, reinforcing my position, they've struck out against America again. In last week's column, "Limbaugh-Beck and the GOP Patriots Against America", I pointed out that you can say what you will about true conservatives, but they are fiercely patriotic, and will ALWAYS, support America, regardless to what the circumstances.
But this current group of renegade Republicans are clearly demonstrating not only that they're not true conservatives, but they're not even loyal Americans. With every day that passes it becomes increasingly clear that their only concern is making money, regaining power, and accommodating their own self-interest, and they're more than willing to throw America under the bus to achieve those goals. Read More »
Limbaugh-Beck and the GOP Patriots Against America
If anyone had any doubt about whether or not the GOP has become anti-American, all doubt should now be laid to rest. Rush Limbaugh, the titular head of the Republican Party, slipped into an altered state of bliss after hearing the news that the United States lost its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The man was completely beside himself with glee. God only knows what would have happened if we'd also been attacked - his body fluids would've had to be cleaned off the studio floor. I watched the video of Limbaugh's antics over and over again in total disbelief. It's literally unbelievable what's happened to the Republican Party. Read More »
The Republican Agenda: Keep America Ignorant and Miserable, at any Cost
The Republican Party is a coalition of three separate constituencies with confluent interests. The first group is made up of traditional conservatives. These are highly patriotic Americans who believe in limited government, the primacy of the people over government, and fiscal responsibility. But the other two groups that have coalesced within the GOP are much more malevolent - international business interests, and social bigots.
It is the former of these two, international business, that controls the GOP. It's made up of highly educated individuals with huge resources and plenty of clout - and they use every bit of their resources and clout to manipulate what has become their citizen army - the social bigots. The social bigots are the people we see armed to the teeth at presidential speeches, disrupting townhall meetings, and fighting against their own interests. In short, these are the Joe the Plumbers of the world. Read More »
The Religious Right: A Threat to America
When I became of age one of the first things I did was to reassess all of my previous beliefs and attitudes. Thereafter, I discarded as invalid anything that didn't stand up to logical and objective scrutiny, because even at that young age, I'd lived long enough to recognize that most of the problems in this world are a direct result of our failure to re-examine our illogical views of reality. Most religious zealots not only fail to go through that process, but refuse to as a matter of religious doctrine. It is due to that kind of zealotry, along with their doctrinal obligation against even considering the fact that they might be zealots, that makes the religious right a clear and present danger to both the United States, and the world. Read More »
The Ironies of 911
While viewing America's solemn commemoration of the eighth anniversary of 911, I began to reflect upon its many ironies. The very first thing that came to mind was Dick Cheney's claim that the Bush administration's policies have kept us safe. My second thought was, he must think we're crazy - and far too many of us are. Read More »
Lofty Ideals are Only as Meaningful as the Backbone that Supports Them
Is it just me, or is anyone else curious about how the GOP managed to suspend the United States Constitution, thrust us headlong into a costly and unjustified war, ravage the global economy, and destroy America's moral credibility throughout the world, while the Democrats, even after being handed the White House and a huge majority in both houses of congress, can't even manage to pass a healthcare bill that would benefit every family in America?
If like me, you've been curious about this issue, scratch your head no more. The answer is screaming at us right before our eyes, but like the angry medicare recipient boisterously demonstrating against socialism, we simply refused to believe our lying eyes. Read More »
We all know who is running this whole backlash, the Republican Party. Here's the proof: Rupert Murdoch has a monopoly on American mainstream news media, and every cable news station is either connected to him through mutual CEO friendships/funds. What Murdoch thinks is broadcast on every network in every shape or form. Murdoch is a registered Republican. To add to that, investors in these networks who are politically conservatives have the last say in what narratives and perspectives get put on screens. Why is Dobbs, Beck, and Cramer still on the networks when they screwed up so much and scare people to death? Think certain Arabian leaders who fund al-Queda and you have another form of domestic terrorism. Republican Congressmen and women are ordered by Steele to do whatever means possible to prevent universal health care from happening in this country "by any means necessary." Tap on Murdoch's shoulder, and we have our population scared shitless and left even more ignorant and uneducated on how Obama's health care will help us. Who is running this operation? G-O-P, who want to run this country from the backseat. Old strategies indeed. The GOP won in 1994, they shouldn't win in 2009.
Another aspect of the GOP's desire to lynch President Obama is inherent racism. With everything Obama does, he is inspected and thought of differently because of the color of his skin. Former president Bush made this country so close to fascism, yet everyone is viewing his efforts as light and favorable. Now, an African American man is president and they are giving him the Malcolm X treatment. Talk about a double standard! Not to mention, if anything, this health care thing and people's misunderstandings on it have wakened the sleeping dragon, of racism. All this is hype and fear, what is this? The Bush Administration?!
If anything, people just need to educate themselves or at least someone should start a bumper sticker campaign, "Eight Years We Lived With An Idiot, Time To Start Thinking Again." I don't want to see President Obama hanging from a noose outside of the White House.
Obama needs to send a diplomatic team over there just to show that Obama is not Bush, that seems to be why Kim Jong-Il is testing him by threatening a nuclear attack on Hawaii. We can work this out people, because I don't want the worst to happen. I don't think anyone wants the worst to happen. I do not want to feel afraid anymore, like I was with George W. Bush, who went in and out of his way to scare the shit out of me.
Obama is not Bush, he'll do the right thing. Strong diplomacy, which we now have, is our way out of this mess.
In the wake of North Korea's attitude, however, I feel like as busy as we are with reviving our strong diplomacy, we need to use that again towards North Korea and use our resources properly to prevent any immature actions from taking place.
As someone who just experienced eight years of weak diplomacy and a man who only knew how to exploit them for his and an exclusive fews benefit, it is VERY important to stress that we need to use our diplomacy and not ending up prematurely exhausting it just to prove who's the man here. It is time to make peace a priority. We don't have to lead nations through conservative imperialism, we can lead by example. If we make peace a priority, we can energize our diplomats to encourage the same thing.
In the past, America has gone through a Cold War whose leftovers we still have in the refrigerator of our collective minds, and Bush did set up a Reaganite international standard before leaving his presidency. This American does not want 20th century reruns to determine the course of action for the next 4-8 years. If we make peace a priority, and actually work towards achieving that, then we can not deal with unfriendly countries and their nuclear experiments. Personally, I think Kim Jong-Il is bluffing when it comes to the whole "let's test nuclear arms on Hawaii so I can be taken seriously," but the mentality I have applies not only to him in this circumstance. Any male world leader who is trying to prove his masculinity through nuclear arms is not a man, but a coward with ammunition. George W. Bush was a coward with ammunition by trying to prove his masculinity through invading Iraq. I think President Obama is saying one thing and working out ways of preventing the worst from happening, which is good. It's pragmatic. We need pragmatism.
Because I for one, could live in a world without nuclear arms.
Economically, it was all about spending money, giving tax breaks to the better off, corporate tax breaks, and flushing our money down the drain into a guaranteed quagmire of foreign policy excrement(Iraq).With the rich getting richer and being allowed to break the rules for personal gain, we had an economic culture of Gordon Gekkos running around.
How this transpired into our foreign policy is this: Bush's Iraq was Reagan's Iran-Contra realized. By invading a country and using an unjustified,invalidated excuse(Reagan-communism; bush-terrorism), Bush was able to sponge benefits from Halliburton and disguise it as "bringing democracy to the world" but in effect giving communists in Nicaragua the same juice of support the way Bush the same ideological juice to support their activities through this distraction. By making sure Nicaraguan Communists got weapons from Iran with US taxpayer money, in the end it would supposedly make America come on top, the same way by making sure Americans originally believed the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and thus, flushing our money down the drain with the support of top CEO bigwigs in our economy to "make the world safe for democracy." With weak diplomacy and overseas investments, the American economy was bound to get into a recession sooner or later. But, unlike Reagan, who totally fixed it so that his number 5 would get the blame(Oliver North) and not him, Bush just pressed away and faded out, thus making it safe to give Obama all the problems he is currently trying to solve.
Reagan and Bush had the religious right to back them up and expanding media conglomerates to convince the supposed uneducated masses that they were the big man in charge and that if you weren't okay with it, demonization and being called unpatriotic.L ike Reagan's Moral Majority's effect on the social climate of America, the values we stood behind we, as a country, were ready to trample on so long as the big man kept us scared shitless. Abortion, habeus corpus, Geneva Conventions, the Constitution, free election. We are currently experiencing what was literally leftover from the Bush administration.
and Bush made it safe to put all the blame on the guy fixing all the problems left behind: President Obama.After 8 years of unregulated economic activity, it makes sense why people are so uncomfortable and ready to play the fascist card because Obama is regulating again.
What Obama is doing is not as bad as people fear it to be. The companies he bought are only temporary buys until the company can independently function again, and some have recently graduated from that temporary fix. His plans of cutting off overshore accounts has to do with stimulating gross national product within the nation, the key to making America independently economically successful again. By limiting CEO's indulgent behavior, he is preventing another recession from happening in the next 25 years.and, another great thing, delegating the transference of national gross product from oil to alternative resources, which is sorely needed, because it will produce jobs and it will make the grass greener, so to speak. By universalizing health care with public and private options, Obama is creating healthy economic competition in the long run because with options come picking who has the best for you, etc. So far, amidst all this, his only competition is weak mass media propaganda paid for by the beneficiaries of the status quo and their affiliates and lobbyists who are dependent on their last financial fixes from oil and coal.
Just thought I'd share.
As Iranians go to the polls to elect a president, American neoconservatives are openly rooting not for moderate reform candidate and former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi but for anti-U.S. hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This is an obvious sign both of the neocons' preference for conflict over peace between the U.S. and Iran and of the generally bankrupt state of conservatism in America, reduced now to banking on failure for the Obama administration (see Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow).
Should the reformist Mousavi win the Iranian election and become president, it would likely signal a new and more positive direction for U.S.-Iranian relations as well as providing support for the "Obama Doctrine" of engagement with Iran and other adversaries. Such a development would at the same time undercut the neocon attitude of hostility and suspicion toward Iran, as well as undercutting the right-wing Israeli government's aggressive stance toward Iran. Indeed right-wingers in Israel like those in America appear to see nothing good for themselves in any warming of relations between the U.S. and Iran, as observed by M.J. Rosenberg at TPM and Yaakov Katz at the Jerusalem Post.
The unpleasant fellow you see pictured here is Daniel Pipes of the right-wing Middle East Forum, a raging neocon who said in a speech this week at the Heritage Foundation that he would vote for Ahmadinejad if he were allowed to vote in Iran (video). The American Enterprise Institute's Michael Rubin likewise told Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review that it could be better for Ahmadinejad to win, because a Mousavi win might give Obama the impression that diplomacy was working. Painting Iran as inherently and hopelessly evil, Rubin said of the Iranian election that "should someone more soft-spoken and less defiant -- someone like former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi -- win, it would be easier for Obama to believe that Iran really was figuratively unclenching a fist when, in fact, it had it had its other hand hidden under its cloak, grasping a dagger."
Without so openly rooting for Ahmadinejad, other neocons are playing down the significance of a possible Mousavi victory, obviously worried that a shift in power will signal a fresh start for U.S.-Iranian relations that could leave American and Israeli hawks out in the cold. The same right-wing pundits who constantly point out Ahmadinejad's bad behavior as reasons to confront Iran now argue that it doesn't matter who the president of Iran is. Martin Peretz wrote at the New New Republic: "We've known for a long time that elected leaders do not carry the weight of those who have been anointed." Ilan Berman likewise wrote at the American Spectator: "Whoever ends up becoming president will have little real power -- and even less influence over Iran's geostrategic direction."
The prospect of peace in the Greater Middle East must give sociopaths like these nightmares the rest of us could scarcely imagine.
Mark C. Eades
http://www.mceades.com
Also, he is doing the best he can to fulfill his campaign promises. Anyone with common sense and a sense of how long it takes for political change to happen in this country by D.C. standards should know by now that it takes time for these changes to occur. The most we can do is continue to stay informed, sign the petitions, and show our support. Also, it is important to know that a goal was to bring back respectable bipartisanship. The GOP is up to their old tricks and using their mass media conglomerates( since conservative Republicans own, invest in, and are more than likely to sponsor what news comes out of the boob tube than ever before) to misinform and scare the living daylights out of us and the people who cannot think for themselves.
In light of these things, I would like to commend President Obama for lifting the gag rule, trying to establish a timetable for leaving Iraq, developing a strong diplomacy team, improving our responsibility to the environment, and busting his ass to fix and stimulate our economy. He's doing the best he can, and hasn't lost sight of his principles that we voted for last November. The political right has done a lot to combat such progress, leaving some conservative Republicans to think that the way he is stimulating the economy and steering money back into the US "fascist." All he is doing is what the economy needs right now, basic regulation. Because of de-regulation dating all the way back to Reagan( not considering however Clinton's 8 years of successful economic prosperity and expansion, more on him later) and amplified by George W., not to mention our money being flushed down the toilet of Iraq and tax cuts for the rich 1% and tax breaks for corporations, we are in the current state that we are in. Our real problem is not with Obama, it is with our idea that a President can magically fix everything all at once like a magician while we sit back and do nothing about it. It is a time to do something about it. Clinton didn't fix Bush I's leftovers in the first 6 months of his presidency, and no one judged him harshly for it, we should do the same for President Obama.
One more thing, I am sad that California upheld its ruling against the equal right for people to marry of the same gender. But, there is a movement growing that will sure give whoever is behind these rulings, legal and otherwise, a run for their money.
Good night, and good luck!
It's been a long time since I've checked in with politics, and I'm completely out of the loop. I didn't even participate in the Obama campaign!! I only managed to yell at some of the republicans in my school, and say "Go Obama" like 5 times.
I caught the end of the Maddoff scandal, and did a report on the stimulus package, which I really didn't understand. My teacher said it sounded great, but I probably confused her with random statistics and big words...
I just wanted to say that almost all of my 8th grade class is left wing, and totally supported Obama, which is kind of interesting, since most of their parents are right wing. Back in November, a few classmates and I organized a mock election, and Obama won by a long shot.
All I can do right now in the midst of NJASK testing and graduation is blog about my opinion on Barack Obama's "Audacity of Hope", so bear with me, or buzz off!
How Loyal is the Loyal Opposition?
From this point on I pledge to stop using the terms "conservative" and "Republican" interchangeably. I'm beginning to realize there's a big difference between the two. Conservatives are loyal and well-meaning Americans of good faith who just happen not to share my opinion of what's in the best interest of America. On the other hand, it has become clear that the Republican Party has crossed the line between the loyal opposition, and subversion.
Am I indulging in radical hyperbole? I don't think so. The American Heritage Dictionary defines subversive as "Intended or serving to subvert, especially intended to overthrow or undermine an established government." Read More »
Right-wing hack Glenn Beck has taken on his Fox News talk show to spreading paranoid fantasies of a coming totalitarian America, total economic collapse, and an armed citizens' uprising in defense of the constitution. On the Feb. 20 installment of his "War Room" segment, Beck and a paranoid panel of guests raised the spectre of the "bubba effect," a rise of individual militias across America in response to liberal tyranny, and suggested that America is on the verge of civil war.
The segment is pure melodrama, beginning with a warning that some might find the material disturbing and advising viewer discretion. Beck then opens with a nightmare vision of the year 2014 in Barack Obama's America: All US banks have been nationalized, Beck predicts; unemployment stands at between 12 and 20 percent; the Dow is trading at around 2800; the real estate market has collapsed; the government and unions control most business; and America's credit rating has been severely downgraded. As Beck and his guests continue, the picture gets worse: Since the Democratic victories of 2006 and 2008, the segment suggests, the USA we used to know has been transformed into the Islamic Socialist Republic of Obamistan, where income tax rates have risen to between eighty and ninety-five percent, and where we all must live in fear of the Obamist secret police who will soon be coming to take away our guns and bibles. Beck and his guests predict a Mad Max-like environment in America's cities, which have become no-go zones controlled by armed gangs presumably of angry blacks and illegal aliens. Meanwhile, the disenfranchised and betrayed "bubbas" of America's heartland have taken to setting up armed, self-sufficient communities hostile to outsiders, and to preparing for civil war.
Finally, Beck asks his guests how such a situation might be defused, and they suggest provocatively that perhaps it should not be defused at all but encouraged, since it is government that is at fault and such an uprising would be an uprising against tyranny in defense of the constitution. At this Beck feigns shock and surprise, though his barely-masked excitement at the prospect says he is really just playing along as his guests more-or-less openly advocate the armed overthrow of the US government. Indeed earlier that day on Fox, Beck had played the sad and fearful prophet of doom, showing us his shaking hands to prove how afraid he is at the prospect of civil war in America, and warning us: "You need to prepare."
I wonder how many "bubbas" who watched Beck's show are, even now, stocking up on guns, ammo, and survival supplies for the coming apocalypse: Ka-ching!
Mark C. Eades
http://www.mceades.com
Posts
