DEMOCRATS IN NAME ONLY

The Brain Washing of The Ignorant Masses

I'm afraid - that the right-wing Republican behavior is the result of cynical use of prejudice and political ignorance by political propagandists who know their audience and their purpose - to get naive voters to support right-wing political and financial power. They use behavioral psychology from the 1890s to pick out the pushbuttons of human motivation.

Money talks, loudest when that investment is the most profitable. Commercial media are professionals at bending public opinion to benefit their clients the advertisers, and their owners, and politicians who serve their purpose at public expense. They use prostitutes who create cultural ambiance for pay and we are exposed to nothing else.

We need to re-learn the wisdom of the 1930s but that's a rant that no one can hear over the attention-grabbing din of commercial media. They are fanning the flames of resentment, from their low-wage economy, and blaming the "Liberals", to build a culture of fear and violence that would welcome a Fascist (Corporatist) takeover in the name of democracy. The volunteer goon squads are already here, privately financed by a would-be Feudal aristocracy.

The Nazi takeover in Germany used expensive mass media, radio and motion pictures that were new at the time, supported by an industrial and financial aristocracy. Hitler was their tool but they did not know what they were getting. People in power all over the world supported them because they were putting down the "Red Menace".

Time will tell - I hope the real American Populist tradition will come to life before it's too late. And Russell King's Open Letter can help us to see what's happening.

Glen Sandberg

If you want to really know what we've become, watch this.

An Open Letter To Conservatives

March 22, 2010, 3:16PM

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You've lost me and you've lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation: Come back to us.

Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you're going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you'll have to start by draining this swamp:

Hypocrisy

You can't flip out -- and threaten impeachment - when Dems use a parliamentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that's centuries old and which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.

You can't vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it's done in your own district (happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against, is especially ugly) -- 114 of you (at last count) did just that -- and it's even worse when you secretly beg for more.

You can't fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.

You can't call for a pay-as-you-go policy, and then vote against your own ideas.

Are they "unlawful enemy combatants" or are they "prisoners of war" at Gitmo? You can't have it both ways.

You can't carry on about the evils of government spending when your family has accepted more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts.

You can't refuse to go to a scheduled meeting, to which you were invited, and then blame the Dems because they didn't meet with you.

You can't rail against using teleprompters while using teleprompters. Repeatedly.

You can't rail against the bank bailouts when you supported them as they were happening.

You can't be for immigration reform, then against it .

You can't enjoy socialized medicine while condemning it.

You can't flip out when the black president puts his feet on the presidential desk when you were silent about white presidents doing the same. Bush. Ford.

You can't complain that the president hasn't closed Gitmo yet when you've campaigned to keep Gitmo open.

You can't flip out when the black president bows to foreign dignitaries, as appropriate for their culture, when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush. Nixon. Ike. You didn't even make a peep when Bush held hands and kissed (on the mouth) leaders of countries that are not on "kissing terms" with the US.

You can't complain that the undies bomber was read his Miranda rights under Obama when the shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights under Bush and you remained silent. (And, no, Newt -- the shoe bomber was not a US citizen either, so there is no difference.)

You can't attack the Dem president for not personally* publicly condemning a terrorist event for 72 hours when you said nothing about the Rep president waiting 6 days in an eerily similar incident (and, even then, he didn't issue any condemnation). *Obama administration did the day of the event.

You can't throw a hissy fit, sound alarms and cry that Obama freed Gitmo prisoners who later helped plan the Christmas Day undie bombing, when -- in fact -- only one former Gitmo detainee, released by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, helped to plan the failed attack.

You can't condemn blaming the Republican president for an attempted terror attack on his watch, then blame the Dem president for an attempted terror attack on his.

You can't mount a boycott against singers who say they're ashamed of the president for starting a war, but remain silent when another singer says he's ashamed of the president and falsely calls him a Maoist who makes him want to throw up and says he ought to be in jail.

You can't cry that the health care bill is too long, then cry that it's too short.

You can't support the individual mandate for health insurance, then call it unconstitutional when Dems propose it and campaign against your own ideas.

You can't demand television coverage, then whine about it when you get it. Repeatedly.

You can't praise criminal trials in US courts for terror suspects under a Rep president, then call it "treasonous" under a Dem president.

You can't propose ideas to create jobs, and then work against them when the Dems put your ideas in a bill.

You can't be both pro-choice and anti-choice.

You can't damn someone for failing to pay $900 in taxes when you've paid nearly $20,000 in IRS fines.

You can't condemn criticizing the president when US troops are in harms way, then attack the president when US troops are in harms way , the only difference being the president's party affiliation (and, by the way, armed conflict does NOT remove our right and our duty as Americans to speak up).

You can't be both for cap-and-trade policy and against it.

You can't vote to block debate on a bill, then bemoan the lack of 'open debate'.

If you push anti-gay legislation and make anti-gay speeches, you should probably take a pass on having gay sex, regardless of whether it's 2004 or 2010. This is true, too, if you're taking GOP money and giving anti-gay rants on CNN. Taking right-wing money and GOP favors to write anti-gay stories for news sites while working as a gay prostitute, doubles down on both the hypocrisy and the prostitution. This is especially true if you claim your anti-gay stand is God's stand, too.

When you chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, you can't send sexy emails to 16-year-old boys (illegal anyway, but you made it hypocritical as well).

You can't criticize Dems for not doing something you didn't do while you held power over the past 16 years, especially when the Dems have done more in one year than you did in 16.

You can't decry "name calling" when you've been the most consistent and outrageous at it. And the most vile.

You can't spend more than 40 years hating, cutting and trying to kill Medicare, and then pretend to be the defenders of Medicare

You can't praise the Congressional Budget Office when it's analysis produces numbers that fit your political agenda, then claim it's unreliable when it comes up with numbers that don't.

You can't vote for X under a Republican president, then vote against X under a Democratic president. Either you support X or you don't. And it makes it worse when you change your position merely for the sake obstructionism.

You can't call a reconciliation out of bounds when you used it repeatedly.

You can't spend taxpayer money on ads against spending taxpayer money.

You can't condemn individual health insurance mandates in a Dem bill, when the mandates were your idea.

You can't demand everyone listen to the generals when they say what fits your agenda, and then ignore them when they don't.

You can't whine that it's unfair when people accuse you of exploiting racism for political gain, when your party's former leader admits you've been doing it for decades.

You can't portray yourself as fighting terrorists when you openly and passionately support terrorists.

You can't complain about a lack of bipartisanship when you've routinely obstructed for the sake of political gain -- threatening to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation in one session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented -- and admitted it. Some admissions are unintentional, others are made proudly. This is especially true when the bill is the result of decades of compromise between the two parties and is filled with your own ideas.

You can't question the loyalty of Department of Justice lawyers when you didn't object when your own Republican president appointed them.

You can't preach and try to legislate "Family Values" when you: take nude hot tub dips with teenagers (and pay them hush money); cheat on your wife with a secret lover and lie about it to the world; cheat with a staffer's wife (and pay them off with a new job); pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheating on your wife; or just enjoying an old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife; try to have gay sex in a public toilet; authorize the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to coerce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have sex with children; replace a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife's mother;

Hyperbole

You really need to disassociate with those among you who:

• assert that people making a quarter-million dollars a year can barely make ends meet or that $1 million "isn't a lot of money";
• say that "Comrade" Obama is a "Bolshevik" who is "taking cues from Lenin";
• ignore the many times your buddies use a term that offends you and complain only when a Dem says it;
• liken political opponents to murderers, rapists, and "this Muslim guy" that "offed his wife's head" or call then "un-American";
• say Obama "wants his plan to fail...so that he can make the case for bank nationalization and vindicate his dream of a socialist economy";
• equate putting the good of the people ahead of your personal fortunes with terrorism;
• smear an entire major religion with the actions of a few fanatics;
• say that the president wants to "annihilate us";
• compare health care reform with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Bolshevik plot the attack on 9/11,or reviving the ghosts of communist dictators (update: it's also not Armageddon);
• equate our disease-fighting stem cell research with "what the Nazis did";
• call a bill passed by the majority of both houses of Congress, by members of Congress each elected by a majority in their districts, an unconscionable abuse of power, a violation of the presidential oath or "the end of representative government";
• shout "baby killer" at a member of Congress on the floor of the House, especially one who so fought against abortion rights that he nearly killed health care reform (in fact, a little decorum, a little respect for our national institutions and the people and the values they represent, would be refreshing -- cut out the shouting, the swearing and the obscenities);
• prove your machismo by claiming your going to "crash a party" to which you're officially invited;
• claim that Obama is pushing America's "submission to Shariah";
• question the patriotism of people upholding cherished American values and the rule of law;
• claim the president is making us less safe without a hint of evidence;
• call a majority vote the "tyranny of the minority," even if you meant to call it tyranny of the majority -- it's democracy, not tyranny;
• call the president's support of a criminal trial for a terror suspect "treasonous" (especially when you supported the same thing when the president shared your party);
• call the Pope the anti-Christ;
• assert that the constitutionally mandated census is an attempt to enslave us;
• accuse opponents of being backed by Arab slave-drivers or of being drunk and suicidal;
• equate family planning with eugenics or Nazism;
• accuse the president of changing the missile defense program's logo to match his campaign logo and reflect what you say is his secret Muslim identity;
• accuse political opponents of being totalitarians, socialists, communists, fascists, Marxists; terrorist sympathizers, McCarthy-like, Nazis or drug pushers; and
• advocate a traitorous act like secession, violent revolution , military coup or civil war (just so we're clear: sedition is a bad thing).

History

If you're going to use words like socialism, communism and fascism, you must have at least a basic understanding of what those words mean (hint: they're NOT synonymous!)

You can't cut a leading Founding Father out the history books because you've decided you don't like his ideas.

You cant repeatedly assert that the president refuses to say the word "terrorism" or say we're at war with terror when we have an awful lot of videotape showing him repeatedly assailing terrorism and using those exact words.

If you're going to invoke the names of historical figures, it does not serve you well to whitewash them. Especially this one.

You can't just pretend historical events didn't happen in an effort to make a political opponent look dishonest or to make your side look better. Especially these events. (And, no, repeating it doesn't make it better.)

You can't say things that are simply and demonstrably false: health care reform will not push people out of their private insurance and into a government-run program ; health care reform (which contains a good many of your ideas and very few from the Left) is a long way from "socialist utopia"; health care reform is not "reparations"; nor does health care reform create "death panels".

Hatred

You have to condemn those among you who:

• call members of Congress n*gger and f*ggot;
• elected leaders who say "I'm a proud racist";
• state that America has been built by white people;
• say that poor people are poor because they're rotten people, call them "parasitic garbage" or say they shouldn't be allowed to vote;
• call women bitches and prostitutes just because you don't like their politics ( re - pea -ted - ly );
• assert that the women who are serving our nation in uniform are hookers;
• mock and celebrate the death of a grandmother because you disagree with her son's politics;
• declare that those who disagree with you are shown by that disagreement to be not just "Marxist radicals" but also monsters and a deadly disease killing the nation (this would fit in the hyperbole and history categories, too);
• joke about blindness;
• advocate euthanizing the wife of your political opponent;
• taunt people with incurable, life-threatening diseases -- especially if you do it on a syndicated broadcast;
• equate gay love with bestiality -- involving horses or dogs or turtles or ducks -- or polygamy, child molestation, pedophilia;
• casually assume that only white males look "like a real American";
• assert presidential power to authorize torture, torture a child by having his testicles crushed in front of his parents to get them to talk, order the massacre of a civilian village and launch a nuclear attack without the consent of Congress;
• attack children whose mothers have died;
• call people racists without producing a shred of evidence that they've said or done something that would even smell like racism -- same for invoking racially charged "dog whistle" words (repeatedly);
• condemn the one thing that every major religion agrees on;
• complain that we no longer employ the tactics we once used to disenfranchise millions of Americans because of their race;
• blame the victims of natural disasters and terrorist attacks for their suffering and losses;
• celebrate violence , joke about violence, prepare for violence or use violent imagery, "fun" political violence, hints of violence, threats of violence (this one is rather explicit), suggestions of violence or actual violence (and, really, suggesting anal rape with a hot piece of metal is beyond the pale); and
• incite insurrection telling people to get their guns ready for a "bloody battle" with the president of the United States.

Oh, and I'm not alone: One of your most respected and decorated leaders agrees with me.

So, dear conservatives, get to work. Drain the swamp of the conspiracy nuts, the bald-faced liars undeterred by demonstrable facts, the overt hypocrisy and the hatred. Then offer us a calm, responsible, grownup agenda based on your values and your vision for America. We may or may not agree with your values and vision, but we'll certainly welcome you back to the American mainstream with open arms. We need you.

(Anticipating your initial response: No there is nothing that even comes close to this level of wingnuttery on the American Left.)

Written by Russell King

Michael Steele said on fox, "I'm the cow on the tracks" that is going to stop this health care bill. Well, the health care bill wasn't stopped by Mr. Steele and here is the result:

America, Here Are 10 Things You've Just Won With Health Care Reform
You already know about the health care reform vote, but you might not know what's in it for you. Here's 10 things that will kick in this year.
March 23, 2010 |


1. Insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime coverage limits on your insurance. Never again will you face the risk of getting really sick and then, a few months in, having your insurer tell you "sorry, you've 'run out' of coverage." Almost everyone I've met knows someone who had insurance but got really, really sick (or had a kid get really sick) and ran into a lifetime cap.
2. If you don't know someone who has run into a lifetime cap, you probably know someone who has run into an annual cap. The use of these will be sharply limited. (They'll be eliminated entirely in 2014.)
3. Insurers can no longer tell kids with pre-existing conditions that they'll insure them "except for" the pre-existing condition. That's called pre-existing condition exclusion, and it's out the window.
4. A special, temporary program will help adults with pre-existing conditions get coverage. It expires in 2014, when the health insurance exchanges—basically big "pools" of businesses and individuals—come on-line. That's when all insurers will have to cover everyone, pre-existing condition or not.
5. Insurance companies can't drop you when you get sick, either—this plan means the end of "rescissions."
6. You can stay on your parents' insurance until you're 26.
7. Seniors get $250 towards closing the "donut hole" in their prescription drug coverage. Currently, prescription drug coverage ends once you've spent $2,700 on drugs and it doesn't kick in again until you've spent nearly $6,200. James Ridgeway wrote about the problems with the donut hole for Mother Jones in the September/October 2008 issue. Eventually, the health care reform bill will close the donut hole entirely. The AARP has more on immediate health care benefits for seniors. Next year (i.e. in nine months), 50 percent of the donut hole will be covered.
8. Medicare's preventive benefits now come with a free visit with your primary care doctor every year to plan out your prevention services. And there are no more co-pays for preventative services in Medicare.
9. This is a big one: small businesses get big tax credits—up to 50 percent of premium costs—for offering health insurance to their workers.
10. Insurers with unusually high administrative costs have to offer rebates to their customers, and every insurance company has to reveal how much it spends on overhead.

There's a lot more that happens down the road. But this is most of what you get now. No death panels included.

America, Here Are 10 Things You've Just Won With Health Care Reform | | AlterNet

Demand a constitutional amendment

After today's disastrous ruling by the supreme court that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, we are now, officially a fascist state. the definition of fascism is the combining of corporations, governments and the military. once the corporations own the government our military becomes there beck and call billy club around the world for their profits. not only that but with this kind of influence they will only allow those who will agree to transfer the greatest amounts of our collective tax wealth to them. through wars, contracts, subsidies, etc. they will have it all and social safety nets will be cut back to feed this horrible beast. we need a constitutional amendment and we need for everyone in this country to sign onto the idea. so when you get this email, if you will copy and paste it into a new mail each time so it doesn't end up as one of those indented messes after 10 reincarnations, that would be great. People for the American Way are starting an action page to get the word out and to take action against this anti-democratic, republican-justice-only supported abortion that has been inflicted upon us. i really hope you sign on and pass this on to EVERYONE. it is the most important email i have ever sent. yes, even more important than the contamination of our food sources with gm and chemicals because now that company will own Washington. it is the end of America and democracy if we allow this decision to stand. the people have NO POWER WHATSOEVER now. we may as well be piss ants for the corporations to burn under their magnifying glasses as they laugh all the way to the bank with our tax dollars. they've gotten a lions share of them for many years not but you ain't seen nothing yet. if we don't change this, it is the beginning of the end.. pigs at the trough.
shelley

http://site.pfaw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Amend&autologin=true

Michelle Malkin. Ann Coulters Nasty Asshole and Penis.

No, no KY necessary.



Here it cums baby!

Ultimate Bush and his Administration lied About wmd, nukes and al qaeda!

t r u t h o u t | Robert Parry | Lessons from America's Lost Decade

As the United States takes the measure of Barack Obama's first year in the White House and looks beyond to what could be a difficult new decade, it might be useful to first stop and extract some lessons from the 2000s, which proved to be a lost economic decade for many Americans.

For the first time since the Great Depression, the United States experienced zero job growth in a decade. Zero. And zero is actually worse than it sounds since none of the preceding six decades registered job growth of less than 20 percent.

By comparison, the 1970s, which are often bemoaned as a time of economic stagflation and political malaise, registered a 27 percent increase in jobs. Yet, in part because of that relatively slow rise in jobs – down from 31 percent in the 1960s – American voters turned to Ronald Reagan and his radical economic theories of tax cuts, global "free markets" and deregulation.

Reagan sold Americans on his core vision: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Through his personal magnetism, Reagan turned taxes into a third rail of American politics. He convinced many voters that the government's only important role was funding the military.

Yet, instead of guiding the country to a bright new day of economic vitality, Reagan's approach accelerated a de-industrialization of the United States and a slump in the growth of American jobs, down to 20 percent during the 1980s. The percentage job increase for the 1990s stayed at 20 percent, although job growth did pick up later in the decade under Democrat Bill Clinton, who raised taxes and moderated some of Reagan's approaches while still pushing "free trade" agreements and deregulation.

Hard-line Reaganomics returned with a vengeance under George W. Bush – more tax cuts, more faith in "free trade," more deregulation – and the Great American Job Engine finally started grinding to a halt. Zero percent increase.

Despite the painful statistics of the past three decades, Reaganomics remains a powerful force in American political life. Anyone tuning in CNBC or picking up the Wall Street Journal would think that these economic policies had enjoyed unqualified success.

Though the downward economic spiral can be traced over the past three decades, the facts are especially stark for the 2000s, the so-called "Aughts" or perhaps more accurately the "Naughts."

"For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households," wrote Neil Irwin in a Jan. 2, 2010, review of comparative economic data for the Washington Post. "But since 2000, the story is starkly different."

As the Post article and its accompanying graphics show, the last decade's sad story wasn't just limited to the abysmal job numbers.

U.S. economic output slowed to its worst pace since the 1930s, rising only 17.8 percent in the 2000s, less than half the 38.1 percent increase in the despised 1970s. Household net worth declined 4 percent in the last decade, compared to a 28 percent rise in the 1970s. (All figures were adjusted for inflation.)

Even Worse

As grim as those numbers were, the overall economic legacies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush may be even worse.

Not only did the Great American Job Engine grind to a halt in the past decade, but the dire economic numbers were accompanied by massive increases in federal debt, part of a risky right-wing strategy to hamstring the government's ability to ever address domestic problems in the future.

When Reagan took office, the total federal debt was still under $1 trillion ($909 billion). By the end of the 12-year Republican reign of Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the total debt had quadrupled.

The rise in the red ink leveled off under Democrat Bill Clinton. Amazingly, he left office with the federal budget in the black by $236 billion and with a projected 10-year budget surplus of $5.6 trillion.

The budgetary trend lines were such that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan began to fret about the challenges the Fed might face in influencing interest rates if the entire U.S. government debt were paid off, thus leaving no debt obligations to sell.

But Greenspan's nervousness was soon quieted. In 2001, George W. Bush seized the White House after blocking a full counting of legally cast votes in Florida, with the help of five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then, though lacking a popular mandate – Bush also had lost the national popular vote to Al Gore – Bush governed as if he had won by a landslide. He pushed through a new round of tax cuts weighted in favor of the wealthy and, after the 9/11 attacks, launched two open-ended wars on borrowed money.

By the time Bush left office in 2009, the annual deficit had gone to $1.3 trillion (from a $236 billion surplus). Total federal debt had risen almost $5 trillion to $10.7 trillion. And the projected 10-year budget outlook called for $8 trillion more in red ink.

Despite this record of economic failure – trillions more in debt but no net increase in jobs – many Americans appear to have learned no lessons from either the Bush-II presidency or the legacy of Reaganomics. Any thought of raising taxes, addressing long-term problems like health costs, or investing in a stronger domestic infrastructure remains anathema to large segments of the population.

Indeed, across the news media, it is hard to find any serious – or sustained – criticism of the Reagan/Bush economic theories. Far more blame is heaped on Obama for not having fully turned around the financial and economic crisis that he inherited.

Less than a year into Obama's presidency, voters in Massachusetts may be on the verge of electing a conservative Republican in a special Senate election, according to some polls. That result would enable the GOP to filibuster every significant Obama initiative, from health care to job programs. Many pundits anticipate Republican victories in congressional elections next November.

Who's to Blame?

Some of the fault for these Democratic political troubles can fairly be laid at Obama's door, though surely not all.

Fearing a new Great Depression, Obama did continue Bush's policies for bailing out large banks whose greed and recklessness contributed to the 2008 financial meltdown. Obama also alienated his "base" by rejecting calls for investigating Bush-era national security crimes, expanding the Afghan War, and accepting compromises on health-care reform.

Tactically, Obama was played for a sucker when he let health-care negotiations with "moderate" Republicans like Olympia Snowe of Maine drag on past his initial deadline of August. By slow-rolling the process, the Republicans bought time to organize right-wing populist opposition to the reform package and then marched the GOP (Snowe included) in lockstep behind a Senate filibuster of the legislation.

The unified Republican filibuster forced Obama and the Democratic leadership to make deals with conservative Democrats and Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Independent who seemed to enjoy bedeviling the legislative process. To get Lieberman's support, the public option and other popular elements were jettisoned, causing many on the Left to denounce Obama as a sell-out.

Because of all the legislative delays, the health-care bill now hangs on the outcome of the Massachusetts election to fill the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat on Jan. 19.

More generally, few Americans appear to be paying any heed to the lessons of the past three decades. Instead, many are simply reprising the same mistakes.

Republicans and the Right are determined to protect the Reagan-Bush legacies by blocking Democratic domestic legislation that might take the country in a different direction. To stop that possibility, they continue to whip up anti-tax, anti-government furies.

Meanwhile, the Democrats still come across as flaccid protectors of an Establishment that many Americans understandably hate. And the American Left mostly sits in the bleachers booing all the players, rather than getting into the game.

As this new decade dawns, the U.S. political process seems resistant to the one of most obvious lessons of the past three decades: Simply put, Reaganomics didn't work. As George H.W. Bush once commented – when he was running against Reagan in the 1980 primaries – it is "voodoo economics."

Yet, the fact that the United States has embraced "voodoo economics" for 30 years and refuses to recognize the statistical evidence of Reaganomics' abject failure suggests that the larger lesson of this era – and especially this past lost decade – is that the U.S. political process is dysfunctional.

t r u t h o u t | Robert Parry | Lessons from America's Lost Decade

t r u t h o u t | "The Uh-Ohs": A Decade of Conservative Failure

Stuff happens."
— Donald Rumsfeld on the looting of Iraq following the U.S. invasion.

Forget about "the Aughts." Never mind "the Naughts." The decade just passed — and which promises to leave a lingering, bitter aftertaste — deserves a far better, more descriptive name. So for what it's worth, I hereby dub the past ten years "The Uh-Ohs: A Decade of Conservative Failure."

It's as good as any of the others I've heard. Perhaps better. Here's why.

Because despite the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, "stuff" doesn't just happen. Despite what Joel Achenbach seems to think, the debacle of the last ten years didn't just happen. And, yes, plenty of people did see it coming. Their warnings were ignored. What followed, then, didn't "just happen," but was the consequence of conscious choice. And, despite what Matt Yglesias seems to think, it is important to discuss and determine the causes of the various messes we find ourselves in. (Even if we find along the way the fingerprints of some Democrats Who Should Have Known Better™.)

There were plenty of messes. And, like the clean-up crew after a wild, drunken party, we're still uncovering messes, some of which we can smell before we actually see them.

It was a decade during which conservatives controlled both Congress and the While House, and could thus enact much of their agenda. Thus, it was a decade of "uh-ohs"

Uh-oh is an ubiquitous interjection or expression of dismay in the English language, usually said in anticipation of something bad about to happen, with the sly admittance of guilt that one may have caused something bad to happen, or perceiving that something bad has already happened.

From the economy to energy to security, the "Uh-Ohs" abounded.

Uh-Oh! Conservatives turned a budget surplus we had then into the deficit we have now. It's true. Even the Wall Street Journal had to acknowledge that the perhaps the biggest legacy of the Bush years is the huge deficit.

In other words, the deficit didn't just happen, and it didn't have to happen. It was the predicted outcome of conservative policy decisions.

Basically:

• Bush and congressional conservatives came into office with a $236 billion surplus projected to last years into the future. They turned it into a $412 billion deficit, in just four years.
• Bush used the existing surplus (and the $5.6 trillion surplus projected over the next ten years) as justification for huge tax cuts for the wealthy.
• Even as the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan spiraled skyward, Bush refused to pay the costs of waging two wars with tax increases or other budgetary offsets.
• As a result, the government ran a deficit, and paid for some of its biggest expenditures with borrowed money.
• Ever "reality-based," in 2007 the Bush administration predicted a $61 billion surplus by 2012, but presented a 2008 budget that added $251 billion to the deficit.

Uh-Oh! Conservatives shrunk the economy. Despite what Glenn Beck and the rest of the conservative noise machine say, what happened to the economy didn't just happen in the past year. And it didn't just happen. It was the predictable outcome of conservative politics and policies during their decade of "uh-ohs."

• Bush and congressional conservatives who supported him, presided over the weakest economy in decades. The number of jobs increased by only about 2% during the Bush years, and the gross domestic product grew at just a 2.1% annual rate.
• It was the worst decade for the stock market, which was down 26% from where it started in 2000.

Uh-oh! It was the worst decade for jobs. Some 7 million jobs were lost (perhaps permanently), 14.5 million were left unemployed, and 6 million out-of-work adults became discouraged and stopped looking for works and are thus not even counted among the unemployed.

• Manufacturing fell to its lowest level in 26 years.
• By the end of the decade, the jobless rate reached a 26-year-high.
• There were 6.5 job seekers per job opening, by the end of the decade.
• "One in five Americans are unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work."
• Bush finished his term with the worst track record ever on jobs since the government began keeping records in 1939.
• In fact, there's been zero net job creation since December 1999.
• The 10% unemployment rate isn't expected to change in 2010, and probably won't return to pre-recession levels of less than 5% in the next six years.

This is just a beginning; a brief foray into a decade that was — but certainly didn't have to be — filled with more items like those above. Such a decade, after all, deserves far more than one blog post.

Besides, we haven't yet covered Iraq, Katrina, economic inequality, e. coli... With ten years of conservative failure to cover, there are definitely more "Uh-Ohs" to come.

t r u t h o u t | "The Uh-Ohs": A Decade of Conservative Failure

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