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Thursday, April 8, 2010

TeaParty White Trailer Trash

This guy mimicks faux news talking points while adding his vulgar rascism into the batter. What a piece of white trash. He calls whites who voted for obama "white trash", how ironic is that?

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Not satisfied with U.S. history, some conservatives are rewriting it | McClatchy

WASHINGTON — The right is rewriting history.

The most ballyhooed effort is under way in Texas, where conservatives have pushed the state school board to rewrite guidelines, downplaying Thomas Jefferson in one high school course, playing up such conservatives as Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation and challenging the idea that the Founding Fathers wanted to separate church and state.

The effort reaches far beyond one state, however.

In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and influential figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today's politics.

The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton? Ill-informed professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.

Theodore Roosevelt? Another socialist. Franklin D. Roosevelt? Not only did he not end the Great Depression, he also created it.

Joe McCarthy? Liberals lied about him. He was a hero.

Some conservatives say it's a long-overdue swing of the pendulum after years of liberal efforts to define history on their terms in classrooms and in popular culture.

"We are adding balance," Texas school board member Don McLeroy said. "History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left."

The effort in Texas and nationwide is controversial, however, even among many conservatives. McLeroy was defeated in a recent primary after he led the campaign for a more conservative version of history, a defeat that the National Review, a leading conservative organ, called "sensible."

While even some conservative intellectuals say that some of the revisionist history is simply wrong, at the core, the effort reflects the ever-changing view of history, which is always subject to revision thanks to new information or new ways of looking at things, and often is viewed through a political lens.

"History in the popular world is always a political football," said Alan Brinkley, a historian at Columbia University. "The right is unusually mobilized at the moment."

"Part of the tide of history is that it's contested terrain," said Fritz Fischer, a historian at the University of Northern Colorado and the chairman of the National Council for History Education. "We should always be arguing and questioning what happened in the past."

It's not just historians who contest history, however. It's also politicians and pundits.

The left has done it.

Fischer cited the case of controversial former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, whose essay claiming that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were the fruit of illegal U.S. policies became a cause celebre. Fischer said Churchill "ignored a lot of evidence and made some up to promulgate a particular political belief."

Now, it's the right.

"There's clearly a political impetus behind this that connects to the issues of today," Fischer said, such as labeling President Barack Obama a socialist. "But when history is ignored to do it, that can be dangerous."

Here are five recent examples of new conservative versions of history:

JAMESTOWN

Reaching for an example of how bad socialism can be, former House of Representatives Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said recently that the people who settled Jamestown, Va., in 1607 were socialists and that their ideology doomed them.

"Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow," he said in a speech March 15 at the National Press Club.

It was a good, strong story, helping Armey, a former economics professor, illustrate the dangers of socialism, the same ideology that he and other conservatives say is at the core of Obama's agenda.

It was not, however, true.

The Jamestown settlement was a capitalist venture financed by the Virginia Company of London — a joint stock corporation — to make a profit. The colony nearly foundered owing to a harsh winter, brackish water and lack of food, but reinforcements enabled it to survive. It was never socialistic. In fact, in 1619, Jamestown planters imported the first African slaves to the 13 colonies that later formed the United States.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

At the same event, Armey urged people to read the Federalist Papers as a guide to the sentiments of the tea party movement.

"The small-government conservative movement, which includes people who call themselves the tea party patriots and so forth, is about the principles of liberty as embodied in the Constitution, the understanding of which is fleshed out if you read things like the Federalist Papers," Armey said.

Others such as Democrats and the news media, "people here who do not cherish America the way we do," don't understand because "they did not read the Federalist Papers," he said.

A member of the audience asked Armey how the Federalist Papers could be such a tea party manifesto when they were written largely by Alexander Hamilton, who the questioner said "was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government."

Armey ridiculed the very suggestion.

"Widely regarded by whom?" he asked. "Today's modern, ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case, in fact, about Hamilton."

Hamilton, however, was an unapologetic advocate of a strong central government, one that plays an active role in the economy and is led by a president named for life and thus beyond the emotions of the people. Hamilton also pushed for excise taxes and customs duties to pay down federal debt.

In fact, Ian Finseth said in a history written for the University of Virginia, others at the constitutional convention "thought his proposals went too far in strengthening the central government."

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Theodore Roosevelt was long an icon of the Republican Party, a dynamic leader who ushered in the Progressive era, busting trusts, regulating robber barons, building the Panama Canal and sending the U.S. fleet around the world announcing ascendant American power.

Fox TV commentator Glenn Beck, however, says that Roosevelt was a socialist whose legacy is destroying America. It started, Beck said, with Roosevelt's admonition to the wealthy of his day to spend their riches for the good of society.

"We judge no man a fortune in civil life if it's honorably obtained and well spent," Roosevelt said, according to Beck. "It's not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it only to be gained so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community."

Actually, Roosevelt said, "We GRUDGE no man a fortune ... if it's honorably obtained and well USED." But either way, Beck saw the threat.

"Oh? Well, thank you," Beck said with scorn during his keynote speech to the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. The presidential suggestion that the wealthy of the Gilded Age should contribute to the good of society was a clear danger that must be condemned, Beck said.

"Is this what the Republican Party stands for? Well, you should ask members of the Republican Party, because this is not our founders' idea of America. And this is the cancer that's eating at America. It is big government; it's a socialist utopia," Beck said.

"And we need to address it as if it is a cancer. It must be cut out of the system because they cannot coexist. ... You must eradicate it. It cannot coexist."

There's no doubt that Roosevelt was a domestic policy liberal by today's standards. In a 1910 speech in Kansas, he acknowledged that his "New Nationalism" meant "far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had."

The 26th president insisted, however, that he wanted the government to guarantee opportunity, not a handout.

"The fundamental thing to do for every man is to give him a chance to reach a place in which he will make the greatest possible contribution to the public welfare," he said.

"Give him a chance, not push him up if he will not be pushed. ... Help any man who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor job to try to carry him; but if he is a worthy man, try your best to see that he gets a chance to show the worth that is in him."

In his autobiography three years later, Roosevelt went on to dismiss the tenets of socialism as taught by Karl Marx as "an exploded theory."

"Too many thoroughly well-meaning men and women in the America of today glibly repeat and accept," he wrote, "various assumptions and speculations by Marx and others which by the lapse of time and by actual experiment have been shown to possess not one shred of value."

In addition, Roosevelt didn't advocate government ownership of the means of production, the definition of socialism.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

It's long been debated how well Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal government programs countered the Great Depression, but now a prominent conservative has introduced the idea that Roosevelt CAUSED the Depression.

"FDR took office in the midst of a recession," Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., told the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. "He decided to choose massive government spending and the creation of monstrous bureaucracies. Do we detect a Democrat pattern here in all of this? He took what was a manageable recession and turned it into a 10-year depression."

A year before, Bachmann went to the House floor to blame FDR and what she called the "Hoot-Smalley" tariffs for creating the Depression.

"The recession that FDR had to deal with wasn't as bad as the recession (President Calvin) Coolidge had to deal with in the early '20s," she said.

Coolidge cut taxes and created the roaring '20s, Bachmann said.

"FDR applied just the opposite formula: the Hoot-Smalley act, which was a tremendous burden on tariff restrictions. And of course trade barriers and the regulatory burden and of course tax barriers.

"That's what we saw happen under FDR. That took a recession and blew it into a full-scale depression. The American people suffered for almost 10 years under that kind of thinking."

The truth? Historians agree that tariffs hurt trade and worsened the depression.

However, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act — not Hoot-Smalley — was proposed by two Republicans, Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah and Rep. Willis Hawley of Oregon. A Republican House and a Republican Senate approved it. President Herbert Hoover, a Republican, signed it into law.

The facts also show that the country was in something far worse than a "manageable recession" in March 1933 when Roosevelt took office.

Stocks had lost 90 percent of their value since the crash of 1929. Thousands of banks had failed. Unemployment reached an all-time high of 24.9 percent just before Roosevelt was inaugurated.

JOE MCCARTHY

Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., burst onto the national stage in the early 1950s with accusations that he had a list of names of known Communists in the federal government. He didn't name them, was censured by the Senate eventually and his name became synonymous with witch hunts — McCarthyism.

Now, the end of the Cold War has opened up spy files and identified many Communist spies who operated inside the government during the era. Some conservatives argue that this proves not only that McCarthy was right, but also that he was a hero and that he was smeared by liberals, the news media and historians.

"Almost everything about McCarthy in current history books is a lie and will have to be revised," conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly said.

"Liberals had to destroy McCarthy because he exposed the entire liberal establishment as having sheltered Soviet spies," conservative commentator Ann Coulter said in one interview.

"The myth of 'McCarthyism' is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times," she said in another. "Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Senator Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. ... If the Internet, talk radio and Fox News had been around in McCarthy's day, my book wouldn't be the first time most people would be hearing the truth about 'McCarthyism.' "

Yet even some prominent conservatives say that McCarthy's defenders go too far, and that even from a conservative perspective, McCarthy was no hero and damaged the country.

"A dangerous movement has been growing among conservative writers to vindicate the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and his campaign to expose Soviet spies in the U.S. government," Ronald Kessler wrote for the conservative Web site Newsmax.com.

"The FBI agents who were actually chasing those spies have told me that McCarthy hurt their efforts because he trumped up charges, unfairly besmirched honorable Americans and gave hunting spies a bad name."

Kessler said the release of secret Cold War files under the Venona Project confirmed that there were Soviet spies in the U.S. government.

"The problem was that the people McCarthy tarnished as Communists or Communist sympathizers were not the real spies," Kessler wrote.

"The cause of anti-communism, which united millions of Americans and which gained the support of Democrats, Republicans and independents, was undermined by Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin," wrote William Bennett, who was the conservative secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan.

"McCarthy addressed a real problem: disloyal elements within the U.S. government. But his approach to this real problem was to cause untold grief to the country he claimed to love," Bennett wrote in his book "America: The Last Best Hope."

"Worst of all, McCarthy besmirched the honorable cause of anti-communism. He discredited legitimate efforts to counter Soviet subversion of American institutions."

Not satisfied with U.S. history, some conservatives are rewriting it | McClatchy

Friday, April 2, 2010

I keep hearing stupid ass republicans and conservatives saying that the "nigger" and spitting incident at the capitol building didn't happen. That democrats made it up for the outrage-factor. They're so full of shit that they can't see through their dark brown eyes what is right in front of them.

This is Dale Robertson, a Tea Party activist who operates TeaParty.org

Now you tell me if this asshole isn't capable of screaming "nigger" at civil rights icons. Tell me if he's not capable of spitting in a black man's face. I've seen hundreds of signs almost as bad as this one at the teabagging events. But i chose this one because it just says it all.


And our government would like you to believe that chavez and morales are tyrants?

I am always trying to open lour people's eyes to American foreign policy. Our corporatist government demonizes leaders in countries that have popular, even beloved leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales. These two leaders put their own people ahead of the corporate demands from America and other developed nations. They won't play the game of borrowing money from us and then being beholden to the demands of our corporations in order to pay back the loans that were designed to entrap poor countries in the first place. (read, "confessions of an economic hit man" by john perkins).
On the other hand, our government and corporate media always tout the greatness of Columbia. Rave about it's president, Uribe. They make the uninformed masses in America believe that this is a great guy. Truth is we put this tyrant in power because he was a sell out to his own people in favor of our corporate wishes. Our corporations want a free trade agreement with Columbia because it is one of the best climates to grow palm oil in. They are paying paramilitaries run by Uribes family members to kill labor leaders, kill or run farmers off of their ancestral lands and steal that land to grow palm trees. All funded by Americans and ignored by our corporate cowed government. Here is a look at this wonderful "thriving" democracy where no dissent is allowed.

By DANIEL KOVALIK

The biggest human rights scandal in years is developing in Colombia, though you wouldn’t notice it from the total lack of media coverage here. A mass grave – one of a number suspected by human rights groups in Colombia – was discovered by accident last year just outside a Colombian Army base in La Macarena, a rural municipality located in the Department of Meta just south of Bogota. The grave was discovered when children drank from a nearby stream and started to become seriously ill. These illnesses were traced to runoff from what was discovered to be a mass grave – a grave marked only with small flags showing the dates (between 2002 and 2009) on which the bodies were buried.

According to a February 10, 2010 letter issued by Alexandra Valencia Molina, Director of the regional office of Colombia’s own Procuraduria General de la Nacion – a government agency tasked to investigate government corruption – approximately 2,000 bodies are buried in this grave. The Colombian Army has admitted responsibility for the grave, claiming to have killed and buried alleged guerillas there. However, the bodies in the grave have yet to be identified. Instead, against all protocol for handling the remains of anyone killed by the military, especially the bodies of guerillas, the bodies contained in the mass grave were buried there secretly without the requisite process of having the Colombian government certify that the deceased were indeed the armed combatants the Army claims.

And, given the current “false positive” scandal which has enveloped the government of President Alvaro Uribe and his Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, who is now running to succeed Uribe as President, the Colombian Army’s claim about the mass grave is especially suspect. This scandal revolves around the Colombian military, recently under the direction of Juan Manuel Santos, knowingly murdering civilians in cold blood and then dressing them up to look like armed guerillas in order to justify more aid from the United States. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pilay, this practice has been so “systematic and widespread” as to amount to a “crime against humanity.”

To date, not factoring in the mass grave, it has been confirmed by Colombian government sources that there have been 2,000 civilians falling victim to the “false positive” scheme since President Uribe took office in 2002. If, as suspected by Colombian human rights groups, such as the “Comision de Derechos Humanos del Bajo Ariari” and the “Colectivo Orlando Fals Borda,” the mass grave in La Macarena contains 2,000 more civilian victims of this scheme, then this would bring the total of those victimized by the “false positive” scandal to at least 4,000 --much worse than originally believed.

That this grave was discovered just outside a Colombian military base overseen by U.S. military advisers -- the U.S. having around 600 military advisers in that country -- is especially troubling, and raises serious questions about the U.S.’s own conduct in that country. In addition, this calls into even greater question the propriety of President Obama’s agreement with President Alvaro Uribe last summer pursuant to which the U.S. will have access to 7 military bases in that country.

The Colombian government and military are scrambling to contain this most recent scandal, and possibly through violence. Thus, on March 15, 2010, Jhonny Hurtado, a former union leader and President of the Human Rights Committee of La Cantina, and an individual who was key in revealing the truth about this mass grave, was assassinated as soldiers from Colombia’s 7th Mobile Brigade patrolled the area. Just prior to his murder, Jhonny Hurtado told a delegation of British MPs visiting Colombia that he believed the mass grave at La Macarena contained the bodies of innocent people who had been “disappeared.”


Daniel Kovalik: The Bodies of the Innocent

Monday, March 29, 2010

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.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

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:

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:

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

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

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

Friday, January 22, 2010

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