I Could Spit

One year into it and the Republicans are again succeeding at doing what they do best: nothing.

President Obama took the reins, the very same ones which were tangled up in a ball in the muck and grime beneath the lurching and shuddering wagon which had become our nation, and immediately he went to work; he guided us through some of the most troublesome economic times we have seen in our history.

Banks are needed and the actions of President Obama saved the biggest banks; banks, really, that were too big. Should one or two fail, they can yank the whole economy, the world's that is, down to its knees. This is not right. President Obama, avoiding the rhetoric and demagoguery that is so abused by republicans, saved the banks and now proposes to ensure that this does not happen again. Who is against this banking reform? Yes, the republicans.

And, while he was at it, he saved the US auto industry; he then went after the irresponsible and shark-like tactics of the credit card companies (smell financial need and they swarm you with high-interest but already-approved credit cards); and, while taking a break from his accomplishments, he has rightly led us to the brink of what will be the greatest social contract in our nation's history: health care reform. Who was against all of the above? Yes, those same missing-in-obstruction republicans.

Stealing our Wealth

The Conservatives (really, I am so confused by who is what in that party, so let's go back to calling them the GOPCONers) love to lie about how President Obama is bankrupting our nation. Well, here is a little ditty for ya: we are already bankrupt. Let's take a look at GOPCON accomplishments since W stole the White House in 2001 and see how we got there:

1) 9/11. They were in charge, it happened on their watch so guess what who gets blamed? Also, Condoleeza Rice, the least competent NSC chief we have ever had blatantly ignored all the warnings about the imminent attacks; and, monkey boy (W), never one to be bothered with reading his Presidential Daily Briefing, failed to take notice of one in late August 2001 entitled "Bin Laden determined to use hi-jacked aircraft as weapons against US targets." Wow! Lost wealth.

2) Late on the night of 9/11, W told Richard Clarke, the expert on Al Qaeda who had not met with President Bush (needed emphasis) until after the attacks had occurred, to find a link to Saddam. Clarke insisted that none existed but Bush testily told to "find one." (Clarke used to meet with Clinton once a week to discuss Al Qaeda not once in 8 9 months had he met with the new Prez.)

With Bin Laden trapped in the mountains and intercepted messages from him to relatives in which he was saying his good-byes showing just how "caught" he was, we got up and left him there. We instead invaded Iraq. We all know what this has gotten for our nation.

Um, nothing, zero. Name one tangible thing that was gained from that so-called war--although, it is not a war officially. 5000 dead Americans (lost economic value); 40,000 amputees (not just lost economic value but continued drains on our nation's wealth); and, trillions of dollars of money spent not on our nation's infrastructure; not on making our economy more competitive; not on preparing us for what are already the obvious effects of global warming; no, money we didn't have wasted on a war no one needed. Lost wealth.

3) Those tax cuts: the largest tax cuts in the history of the world were enacted by W in his first 6 months in office; and then, after 9/11, with our troops in 2 countries, he cut some more taxes. Since 1999, we have had zero overall job growth in the private sector. Yet, as usually happens under republicans, the federal pay-roll expanded in leaps and bounds. W failed to listen to the CIA and their warnings about Bin Laden and we get strapped with the Department of Homeland Security, the largest expansion of the federal government in our history. Lost wealth.

Oh, and whatever happened to that tried-and-true economic "theory" of cut taxes and then watch the wealthy invest in jobs? Didn't happen because, you see, the taxes were being cut on virtual wealth, derivatives and housing bubbles and such. Also, taxes were being cut for people who don't own factories, small businesses and start-ups but rather on the types who take that money and stuff it away in off-shore accounts to avoid the IRS so as to create ever larger empires for their rotten offspring. These rich people don't reinvest in the economy! When are the GOPCONers going to get this?

Propaganda

Oh and how they lie and obstruct, those GOPCONers. When they are dismantling our wealth by invading nations and ensuring that the nation's tax base--where a nation gets it's money from--is being decimated, they also like to reach into the private lives of people and micromanage there. They force God into lives; they contradict themselves about life and death--anti-abortion but pro gun. Guns kill people. Make your fingers look like a gun and try shooting someone. Doesn't work, right. Put a gun in that hand and watch out.

A nation needs to be governed. Governments provide infrastructures which make nations safe, economically more competitive and which provide quality of life for all citizenry. A good government tries to ensure that all of its citizenry are getting the best possible chance to succeed in life; success requires clean air, clear water, safe roads and bridges, safe parks, health care, professional police and ever watchful TSA agents.

When one party spends all of its time and energy attacking a president at a time when the nation needs unity to survive a crisis that the minority party brought on, you have to ask yourself, are they not traitorous? After 9/11, the Dems puts politics aside and supported W. The republicans have not done any pro-America governing since the Carter-era. From Clinton's ascendancy to date, they have ruled by emotion and lies.

They are a dangerous and harmful force in our national saga and sadly, most of America cannot see this because it is precisely those Republican-style lies and emotions which make for great news ratings: the media are in full cahoots because they too are making lots of money from all of this.

Let's look at the run-off for the seat in Massachusetts which will take place tomorrow; the media are focusing on this as an "anti-Obama" vote; a anti-incumbent vote; they are fanning the flames to make it seem like Obama's leadership has been a failure to date. What they are not focusing on, and what should be the biggest headline of all is, that this republican, likely to win tomorrow, has already said he will not support President Obama's attempts to tax the big banks to make them pay back the money they us our government. Does that make any sense? They don't want to get the money back?

Again, the republicans are falling on the side of big business by supporting the same destructive, anti-working-class, anti-America policies that have gotten us here in the first place; and, all that the media can show is Dick calling Obama weak and Tea Party nuts calling him a socialist or a Muslim.

When will the GOP be taken to task for destroying our nation? When do the media decide that enough is enough and start to let all of America know just how the republicans have frittered away our wealth, our security all for the sake of their wealthy buddies at the country club?

PS: When that bozo tried to blow up a plane with his exploding shoe, why weren't full-body scanners introduced into all airports back then? Why? Because that would have cost the government a lot of money. And, that was precisely when the tax cuts were taking hold and our nation's revenues were starting to drastically drop; in other words, because it wasn't important to W to find money to enhance the safety of all for he was too concerned with increasing the wealth of the so, so few.

This is the America the republicans want for us all. I could spit.

The Wild (and Wet if you are New Orleans) World of Dick Cheney

As in Disney World, a land of magical fun where fantasy and dreams meet reality, so too the world of Dick (and I mean that literally) Cheney--aka Mr. Potter--is one where fact and fiction wed and the result is often times a bitter concoction of anti-American diatribes cloaked in fear-mongering and patriotism.

Terrorists, schmerrorists...

Selected by the Supreme Court and elected by a minority of Americans, monkey-boy W Bush came to down riding a carpet woven together by anything but a mandate for drastic action. As we would find out, W and his VP were not so concerned with the reality at hand and what they did was force through the largest tax cut in the history of the world!

Yes, not just our history but world history! Imaginez, s'il vous plait, le petit prince disregarded dire warnings of an imminent terrorist attack because as Condie Rice said to Richard Clarke--the single greatest authority on Al Qaeda in the government at the time: "The President is too busy right now to meet with you about possible terrorist attacks because he is busy getting his tax cut passed."

Those words were uttered by the queen of incompetence in the Spring of 2001. And, right up until those buildings collapsed and 2,750 Americans were crushed to death, the president responsible for our well-being simply had no time to meet with anyone concerning the imminent attacks.

The month prior to those attacks he was AWOL at his ranch, clearning brush! Isn't that why we allow illegal immigrant Mexicans to hang on street corners? Why didn't monkey-boy ride a pick-up down to the corner and slow to a crawl to let a few of the Pepe's and Pedro's jump in for an honest day's labor?

No, our macho prez had to do it himself and America was rudderless in the final month prior to the attacks despite daily CIA warnings that an attack was absolutely in the works and going to happen "any day now." The rest is sadly history.

Cheney's World

On Christmas day of 2009, a want-to-be terrorist failed to blow up a plane. Bored and having nothing else to report on, the media decided to somehow make a national obsession of almost nothing. Yes, again the incomptence of government bureaucrats permitted a loser like that kid from Nigeria to board a plane. Yes, the heroics of passengers saved many lives on that day.

And then, rather than sit down and really study what went wrong, in a manner that should have been done after 9/11 but thanks to the criminal obstructionism of the Bush/Cheney White House we still do not have complete picture of government wrongs leading up to and 9/11, CNN and Fox started to quote Cheney. "This president does not know their is a war going on against terrorists."

Now, why didn't a smart America and an astute media pose one question that could have and should have shut that clown up: "Dick, on whose watch did 9/11 happen in the first place? Where were you and your 'know-it-alls' when those warnings were being given to both you and the president on a daily basis for 3 months prior to 9/11?"

Some follow-up questions could have been: "Um, Mr. Potter, wasn't it you and W who decided to stop pursuing Bin Laden in Afghanistan when he was cornered in the mountains? Wasn't it you who ordered an illegal invasion of Iraq and who STOPPED that war against Al Qaeda rebels in Afghanistan in December 2002? Wasn't it you who started a war we are still in against people who are NOT the terrorists? And isn't it President Obama who has redirected our efforts at engaging the terrorists in Afghanistan by sending an additional 30,000 troops? If that is not an understanding of war, then what is?"

First of all, Cheney is one of the most anti-American people in America today. He honestly is probably sad that that plane didn't get blown up all so as to show that Obama is incompetent.

Secondly, Cheney wants Obama to stoke the coals of fear. He wants the American people to become obsessed again with the monster in the dark closet; the one hiding under the bed. He wants civil liberties to be encroached upon; he wants Obama's domestic agenda to fail so he is trying desperately, and succeeding thanks to a disgusting and irresponsible media, by sowing the seeds of doubt in this man's leadership.

A Great Leader

And, a leader he is. Obama did exactly what he was supposed to have done: nothing. "Nothing" is good and why? Because terrorists want to know that they are disrupting everyday life, weaving fear and anxiety into everything we do, day in and day out. Obama's reactions behinds closed doors should have been to head butt some people for this failure to detect this kid with the exploding underwear. But, in public he should have merely praised people for their heroics, announced the beginning of an investigation of what went wrong and then gone back on vacation.

The terrorists were emboldened, however, by Cheney and the anti-America GOPCON idiots who have since that day made careers denouncing Obama for his "weakness on terrorism" and by saturating the airwaves and printed media with dire warnings of armageddon thanks to the next generation of "jockey underwear bombers" in training in the outback of Africa.

Attention and fear is what they were aiming for and when I flew to Miami on January 2nd, it was simply chaos! The lines were endless and the "checks" of our personal belongings the same, nothing had changed but for some reason we waited 2 hours to pass through security only to have had to run to the gate in our socks. The terrorists had failed but Cheney and the GOP had once again succeeded in drawing our attention from real problems at hand and for making all of America ill at ease.

It's not the terrorists but anti-America Republicans, it's the economy, it's their failed leadership since 1994 and it is their demonizing of government that has made our nation a much less safer and even a poorer nation than we had been in 1996.

Always remember, 9/11 happened because of a mixture of arrogance, ignorance and sheer laziness and it happened while Bush and Cheney were in charge. So, who is he to talk and why is it that the American media listen? (Oh, yeah, because when a lot of people are watching TV, the ratings go up and they can charge more to advertise on their channels...)

Fox: The Dumber the Better

There once was an American creed which, to paraphrase, stated the following: to those who rise early, who are honest and who respect their neigbors, the fruits of their labor will bring them rewards.

And then, the era of corporate welfare began in earnest; the era of hysterical governing in which a tactic often used by "communists" in Russia was employed to such a degree that still 15 years later we are stuck in this quagmire of "ungovernability."

The deke used with such amazing success by the hysterical-right (HR, hereinafter) is a simple one: lie about one's enemy with passion, believe your lie, and then force him to disprove the lie, nevertheless however, the stain will be on the dress (thank you Monica for saving it). This has been an amazing tactic used for nearly a century by Russian communists and now today's so-called democratically-elected governing party. In Russia, and in other low-trust societies, you lie and he who has the money to spin that lie and make it "reality" is the ultimate victor for the other guy expends all his energy disproving the lie.

Not My Concern

Russia, however, is not my concern. Despite living here for many years, I have learned one thing: keep your mouth shut in this society. You can have a negative opinion but just don't try to apply that to action or else very quickly you will be identified, isolated and expelled or arrested.

My concern is what I see happening in our America. Yes, we have always had an emotional and slightly hysterical bent to our politics. George Washington hated the media and the opposition so much when he left office he secretly feared that America couldn't last if new rules for governing weren't instituted. Not much was done, though, and today we still see similar tactics being applied by the media and the opposition.

The danger, however, lies not in these tactics but in the collaboration of these tactics. When the media becomes the opposition then we set out into swamps only traveled by the likes of Nazi's and Communists. For 15 years, all media in Nazi Germany were slipping into all aspects of their reporting, from weather forecasts to sales of lady's pantyhose, that Jews were "vermin." Guess what? During the immediate de-Nazification era after the war, Germans from 15 to 30 years of age were absolutely convinced that Jews were vermin. Fed lies by the mass media for over a decade, the lies became the truth.

Under Communism, for 70 years, lies (propaganda) were spilled across every aspect of society: from newspapers, to radio, to TV, to subway walls to park benches, the glory of communism was extolled. True, many knew that these "glories" were not so great. Yet, to this day, there are entire generations who are convinced that it was the American army that committed atrocities during WWII against Germans and Jews; that the firebombing of Dresden was genocide; that presidents are chosen by elite committees behind closed doors and so on. Now, the current system is again spoon-feeding the nation lies, opinions and creating for modern-day Russia, it's reality.

Hysteria for Power's Sake

The HR, the GOPCON Party and Fox-"News" are taking plays from the playbooks of some very dangerous and destructive parties. No good can be gained when a major network news program, with the resources of not just a TV station, but countless internet sites, newspapers and magazines, so vociferously creates a false reality for to the nation about politicians it does not feel fall in line with its political views.

Fox's behaviour is traitorous. The support of the HR for Fox's tactics is based on greed and immediate political gain. The GOPCON wants power so they can go back to ruining our nation through their inherent mismanagement; go back to bankrupting our nation through their ridiculus corporate welfare (tax cuts); so they can return to making America dumber by NOT investing in education, by making it less likely that working Americans can get student loans, by perpetuating our obsession with fossil fuels which leave us stuck in the go-nowhere economic muck we are currently in.

The dangers of letting Fox mangle the truth by inseminating it with lies is that since the birth of Fox, a generation of youth have come to age. These youth now believe these lies to be the truth. Class assaults that under Reagan would have been considered impeachable offenses, thanks to the hysteria and lies stoked by Fox, are today reasons why Republicans get elected in many states. And, the danger lies in the simplistic world of dichtomies: good versus evil, us v. them, black v. white, Yankees v. Phillies. The simpler the argument, the easier it is for people to understand.

Fox is for Dumb People

If we were to look at the places where Fox is considered the Gospel, we would notice that these parts of America are the least educated. The more outrageous and simplistic the lie, the easier it is to understand, the less worry a politician has about his hysteria and lies being questioned by an informed electorate.

Last year in Russia when the chess-genius Gary Kasparov tried to run for president, his followers were beaten and jailed. Why? Because he is smart and his platform was simple: are we better off today than we were 8 years ago? And then, the smart, well-spoken and well-respected, if not adored by many Russians chess champ merely laid out the problems that have gotten worse under Putin. He was chased out of the country. The goverment/party-controlled mass media made him out to be a drug-using, child-molesting lunatic--all lies, but, the truth was created by a the ruling party's media.

Putin feared Kasparov's intelligent and rational critique would result in smart voters, the majority being concentrated in St. Petersburg and Moscow, not turning out to vote on election day. So, he silenced rational, unemotional opposition and he kept the voters in the dark; instead they spent months pondering whether it could be true that their chess hero was really a heroin-addicted pedofile. And, Medvedev won by a landslide. He created emotional responses where none should have been and manipulated them against his potential opponent.

Some Questions

Finally, I would like to ask some questions of my sane and educated breathren on the other side of the political pendulum: can you really think any good will come out of joining the GOP with Fox-News? Can you really think any good will come from making our electorate dumber so they will question less? When will you return to the core values that made our nation strong, sustainable and great?

Par for the Course

They should be ashamed, but, they won't be.

There are things like, let's see...a constitution. ""Ah, that's just an outdated piece of paper," they mutter over grits drowned in butter. There is a court that is supposed to make decisions based the letter of the law. "Yeah, but, most of those justices were chosen by republican presidents so they had to choose W for the presidency," they rejoice whilst staring at maps of the world where thanks to our troops "democracy" has taken root.

There is even an office, an oval one, in which sits the highest, elected official in the land. He is the President of ALL the United States of America. Shame was brought to this great office by Nixon; by a republican congress-led witch hunt, which did to Clinton what is trying with some success to do to Obama--spread lies and hate against the president so as to distract him from his agenda and wait until he makes a major mistake. Yes, Clinton was stupid to start that affair given the HUAC-style pressure he was under from a nation held hostage by Newt and company.

W brought shame to the White House, to the nation; but, he was and still is called President Bush and in all my dislike of him, I would be awed to meet one of less than 50 men in the past 200 plus years to have held the title of President of the United States of America.

Last night, some southern Joe from none other than the state that fired the first shot against federal troops in 1861 at Fort Sumter, had the utter indecency to shame the office again by screaming (like a spoiled, rotten brat) "you lie." Not since a southern senator beat a northern one with his cane into a coma in the 1850's has such a display been seen.

Shame on you! Shame on the GOPCON Party!

President Obama is all ya all's president so respect him, or at least tje office, an shut the hell up, Joe!