Category Archives: Conservatism

The political leaning of those who only feel comfortable exalting themselves above those who are different from them in some way.

I will no longer log into Twitter.

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Read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon_Musk

The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk began on April 14, 2022, and concluded on October 27, 2022. Business magnate Elon Musk began buying shares of American social media company Twitter, Inc. in January 2022, eventually becoming the company’s largest shareholder in April with a 9.1 percent ownership stake. Twitter then invited Musk to join its board of directors, which Musk at first accepted before subsequently declining. On April 14, he made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company for $43 billion, to which Twitter responded with a “poison pill” strategy to resist a hostile takeover. On April 25, Twitter’s board of directors unanimously accepted Musk’s buyout offer of $44 billion, with the company set to be taken private. Musk stated that he planned to introduce new features to the platform, make its algorithms open-sourced, combat spambot accounts, and promote free speech.

Musk announced his intention to terminate the agreement in July, asserting that Twitter had breached their agreement by refusing to crack down on spambot accounts. The company filed a lawsuit against Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery shortly thereafter, with a trial scheduled for the week of October 17. Weeks before the trial was set to begin, Musk reversed course, announcing that he would move forward with the acquisition. The deal was closed on October 27, with Musk immediately becoming Twitter’s new owner and CEO. He also fired several top executives, including previous CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk has since proposed several reforms to Twitter, including the creation of a “content moderation council” to handle free speech, and laid off half of the company’s workforce.

Reception to the buyout has been mixed, with criticism over fears of a potential rise in misinformation, disinformation, harassment, and hate speech on the platform. Right-wing conservatives and Republicans have largely praised the purchase, while left-wing liberals, Democrats, and former and present Twitter employees have voiced concerns about Musk’s intentions.

To me, this is yet another example of an ultra-rich wanna-be tyrant using his wealth to gain power for himself. The Koch brothers did it for decades through their political activities, Donald Trump did it by running for and winning the Presidency and now Musk has done it by taking over Twitter to remake it according to his desires. Keep in mind that Donald Trump used Twitter for years as his main means of communicating with his followers, until he was banned shortly after he was removed from the Presidency by the 2020 election. Could this be Musk’s way of getting Trump back on Twitter?

This is my Twitter account:

The older I get, the more I hate capitalism and the corrupt personalities it produces, including Musk and Trump. Don’t get me wrong……in a Communist state those two would probably be high ranking members of the Communist Party. It is authoritarianism that is the problem and overthrowing a corrupt economic and political system alone will never work if it ends up replaced with another one later. Look at Russia, both from 1917 to 1950 and then from 1991 to the present day. Or read George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm.

As the Who would have said: “The people got fooled again!”

You can talk about promoting freedom all you want, but if the only freedom you want is for those like you, THAT is actually privilege…..and that is not acceptable in a truly free society. It’s sad that most Americans still don’t understand that. Maybe because they were never taught the difference.

We really should have a society like this…..not just in America, but EVERYWHERE!

Anti-Conservative Rants in Reddit

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I sometimes think that as a whole, the users in Reddit are WAY smarter than most people. Here are two powerful comments I have just noticed that seem to illustrate that.

Who ever would have guessed that electing Republican officials over and over again would have consequences? from LeopardsAteMyFace

GarciaJones
 

Fun… ok no, sad fact:

When slavery was abolished, I feel like a lot of people think it came with asterisks next to the amendment.

But it didn’t .

When slavery was abolished, it instantly made every black person equal to whites under the law.

Same rules applied to white and black people. Owning land. Owning a business. Eating anywhere they liked. This was the intended goal. It’s what those in congress voted and passed and celebrated. Equality.

But the southern states saw the loopholes, and within a few months, enacted the Jim Crow laws, separate but equal pretty damn fast.

The federal government made black people equal.

No caveats no restrictions in the amendment.

Then the states took that right away from them.

On another sad fun fact,

FDR was set to push a new bill of rights, an employee bill of rights.

His speech is something that hits so relevant today. His wants for all citizens and his reasoning as applied to the constitution was something you just don’t get from any politician today.

A snapshot of his speech;

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.”[8] People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

The more you learn of the past, the more you realize that progress could have happened sooner but evil prevailed in the name of “country and patriotism”.

Sad.

Who did the brexiters think will do all those low-paid entry-level jobs? Ukipers? from LeopardsAteMyFace

GrayEidolon
 

Good place to remind folks that conservatism is about hierarchy and a de facto underclass.

Conservatism (big C) has always had one goal and little c “general” conservatism is a myth. Conservatism has the related goals of maintaining a de facto aristocracy that inherits political power and pushing outsiders down to enforce an under class. In support of that is a morality based on a person’s inherent status as good or bad – not their actions. The thing that determines if someone is good or bad is whether they inhabit the aristocracy.

Another way, Conservatives – those who wish to maintain a class system – assign moral value to people and not actions. Those not in the aristocracy are immoral and therefore deserve punishment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4CI2vk3ugk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs its a ret con

https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/conservatism.html

Part of this is posted a lot: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 I like the concept of Conservatism vs. anything else.

A Bush speech writer takes the assertion for granted: It’s all about the upper class vs. democracy. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/why-do-democracies-fail/530949/ “Democracy fails when the Elites are overly shorn of power.”

Read here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/ and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism#History and see that all of the major thought leaders in Conservatism have always opposed one specific change (democracy at the expense of aristocratic power). At some point non-Conservative intellectuals and/or lying Conservatives tried to apply the arguments of conservatism to generalized “change.”

The philosophic definition of something should include criticism. The Stanford page (despite taking pains to justify small c conservatism) includes criticisms. Involving those we can conclude generalized conservatism (small c) is a myth at best and a Trojan Horse at worst.

Incase you don’t want to read the David Frum piece here is a highlight that democracy only exists at the leisure of the elite represented by Conservatism.

The most crucial variable predicting the success of a democratic transition is the self-confidence of the incumbent elites. If they feel able to compete under democratic conditions, they will accept democracy. If they do not, they will not. And the single thing that most accurately predicts elite self-confidence, as Ziblatt marshals powerful statistical and electoral evidence to argue, is the ability to build an effective, competitive conservative political party before the transition to democracy occurs.

Conservatism, manifest as a political party is simply the effort of the Elites to maintain their privileged status. One prior attempt at rebuttal blocked me when we got to: why is it that specifically Conservative parties align with the interests of the Elite?

There is a key difference between conservatives and others that is often overlooked. For liberals, actions are good, bad, moral, etc and people are judged based on their actions. For Conservatives, people are good, bad, moral, etc and the status of the person is what dictates how an action is viewed.

In the world view of the actual Conservative leadership – those with true wealth or political power – , the aristocracy is moral by definition and the working class is immoral by definition and deserving of punishment for that immorality. This is where the laws don’t apply trope comes from or all you’ll often see “rules for thee and not for me.” The aristocracy doesn’t need laws since they are inherently moral. Consider the divinely ordained king: he can do no wrong because he is king, because he is king at God’s behest. The anti-poor aristocratic elite still feel that way.

This is also why people can be wealthy and looked down on: if Bill Gates tries to help the poor or improve worker rights too much he is working against the aristocracy.

If we extend analysis to the voter base: conservative voters view other conservative voters as moral and good by the state of being labeled conservative because they adhere to status morality and social classes. It’s the ultimate virtue signaling. They signal to each other that they are inherently moral. It’s why voter base conservatives think “so what” whenever any of these assholes do nasty anti democratic things. It’s why Christians seem to ignore Christ.

While a non-conservative would see a fair or moral or immoral action and judge the person undertaking the action, a conservative sees a fair or good person and applies the fair status to the action. To the conservative, a conservative who did something illegal or something that would be bad on the part of someone else – must have been doing good. Simply because they can’t do bad.

To them Donald Trump is inherently a good person as a member of the aristocracy. The conservative isn’t lying or being a hypocrite or even being “unfair” because – and this is key – for conservatives past actions have no bearing on current actions and current actions have no bearing on future actions so long as the aristocracy is being protected. Lindsey Graham is “good” so he says to delay SCOTUS confirmations that is good. When he says to move forward: that is good.

To reiterate: All that matters to conservatives is the intrinsic moral state of the actor (and the intrinsic moral state that matters is being part of the aristocracy). Obama was intrinsically immoral and therefore any action on his part was “bad.” Going further – Trump, or the media rebranding we call Mitt Romney, or Moscow Mitch are all intrinsically moral and therefore they can’t do “bad” things. The one bad thing they can do is betray the class system.

The consequences of the central goal of conservatism and the corresponding actor state morality are the simple political goals to do nothing when problems arise and to dismantle labor & consumer protections. The non-aristocratic are immoral, inherently deserve punishment, and certainly don’t deserve help. They want the working class to get fucked by global warming. They want people to die from COVID19. Etc.

Montage of McConnell laughing at suffering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTqMGDocbVM&ab_channel=HuffPost

OH LOOK, months after I first wrote this it turns out to be validated by conservatives themselves: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/16/trump-appointee-demanded-herd-immunity-strategy-446408

Why do the conservative voters seem to vote against their own interest? Why does /selfawarewolves and /leopardsatemyface happen? They simply think they are higher on the social ladder than they really are and want to punish those below them for the immorality.

Absolutely everything Conservatives say and do makes sense when applying the above. This is powerful because you can now predict with good specificity what a conservative political actor will do.

We still need to address more familiar definitions of conservatism (small c) which are a weird mash-up including personal responsibility and incremental change. Neither of those makes sense applied to policy issues. The only opposed change that really matters is the destruction of the aristocracy in favor of democracy. For some reason the arguments were white washed into a general “opposition to change.”

  • This year a few women can vote, next year a few more, until in 100 years all women can vote?

  • This year a few kids can stop working in mines, next year a few more…

  • We should test the waters of COVID relief by sending a 1200 dollar check to 500 families. If that goes well we’ll do 1500 families next month.

  • But it’s all in when they want to separate migrant families to punish them. It’s all in when they want to invade the Middle East for literal generations.

The incremental change argument is asinine. It’s propaganda to avoid concessions to labor.

The personal responsibility argument falls apart with the whole “keep government out of my medicare thing.” Personal responsibility just means “I deserve free things, but people more poor than me don’t.”

Look: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U

And for good measure I found video and sources interesting on an overlapping topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymeTZkiKD0

Some links incase anyone doubts that the contemporary American voter base was purposefully machined and manipulated into its mangle of abortion, guns, war, and “fiscal responsibility.” What does fiscal responsibility even mean? Who describes themselves as fiscally irresponsible?

Here is Atwater talking behind the scenes. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2013/03/27/58058/the-religious-right-wasnt-created-to-battle-abortion/

a little academic abstract to lend weight to conservatives at the time not caring about abortion. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-policy-history/article/abs/gops-abortion-strategy-why-prochoice-republicans-became-prolife-in-the-1970s/C7EC0E0C0F5FF1F4488AA47C787DEC01

They were casting about for something to rile a voter base up and abortion didn’t do it. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/02/05/race-not-abortion-was-founding-issue-religious-right/A5rnmClvuAU7EaThaNLAnK/story.html

The role religion played entwined with institutionalized racism. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/27/pastors-not-politicians-turned-dixie-republican/?sh=31e33816695f

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/27/pastors-not-politicians-turned-dixie-republican/?sh=12df77c6695f

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/01/the-long-southern-strategy-how-southern-white-women-drove-the-gop-to-donald-trum/

Likely the best: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

Just a couple of brilliant statements I noticed. And they deserve a wider audience.

Thom Hartmann exposes the delusions of Republicans, once and for all!

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Thom Hartmann is a liberal radio commentator, but he is clearly also a brilliant writer. Here is a piece he wrote about a month ago:

https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-the-reagan-revolution-scheme

Why the “Reagan Revolution” Scheme to Gut America’s Middle Class is Coming to an End

The signal was in Biden’s speech, but entirely missed by the press

As we stand on the edge of the end of the Reagan Revolution, an end signaled by one particular phrase in President Biden‘s speech last Thursday night (which I’ll get to in a minute), its really important that Americans understand the backstory.

Reagan and his conservative buddies intentionally gutted the American middle class, but they did so not just out of greed but also with what they thought was a good and noble justification.

As I lay out in more granular detail in my new book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, back in the early 1950s conservative thinker Russell Kirk proposed a startling hypothesis that would fundamentally change our nation and the world.

The American middle-class at that time was growing more rapidly than any middle-class had ever grown in the history of the world, in terms of the number of people in the middle class, the income of those people, and the overall wealth that those people were accumulating. The Middle class was growing in wealth and income back then, in fact, faster than were the top 1%.

Kirk postulated in 1951 that if the middle-class got too wealthy, we would see an absolute collapse of our nation’s social order, producing chaos, riots and possibly even the end of the republic.

The first chapter of his 1951 book, The Conservative Mind, is devoted to Edmund Burke, the British conservative who Thomas Paine visited for two weeks in 1787 on his way to get arrested in the French revolution. Paine was so outraged by Burke’s arguments that he wrote an entire book rebutting them titled The Rights Of Man.

Burke was defending, among other things, Britain’s restrictions on who could vote or participate in politics based on wealth and land ownership, as well as the British maximum wage.

That’s right, maximum wage.

Burke and his contemporaries in the late 1700s believed that if working-class people made too much money, they would challenge the social order and collapse the British form of government. So Parliament passed a law making it illegal for employers to pay people over a certain amount, so as to keep wage earners right at the edge of poverty throughout their lives. (For the outcome of this policy, read pretty much any Dickens novel.)

Picking up on this, Kirk’s followers argued that if the American middle-class got too rich there would be similarly dire consequences. Young people would cease to respect their elders, women would stop respecting (and depending on) their husbands, and minorities would begin making outrageous demands and set the country on fire.

When Kirk laid this out in 1951, only a few conservative intellectuals took him seriously. People like William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater were electrified by his writings and line of thinking, but Republicans like then-President Dwight Eisenhower said, of people like Kirk and his rich buddies, “Their numbers are negligible and they are stupid.“

And then came the 1960s.

In 1961, the birth control pill was legalized and by 1964 was in widespread use; this helped kick off the modern-day Women’s Liberation Movement, as women, now in control of their reproductive capacity, demanded equality in politics and the workplace. Bra burning became a thing, at least in pop culture lore.

By 1967, young people on college campuses we’re also in revolt; the object of their scorn was an illegal war in Vietnam that President Johnson had lied us into. Along with national protest, draft card burning was also a thing.

And throughout that decade African Americans were increasingly demanding an end to police violence and an expansion of Civil Rights. In response to several brutal and well-publicized instances of police violence against Black people in the late 1960s, riots broke out and several of our cities were on fire.

These three movements all hitting America at the same time got the attention of conservatives and Republicans who had previously ignored or even ridiculed Kirk back in the 1950s. Suddenly, he seemed like a prophet.

The Republican/Conservative “solution” to the “crisis” these three movements represented was put into place in 1981: the explicit goal of the so-called Reagan Revolution was to take the middle class down a peg and end the protests and social instability. 

Their plan was to declare war on labor unions so wages could slide back down again, end free college all across the nation so students would be in fear rather than willing to protest, and increase the penalties Nixon had already put on drugs so they could use those laws against hippy antiwar protesters and Black people.

As Nixon‘s right hand man, John Ehrlichman, told reporter Dan Baum: “You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. Do you understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.“

While it looks from the outside like the singular mission of the Reagan Revolution was simply to help rich people and giant corporations get richer and bigger, the ideologues driving the movement actually believed they were helping to restore safety and stability to the United States, both politically and economically.

The middle class was out of control, they believed, and something had to be done. Looking back at the “solutions” England used around the time of the American Revolution and advocated by Edmund Burke and other conservative thinkers throughout history, they saw a solution to the crisis…that also had the pleasant side effect of helping their biggest donors and thus boosting their political fortunes.

Reagan massively cut taxes on rich people and raised taxes on working-class people 11 times. He put a tax on Social Security income, tips income, and unemployment income, for example, all of which had previously been tax-free but were exclusively needed and used by middle-class people. At the same time, he cut the top tax bracket for billionaires from 74% to 25%.

He declared war on labor unions, crushed PATCO in less than a week, and over the next decade the result of his war on labor was that union membership went from about a third of the American workforce when he came into office to around 10% at the end of the Reagan/Bush presidencies. It’s at 6% of the private workforce now.

He and Bush also husbanded the moribund 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT, which let Clinton help create the WTO) and NAFTA, which Clinton signed and thus opened a floodgate for American companies to move manufacturing overseas, leaving American workers underemployed while radically cutting corporate labor costs and union membership.

And, sure enough, Reagan’s doubling-down on the War on Drugs was successful in shattering Black communities.

His War on Labor cut average inflation adjusted minimum and median wages by more over a couple of decades than anybody had seen since the Republican Great Depression.

And his War on Colleges jacked up the cost of education so high that an entire generation is today so saddled with more than $1.5 trillion in student debt that many aren’t willing to jeopardize it all by “acting up” on campuses.

The key to selling all this to the American people was the idea that the US shouldn’t protect the rights of workers, subsidize education, or enforce Civil Rights laws because, they said, government itself is a remote, dangerous and incompetent power that can legally use guns to enforce its will.

As Reagan told us in his first inaugural, government was not the solution to our problems, but instead was the problem itself.

He ridiculed the formerly-noble idea of service to one’s country and joked that there were really no good people left in government because if they were smart or competent they’d be working in the private sector for a lot more money.

He told us that the nine most frightening words in the English language were, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, billionaires associated with the Republicans built a massive infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets to promote and amplify the message. It so completely swept America that by the 1990s even President Bill Clinton was saying things like, “The era of big government is over,” and “This is the end of welfare as we know it.” Limbaugh, Hannity and other right-wing talkers were getting millions a year in subsidies from groups like the Heritage Foundation.

Which brings us to President Joe Biden’s speech.

Probably the most important thing he said in that speech was almost completely ignored by the mainstream American press. It certainly didn’t make a single headline, anywhere.

Yet President Biden said something that Presidents Clinton and Obama were absolutely unwilling to say, so deeply ingrained was the Reagan orthodoxy about the dangers of “big government” during their presidencies.

President Biden said, “We need to remember the government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital. No, it’s us. All of us. We, the people.“

This was an all-out declaration of war on the underlying premise of the Reagan Revolution. And a full-throated embrace of the first three words of the Constitution.

In March, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt talked about the “mysterious cycle in human events.” He correctly identified the end of the Republican orthodoxy cycle of the 1920s, embodied in the presidencies of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, of deregulation, privatization and tax cuts. 

(Warren Harding in 1920 successfully ran for president on two slogans. The first was “A return to normalcy,” which meant dropping Democratic President Woodrow Wilson’s 90% tax bracket down to 25%, something Harding did in his first few years in office. The second was, “Less government in business, more business in government.” In other words, deregulate and privatize. These actions, of course, brought us the Great Crash and what was known for a generation as the Republican Great Depression.)

Americans are now watching, for the third time in just 30 years, a Democratic president clean up the economic and social debris of a prior Republican presidency.

They’re starting to figure out that crushing the middle-class didn’t produce prosperity and stability, but instead destroyed tens of millions of people’s lives and dreams.

And they’re seeing the hollowness of the Republican’s promises as we all watch, aghast, as the GOP scrambles to mobilize the last remnants of its white racist base, at the same time waging an all-out war on the ability of Black, young and working-class people to vote. 

President Biden’s speech was the beginning of the end for the Republicans, although it appears only a few of them realize it. (Marco Rubio is apparently one of those who’ve figured it out: he’s now supporting Amazon workers who want to unionize in Alabama!)

Let’s hope the damage the GOP has done over the last 40 years isn’t so severe that America can’t be brought back from the brink of chaos and desperation.

Hopefully, it’s a new day in America.

My responses:

Kirk postulated in 1951 that if the middle-class got too wealthy, we would see an absolute collapse of our nation’s social order, producing chaos, riots and possibly even the end of the republic.
 
This is bullshit, of course. Prosperity for the majority (not just an elite few) results in the people being happier and therefore more loyal to the state that takes care of its people. A state that neglects and oppresses its people deserves to be overthrown.
 
Burke and his contemporaries in the late 1700s believed that if working-class people made too much money, they would challenge the social order and collapse the British form of government. So Parliament passed a law making it illegal for employers to pay people over a certain amount, so as to keep wage earners right at the edge of poverty throughout their lives. (For the outcome of this policy, read pretty much any Dickens novel.)
 
Well, if the social order is unjust, from a purely ethical perspective, it should be challenged! And the government wouldn’t collapse, it would be REFORMED. Equating progressive reforms with social breakdown is a damned lie!
 
Republicans were wrong, wrong, wrong, and EXTREMELY wrong to do what they did! Ever heard of the proverb, “No pain, no gain”? If the social and political reforms of the 1960s had been allowed to continue, we wouldn’t need a Black Lives Matter movement now! How many Americans, of ALL colors, might still be alive if Liberals have continued ruling America to this day?!
 

What’s infuriating about this is…..

Their plan was to declare war on labor unions so wages could slide back down again, end free college all across the nation so students would be in fear rather than willing to protest, and increase the penalties Nixon had already put on drugs so they could use those laws against hippy antiwar protesters and Black people.

…….

While it looks from the outside like the singular mission of the Reagan Revolution was simply to help rich people and giant corporations get richer and bigger, the ideologues driving the movement actually believed they were helping to restore safety and stability to the United States, both politically and economically.

That is EXACTLY the kind of attitude fascists in Europe had before World War II!

I should point out that we Americans went through a FOUR YEAR LONG CIVIL WAR in which over a million Americans on both sides were killed and entire cities were devastated, and yet the American republic not only did not fall, it came out STRONGER because we no longer had that slavery issue dividing us!

The entire premise of the conservative movements in both the United Kingdom and the United States was based on so many damned lies and delusions that I think we would be totally justified in CRUSHING IT COMPLETELY, just as we crushed the Confederacy in 1865! Instead, we tolerate it because we have forgotten our true principles.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Conservatism by its very nature DENIES that! It must be considered UNAMERICAN!!!

 
 

Joe Walsh, ex-Republican, anti-Trump, but still conservative

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It’s no secret that as a progressive/liberal/leftist I bitterly despise most conservatives, seeing nearly all of them as hypocrites who deserve no respect at all. But there is one that I have noticed recently on Twitter that challenges that perception quite well and so he may indeed be the exception that brings redemption to conservatism as a philosophy. He is Joe Walsh.

But before I actually talk about him, read this first:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn

Heel–Face Turn

When a bad guy turns good. This usually makes for a good plot, for three reasons:

  1. It lets the writer reintroduce the villain as a “darker, edgier” hero.
  2. It reinforces a desired notion of the inherent goodness within people.
  3. It prevents the Worthy Opponent from falling victim to What a Senseless Waste of Human Life.

There are also various in-story motivations for the bad guy to make the turn:

  1. An encounter with an All-Loving Hero or gaining a Morality Pet.
  2. Discovering that Being Evil Sucks or possibly that Good Feels Good.
  3. An Enemy Mine situation leading to Fire Forged Friendship or The Power of Love in the form of Deliver Us from Evil or Love Redeems changing their priorities. Conversely Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal makes them rethink their loyalties.
  4. Realizing that they are a Noble Demon.
  5. A Heel Realization, if they had never considered their actions evil or wrong in the first place.
  6. They become friends with a hero after fighting them.
  7. A case of Even Evil Has Standards, if one villain becomes a good guy to stop another villain from doing something so horrible that they just cannot allow it.

Now on to our actual subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Walsh_(American_politician)

William Joseph Walsh (born December 27, 1961) is an American politician, conservative talk radio host, former social worker, and former 2020 Republican presidential candidate who served one term in the United States House of Representatives representing Illinois’s 8th congressional district.

Rep Joe Walsh.jpg

Born and raised in the Chicago metropolitan area, Walsh began his career as a social worker providing education and job skills training to students in low income areas, gradually becoming more politically active. Walsh had unsuccessfully campaigned for Congress in 1996 and the Illinois House of Representatives in 1998, but was elected to the U.S. House in 2010, defeating three-term incumbent Melissa Bean. Though he received little Republican Party support in his bid against Bean, he was popular with the Tea Party movement. In the 1990s, he identified as a moderate Republican, but he later became a conservative and a Tea Party activist.

During his time in Congress, Walsh was criticized for his often personal attacks against members of the Democratic Party and, specifically, President Barack Obama. He accused the president of abandoning the U.S.–Israel alliance and bankrupting the country. Walsh maintained a no-compromise approach to legislating that included rejecting any tax increases. He consistently voted against raising the federal debt ceiling and authored a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution. Walsh rejected the scientific consensus on climate change and supported tougher border control. Later, during his presidential campaign, Walsh expressed regret for some of the comments and stances he made during his time in Congress.

As a result of redistricting following the 2010 United States Census, Walsh’s district was redrawn by the Democratic-controlled Illinois General Assembly in 2012. While he initially planned to run in the newly drawn 14th district against fellow Republican Representative Randy Hultgren, he eventually decided to run in the remapped 8th district against Democratic candidate Tammy Duckworth. Walsh was defeated by Duckworth in the general election on November 6, 2012. After leaving office, Walsh began hosting a talk radio show. Though initially a strong supporter of Donald Trump, Walsh became increasingly critical of the president and, on August 25, 2019, he announced his presidential campaign. He dropped out of the race on February 7, 2020, after a poor showing in the Iowa caucus, and subsequently left the party.[2] He later endorsed Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who won the election.

Say whatever else you will about this guy, but he is not (anymore, at least) a liar. He just doesn’t seem to be a backstabber like so many others I could refer to.

His Twitter account: https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom

And here are some of his actual recent tweets:

I’m going to be watching him over the next few months, at least. And maybe listening to him too.

http://fsilencepodcast.com/

If he really wants to make a difference soon, I think he should join the Libertarian Party and build it up to overthrow the corrupted Republicans.

https://www.lp.org/

Rush Scumbaugh is dead

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Read this story:

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/rush-limbaugh-conservative-radio-titan-172612686.html

Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio titan, has died of lung cancer at age 70

Maria Puente, USA TODAY

Rush Limbaugh, the talk titan who made right-wing radio financially viable in American media and himself a Republican kingmaker years before Fox News, died Wednesday, after he revealed in 2020 that his lung cancer was terminal. He was 70.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Kathryn, at the beginning of Limbaugh’s radio show, from which he’s been absent for almost two weeks.

A longtime cigar smoker who stocked the humidors in his homes and studios with the finest, Limbaugh succumbed to cancer after battling drug addiction and loss of hearing earlier in his career (he was deaf by the end and broadcast his daily show in spite of it).

A Republican conservative and die-hard supporter of former President Donald Trump to the end, Limbaugh was among Trump’s most important enablers of his failed effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election with baseless claims of voting fraud.

At one point in December, Limbaugh declared he thought the country was “trending toward secession,” then had to walk the comment back the next day. He wasn’t advocating another civil war, he was only repeating what he had heard being said, he told listeners.

After a mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, provoking outraged sputtering from Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives alike, Limbaugh stood out in dismissing the controvery.

“We’re supposed to be horrified by the protesters,” Limbaugh scoffed on his program on Jan. 7. “There’s a lot of people out there calling for the end of violence…lot of conservatives, social media, who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable regardless of the circumstances…I am glad Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, the actual tea party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord, didn’t feel that way.”

Love him or loathe him, few would deny that Limbaugh was one of the most influential commercial broadcasters, if not the most influential, in American history, says Michael Harrison, founder and publisher of Talkers trade magazine, which covers talk radio.

Harrison believes Limbaugh’s legacy – his impact on public policy, on the national culture and on GOP politicians from the presidency on down – remains unmatched.

“Limbaugh’s radio talent an dedication to the medium are unparalleled in the modern talk industry,” he said. “At a time when the very future of radio and its talent pool could very much be on the wane in terms of cultural relevance and prestige, he raised it to a level of importance on a par with the most influential media platforms and players of our time.”

Journalist Ze’ev Chafets, whose 2010 biography of Limbaugh (“Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One”) grew out of a New York Times magazine cover story in 2008, says Limbaugh was one of the top two or three most important figures in Republican politics in the 1990s.

“The reason is his show was heard in every congressional district in the country, and certainly every state, by a huge number of Republicans who almost entirely made up his audience,” Chafets says. “He was able, at a granular level, to affect elections. The year Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House (1994), he gave Limbaugh an honorary membership in (the Republican caucus in) Congress because of his influence.”

“Coastal Americans” who didn’t listen to Limbaugh had no idea of his “gravitational pull” because they underestimated his communication talents and his smarts, at least initially, Chafets said.

“They didn’t understand because they thought he was a carnival barker talking to rubes,” Chafets said. “He talked about issues, not gossip. His show (consisted of) three-hour monologues without notes and included minute details about arcane matters that most talk-show hosts could not do.”

He was original, he was funny and he was adept at assembling key elements of broadcasting to produce entertaining and compelling radio, Harrison says.

“He was a consummate pro and even people who disagreed with him politically, most who are honest will tell you what a great broadcaster he (was),” Harrison said. “Because he used so many elements of great radio: pacing, his voice, satire, sound effects. The flow and feel of his show was very appealing in his use of sound and broadcast principles.”

Limbaugh’s show was the most listened-to talk radio broadcast in the United States, with an estimated cumulative weekly audience of 15.5 million listeners at his peak, according to Talkers’ tracking. “No one beats Rush in the political-news talk-radio format – he’s #1,” Harrison said.

His was a life and career of wild success pockmarked by controversies and health calamities, including years of chronic back pain and unsuccessful surgery, leading to long-term prescription opioid addiction and 30 days in rehab in 2003.

In 2006, he was criminally investigated and arrested for alleged “doctor shopping” to obtain multiple prescriptions in Florida, a charge eventually dropped after a plea agreement and his promise to continue addiction treatment (although Limbaugh continued to maintain his innocence).

Earlier, in 2001, he announced he had gone deaf over three months for unknown reasons, although his doctors said it could have been due to years of drug addiction. Eventually, he had cochlear implants to restore some of his hearing.

Then lung cancer struck. Limbaugh gave his legions of fans plenty of advance notice of the coming end. On Oct. 20, he told listeners that his lung cancer was terminal.

“You measure a happy life against whatever medication it takes. And at some point you decide, you know, this medication may be working, but I hate the way I feel every day,” Limbaugh said on the air. “I’m not there yet. But it is part and parcel of this.

“It’s tough to realize that the days where I do not think I’m under a death sentence are over.”

His listeners were shocked when he first revealed his diagnosis on his show in February 2020, not long after being told on Jan. 20 the grim news by “two medical institutions.”

“This day has been one of the most difficult days in recent memory for me. I’ve known this moment is coming in the program…I’m sure that you all know by now that I really don’t like talking about myself and I don’t like making things about me,” Limbaugh said. “I like this program to be about you and the things that matter to all of us.”

But, he said, he knew he had to explain what was going on in his life because listeners would be curious if he wasn’t at his usual post every day. Even though he had no symptoms at that time, he realized that would not last and he would have to be absent for treatment.

“It’s not that I want to fool anybody, it’s just that I don’t want to burden anybody with it and I haven’t wanted to,” he said. “But it is what it is. “You know me, I’m the mayor of Realville.”

A day later, he was visibly moved when his longtime friend and Florida neighbor, President Trump, awarded him the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, during the State of the Union address in the House of Representatives.

Attending as one of Trump’s “special guests,” the white-bearded and ruddy-faced Limbaugh sat in the House gallery next to first lady Melania Trump, who fastened the medal on a blue ribbon around his neck.

“In recognition of all that you have done for our nation, the millions of people a day that you speak to and that you inspire, and all of the incredible work that you do for charity, I’m proud to announce tonight that you will receive our nation’s highest civilian honor,” Trump said to applause in the chamber.

In May, Limbaugh updated his listeners on the state of his health with a candid assessment.

“I vowed not to be a cancer patient on the radio. I vowed to shield as much of that from the daily program as I can,” Limbaugh said before talking about his third wave of treatment. “I have to tell you, it’s kicking my ass.”

He said the previous week of treatments had left him “virtually worthless” and “virtually useless.” He hasn’t left the house or done much of anything, as doctors warned him would happen.

“It’s the price that you pay if you make the decision to go ahead and do treatment to try to prolong your life,” he said, adding that he is doing “extremely well, all things considered.”

Then came his grim assessment in October. He tried to be upbeat but the progression of the cancer or the treatment or both had not been easy.

“Some days are harder than others,” he said. “I do get fatigued now. I do get very, very tired now. I’m not gonna mislead you about that. But I am extremely grateful to be able to come here to the studio and to maintain as much normalcy as possible – and it’s still true.”

The day before Christmas 2020, on his final show of the year, he updated listeners on his health again, saying he hadn’t expected to make it past October let alone into December. “And yet, here I am and today, got some problems, but I’m feeling pretty good today… God knows how important this program is for me today,” he said, thanking listeners.

Limbaugh is survived by his fourth wife, Kathryn Rogers, whom he married in 2010. Three previous marriages ended in divorce. He did not have children.

Born on January 12, 1951, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Rush Hudson Limbaugh III came from a line of conservative Republicans that included lawyers, judges and ambassadors. His was a family that looked askance at his early yen – while still in grammar school – to become a radio star.

“I said, ‘Pop, I love this. I know I’m great at it. I’m gonna get even better,'” Limbaugh told interviewers later.

When he was 9, he got a toy radio as a gift and began “broadcasting” on AM frequencies in his home, entertaining his family playing DJ with his records. In high school he worked as a DJ at a local station co-owned by his father. He lasted only one year at Southeast Missouri State University before leaving to pursue a career in radio.

It did not go well at first. He was fired from stations in Missouri and Pennsylvania for being too controversial as a news commentator. In the mid-1980s, he landed at KFBK in Sacramento as an on-air host. Within a year, he was Sacramento’s top radio host.

The 1987 repeal of the Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine gave Limbaugh his head to broadcast his controversial opinions without having to present opposing views. In July 1988, he launched his own show on a talk station in New York City, and he was off to the races: His star was rising, and people noticed.

“A large new noise echoes across the invisible cacophony that is talk radio,” reported Louis Grossberger in The New York Times in December 1990. “His subject is politics. His stance: conservative. His persona: comic blowhard. His style: a schizoid spritz, bouncing between earnest lecturer and political vaudevillian.”

It helped that the first Gulf War was under way and Limbaugh demonstrated his fervent support by ridiculing anyone who sought peace. His show was moved to stations with larger audiences; eventually Limbaugh was broadcasting on more than 650 stations nationwide. The election of President Bill Clinton in 1992 only fueled the possibilities of lacerating satire aimed at Democrats.

Ever since, Limbaugh maintained his position as the king of talk radio while fending off multiple flaps over controversial things he said on the air, about racial and ethnic minorities, feminism and the notion of sexual consent, environmentalism and climate change, his admiration for Trump and his disdain for former President Barack Obama; Limbaugh was an on-air super-spreader of the “birtherism” lie that Obama was not born in the United States.

Most of these controversies rolled off him, except for Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University law student who testified in Congress in 2012 in support of mandating insurance coverage for contraceptives. Limbaugh mocked her, suggesting this view made her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”

“That was the most damaging thing he ever did,” Harrison says. The outcry that followed kicked off boycotts by major sponsors of talk-radio, even though Limbaugh issued a rare apology for “insulting word choices.”

“It had a terrible economic impact on the talk-radio business in general,” Harrison says. “It’s the one major blemish on his history that hurt his fellow broadcasters. Now he’s been forgiven because of what he’s done for the industry that outweighs that.”

In between doing his show and advising Republican presidents and candidates, Limbaugh wrote best-selling books (“The Way Things Ought to Be” in 1992, followed in 1993 by “See, I Told You So”), including a series of children’s books.

He supported several charities, including a telethon for leukemia and lymphoma, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which honors a firefighter who died saving others in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York.

Chafets, who grew up in Michigan, remembers when he first heard Limbaugh on the radio as he was driving one day near Detroit.

“Before Rush Limbaugh, you could not hear conservative thought on the radio in the USA – Rush is the first guy to provide that, the rock-and-roll DJ with the news. And that shocked people,” Chafets said. “I could not believe it myself. I actually pulled over to listen to what he was saying. I couldn’t believe it.”

Considering all the terrible things Limbaugh said and promoted, and his demonization of liberals, I can only think of one thing in reference to his death:

index

I mean I don’t believe in hell because there is no evidence it exists, but people like Limbaugh make me wish he could be sent there!

Donald Trump MUST be defeated this year!

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I have discovered a YouTube channel dedicated to Republicans who once supported Donald Trump for President……and now oppose him because of his lies, bigotries, and failures.

https://www.youtube.com/c/RepublicanVotersAgainstTrump

Here are some videos of these people:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just have two questions for those people.

  1. What the hell did you think Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America great again” meant when it was unveiled in 2015? Wasn’t it obvious that it was White Nationalist dog-whistling, implying that America stopped being great just because a black man (actually, a half-white man) became President in 2008? By making Trump your nominee in 2016, you made your party the RACIST Party!
  2. Did you really think that someone with absolutely NO political experience or even any public service at all would serve well as our President? That never made any sense at all! Hillary Clinton may have been far from perfect, but she was way better than Trump for any number of reasons anyone could name. But you voted for the one who mirrored your own ignorance at the time and believed that a woman was not fit to be President, period!

You failed this country in 2016, both as Republicans and as Americans in general. Instead of starting a populist revolution, like Bernie Sanders promised, you elected the ultimate ELITIST into power! And we must NEVER tolerate that again. And the only sure way to prevent such a tragedy from repeating itself……is to completely dismantle the Republican Party and push its Conservative ideology, with its racist, sexist, Christian supremacist and plutocratic views, out of mainstream American politics……..

FOREVER!

Mallard Filmore’s creator is a hypocrite

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I remember many years ago seeing the comic strip Mallard Fillmore in my local newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallard_Fillmore

Mallard Fillmore is a comic strip written and illustrated by Bruce Tinsley that has been syndicated by King Features Syndicate since June 6, 1994. The strip follows the exploits of its title character, an anthropomorphic green-plumaged duck who works as a politically conservative reporter at fictional television station WFDR in Washington, D.C. Mallard’s name is a pun on the name of the 13th president of the United States, Millard Fillmore.

I guess I should have paid better attention to it, because…..

Mallard yearns for the “good old days,” and views himself as a victimized underdog in a world that is being overrun with political correctness, religious secularism, and hypocrisy. He is often in a state of outrage over the news item of the day, usually involving liberals.

Mallard’s politics are very close to, if not one and the same as, cartoonist Bruce Tinsley’s; Tinsley told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that “Mallard really is about as close to me as you can get,” in an October 2005 interview.

Other characters from the strip:

  • Mr. Noseworthy is Mallard’s boss at WFDR. He is a parody of political correctness in America, afraid of offending anyone or anything. He is also a parody of the mainstream media, which is portrayed in the strip as having a liberal bias. Noseworthy’s catchphrase is, “If you’d gone to journalism school, you’d know this stuff.” He has a daughter in college who “came out” as a conservative.
  • Chet is a co-worker of Mallard’s at WFDR. He is an arrogant, vain, superficial, Botox-injecting, clothes-obsessed Caucasian male. In a series of strips in late 2003, he discovered he is a “metrosexual.”
  • Chantel, an African-American woman reporter, is a co-worker of Mallard’s at WFDR. She is described as “smart, aggressive, and liberal.” Unlike most liberals depicted in “Mallard Fillmore,” she is presented as an intelligent, competent person. She is usually used whenever a scene calls for a minority or a minority perspective – although she is offended when her colleagues assume she speaks on behalf of all African-Americans. On average, she appears about once or twice a year.
  • Dave Quat, a conservative Vietnamese man, is Mallard’s best friend, who generally agrees with Mallard’s politics. He is the owner of his own diner, aptly named “Dave’s Diner.” His wife has never been seen.
  • Rush Quat is Dave’s young son. Rush is in the fourth grade and hopes to someday become a professional basketball player; he sometimes plays basketball with Mallard. Unlike most of the kids in his class, he does not take Ritalin.
  • Eddie is Mallard’s pet fish. Unlike Mallard, he does not speak but only comments in thought balloons.
  • Congressman Pinkford Veneer is a fictional Washington, D.C. Democratic Congressman. He is a spineless, hypocritical, out-of-touch politician who enjoys tax hikes and opposes school vouchers, even though he sends his own children to a private school. In April 2000, he authored a bill that would require criminals to “give their victims a 30-second waiting period to unlock their trigger-locks” on their guns.
  • OSHA-Boy is a guardian of workplace safety and safe working conditions who is authorized to “annoy virtually anyone suspected of violating a regulation.” He appears to be a flying, glasses-wearing dwarf (or other creature) with a superhero-like costume, and a clipboard in hand. He appears to be a physical manifestation of OSHA.
  • Dr. Dilton Twinkley, an education expert, often appears as a guest on WFDR to talk about education issues. He appears to be an exaggerated parody of the NEA and U.S. public school system officials.
  • Larry, a co-worker of Mallard’s who gets agitated whenever Mallard does not purchase candy from his son for his school’s annual fundraisers.
  • Mr. or Ms. P.C. Person, a superhero-like physical manifestation of political correctness who prides hirself on being gender-neutral.(This character has come under fire from transgender rights groups because they felt the character promoted bigotry and mockery of transgender individuals.)

 

I wanted to learn more about the strip’s creator, so I went to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Tinsley

And then read THIS:

In 2006, Tinsley was arrested twice for driving while intoxicated, once in August and again in December, both Class A misdemeanors.[1][2] After the December incident, he attacked the sentencing judge, Roderick McGillivray, in several of his comics.[3]

And he’s a conservative? Shouldn’t he be a supporter of law enforcement and not a drunk trying to justify himself even if he screws up?

Clearly, his strip shouldn’t be running in newspapers if those incidents are true!

Better late than never!

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As increasing amounts of damning evidence of Donald Trump’s corruption, incompetence, and cruelty as President of the USA piles up, it is finally starting to have an effect upon even his most loyal supporters and the critics of the previous President, Barack Obama.

Read this blog entry. I will copy passages from it in green italics and my responses will be in blue bold.

Continue reading →

The Foundational Lie at the Center of all Conservative Politics

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One of the biggest problems with our modern society is the limited vision far too many people seem to have and their unwillingness to look beyond that vision and outside their comfort zone to see all of reality and what it involves.
For example, the average white person in the USA rarely deals with black people on a personal level and thus has no idea of how racism affects blacks on a frequent basis. Because their dealings with police are usually pleasant or at least respectful, they assume that blacks are treated the same way by police. So when they hear of cops shooting unarmed blacks, they assume that the black suspect must have provolked the cop in some way. But even if that were true, being defiant towards a cop should not merit the death penalty, so the excusing of the killings is racist on its face.
Let me emphasize one important point about those in the media who defend the political status quo and those who are privledged because of that status quo; they are ALL liars. Because those in power want to feel comfortable about their power, these media thugs rush to tell their followers what they already assume to be true, thus the followers express confirmation bias rather than looking for objective truth to take all the facts into account.
Rush Limbaugh is a liar.
Ann Coulter is a liar.
Bill O’Reilly is a liar.
Shawn Hannity is a liar.
Michael Savage is a liar.
Dinesh D’Souza is a liar.
I could go on with dozens more names of media personalities as well as hundreds of names of officials in our various federal, state, and local governments, but you get the point, right?
And what are all these different conservatives lying about? One basic concept, which can be summed up as follows.
“There is no need to reform or improve society, what we have right now (or had in the past at some point) is what we should have forever in the future, because change will be too painful for us to endure.”
Doesn’t that sound like self-serving cowardice to you?
In the 1960s, there was a tremendous struggle over civil rights for blacks in America, especially in the south where they were kept in dire poverty and even denied voting rights in most cases, as well as cut off from the same opportunities whites enjoyed. The U S Supreme Court ruled against these racist institutions and forced most of them to change. Afterwards, most whites across America thought the racial problems had been solved. But the white supremacists, while they were down, were certainly not out and they began to strike back.
Indeed, I have come to believe that the Religious Right of the 1980s and the Tea Party that rose up in response to Barack Obama becoming President were both scams that enabled white supremacists to sneak into and take over the Republican Party and then through that to grab control of the entire political apparatus of the United States federal government, not merely taking back control of the southern states. And with Donald Trump they have finally succeeded.
Why is conservatism so harmful to society? Because human nature is corrupt and abusive. When people allow themselves to act according to their default biological programming, the result is always tribalism, the placing of members of your own group above outsiders instead of promoting equal justice for everyone.
Ironically, Christianity, which most American conservatives claim to believe in, teaches this very thing, that we are all sinners who can’t be trusted to control ourselves without guidance from above. However, it is clear that even authorities in conservative forms of Christianity can’t always be trusted; they promote religious bigotry rooted in the past instead of ethical standards that fit the real needs of real people in this present age (ironic, considering that Christianity itself started as a rebellion against Jewish legalism). That’s what secular humanism does. And democracy is a humanist ideal.
Whenever people believe, for any reason, that society is good enough and needs no improvement, they actually open the door for society to become corrupt and abusive later; the only sure way to protect the people is to constantly look for ways and means to improve society. I am therefore a champion of “perpetual revolution”; the American Revolution of the 18th Century was only the beginning of reforms and progress and should never end as long as we have viable societies of any kind. There should be NO place whatsoever for Conservatism in American politics, period. To be consistent, the aforementioned conservatives in the media should be bowing down to the British government that Americans rebelled against in 1776, but they don’t because they are hypocrites.

The Myth of Liberal “Intolerance”

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A couple of nights ago, some transphobe made a comment on my blog under Transphobics get busted by crime victim they tried to take advantage of.

I rejected it for the filth that it was, but I made a screenshot of it in order to make an example of it.

Transphobe commenting

What an idiot!

First, transgendered people are not trying to be shocking or scary towards anyone; they just want to live their lives without being a target of others’ hate. It is the transphobes who choose to react with hostility to the open existence of transgendered people. If there was no hostility, what would be the problem?

Second, who the hell made this guy an expert on mental illnesses? Most psychologists decades ago classified homosexuality as a mental illness, but they eventually stopped doing that once it became clear that the mental disorder that supposedly caused homosexuality could not be clearly defined and treated. The same may well be true of the transgendered condition. If being homosexual or being transgendered are not themselves harmful, why call them illnesses at all?

Third, if people’s rights are being violated, it does not matter if it is 50% (women) or less than 1% (transgendered). This looks like the reverse of the popularity fallacy, in which there being very few of a non-privileged group somehow justifies discriminating against them. If 100 transgendered people had been exterminated by the Nazis during World War II instead of six million Jews, it still would have been a horrible thing for them to do.

How nice of the asshole to use the slur for transgendered people that is the same as “nigger” for African-Americans!

I am a champion of tolerance for gays, lesbians, and transgendered people. Ironically, that means I have to be INTOLERANT of conservatives who express bigotry towards those types of people. Does this mean I am a bigot towards conservatives? Of course not!

The concept of bigotry towards someone’s OPINIONS is nonsense. When conservatives accuse their liberal opponents of bigotry towards them, that is merely a silencing tactic. It is the same sort of arrogance that leads to them referring to the “regressive left”. A pathological liar named Jonah Goldberg even wrote a book as right-wing propaganda titled “Liberal Fascism” based on that lame fallacy.

Liberal_Fascism_(cover)

To explain the concept of false bigotry a little more clearly, consider this analogy: “Men fear that women may laugh at them for not being manly, while women fear that men may beat them nearly to death for not being ladylike.” Trust me, being publicly ridiculed for one’s bigotry is nothing compared to being MURDERED for being gay, transgendered or even being in the wrong place at the wrong time if you are black in a mostly white neighborhood and get confronted by a cop or some vigilante with a gun.

SO GROW THE FUCK UP, CONSERVATIVES! I am having NONE of your shit anymore!

Transphobics get busted by crime victim they tried to take advantage of.

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I’m against all forms of bigotry, which is simply judging all members of one group as if they all have the same moral failings instead of judging human beings strictly as individuals. I do not assume all Muslims are terrorists, that all women deserve to be sex slaves to their husbands, or that all French people are alcoholics.

Recently, various states in the United States have either tried to pass laws allowing discrimination against transgendered people or tried to repeal laws prohibiting discrimination against them. The rationale behind such absurdities is that all transgendered women are actually still men pretending to be women so they can attack and rape women and girls in bathroom stalls. Where they get that crazy idea from is anyone’s guess, but it actually encourages hatred against all who happen to be transgendered, often making THEM targets of violence. Quite simply, people need to stop equating sexual deviancy with immorality. Just because someone is homosexual or transsexual does not mean they are inclined to violate the personal autonomy of anyone else.

Now someone who was abused TWICE, first by an actual criminal and then by opportunistic transphobes, has decided to fight back against both types of bastards.

Continue reading →

Some Right-wing Bigots have NO Shame!

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Sometimes Conservatives are so desperate for validation of their extremist crusade against their political opponents that they will grab at straws and refer to things that have NOTHING to do with their politics. Below is an example of this chicanery:

http://www.redstate.com/jimjamitis/2017/01/11/leah-reminis-scientology-fight-front-andrew-breitbarts-war/

How Leah Remini’s Scientology Fight Is A Front in Andrew Breitbart’s #WAR

Posted at 6:30 pm on January 11, 2017 by Jim Jamitis

Please note that RedState is yet another one of those right-wing propaganda mills, like breitbart.com, FOX News, WorldNetDaily, NewsMax, and others.

I don’t know any Scientologists that I’m aware of and my only connection to L. Ron Hubbard is having read his bad science fiction novel Battlefield Earth back in the ’80s and later—primarily out of morbid curiosity—watching the even worse film adaptation starring Scientologist John Travolta.

The writer starts off with something that looks completely reasonable and true. If it had stuck to the actual issue of the Church of Scientology vs. Ms. Remini, I would highly recommend it. Instead….the article goes into left field, pun intended!

Last night while watching episode 7 it dawned on me why I am so involved with this show: What Leah Remini is doing is the most Andrew Breitbart-esque thing I have seen anyone do since his untimely passing. Like Andrew did with the Democrat-media complex, Remini is throwing down the gauntlet and challenging a corrupt institution to prove her wrong.

I only met Andrew Breitbart a couple of times, both of which were in chaotic and noisy environments, so I can’t claim to have been his friend or to have really known him personally. Still, he is one of relatively few people I would consider to be personally inspiring to me.

And what did Breitbart do to be so inspiring? Save one or more lives? Create an invention to make millions of lives better? Write a fictional story to entertain and impress readers? Hold public office and push for legislation to make government better for the people?  No, none of these things! He was a writer and publisher of propaganda attacking liberals!

I have no idea what Remini’s politics are. Maybe when you publicly pick a fight with a global cult that has virtually unlimited resources, there isn’t even room for politics in your life. Whether she knows it or not though, Remini’s fight is the same fight for liberty and truth that Andrew Breitbart fought, just on a different front. She is in effect saying to a the cult of Scientology, “I’m going to follow the facts where they lead and if you don’t like it, f*** you. Bring it on. Accuse me of whatever you want, I’m not going to be intimidated. I’m just going to take what you throw at me and use it to show everyone who you are and why you need to be taken down.”

She is executing her takedown just like Andrew would, by telling stories. Data and analysis don’t change people’s minds anywhere near as well as good storytelling.

Scientology is responding with the same sort of tactics the institutional left used against Andrew. According to the people whose stories Remini is telling, anyone who leaves Scientology or speaks ill of it is declared to be a “suppressive person” and is considered “fair game.” Scientologists then use any and all means to intimidate, discredit, or personally destroy those people. They employ private investigators to dig up dirt. They falsely accuse them of crimes. They follow them with cameras in order to capture embarrassing video.  It is like an even more fanatical version of the Saul Alinsky tactics employed by far left progressives.

As I recall, it was Breitbart and his cronies that engaged in disruptive and deceitful tactics against liberals. Like having a guy pose as a pimp to misrepresent how ACORN did its business.

Remember when “Joe the Plumber” tripped up candidate Obama into being honest about wealth redistribution? In just a few days the media investigated the background of a private citizen more thoroughly than they ever did Obama’s. How about when the New York Times crowdsourced their sleazy fishing expedition into Sarah Palin’s emails from when she was Governor of Alaska? Have you ever heard of a black conservative who hasn’t been smeared as an “Uncle Tom?” Or a scientist skeptical about man’s role in climate change who hasn’t been accused of being in the pocket of Big Oil? Racism, sexism, misogyny, are all part of the litany against those who have a different opinion. It’s all the same though. Speak out against progressive orthodoxy and you will be smeared or destroyed. The more effectively you speak out, the more weapons they will bring to bear, not to refute what you say but to silence you from saying it.

Of course, the first two sentences are assertions not backed up with proof. The reference to Sarah Palin’s emails is ironic considering how obsessed Republicans have been about Hillary Clinton’s emails. Hypocrisy much? Also, black conservatives may have sexist (if male), religious (if Christian fundamentalist) or economic (if rich) reasons to sell out the best interests of their own race, much like Milo Yiannopoulos does in backstabbing the gay community despite being gay himself, because he is a white man too. And Big Oil is indeed rich enough to corrupt both governments and scientists; the evidence for man-made climate change is solid. It’s OK to have a different opinion as long as it does not hurt people or render them powerless, as conservative policies often do. And most obvious of all……CRITICISM IS NOT CENSORSHIP! Unless Andrew Breitbart or the others that work for his propaganda site could show attempts on their lives or even death threats sent to them by known liberals, they cannot legitimately claim to be targets of attempts to silence them. That’s just dishonest hyperbole.

I can’t help but think Andrew would be a huge fan of what she is doing. He might even be helping her if he was still with us.

Did he ever attack Scientology before he died? Did he ever attack any extremist cult? If not, that assertion is entirely baseless. The implication that liberals are also members of some extremist cult is nothing but libel.

Milo Yiannopoulos, Liar, Bigot, is Banned from Twitter

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Read this story:

Twitter permanently bans Milo Yiannopoulos for abusive comments on ‘Ghostbusters’ star Leslie Jones

The move came after Yiannopoulos led an online troll against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones who vowed to leave Twitter over her treatment. Image: @myiannopoulos Facebook/AP)

NEW YORK: After several complaints and repeated suspensions, the micro-blogging site Twitter has permanently ban Milo Yiannopoulos, the tech editor at conservative news site Breitbart and one of Twitter’s most offensive users.

The move came after Yiannopoulos led an online troll against ‘Ghostbusters’ star Leslie Jones who vowed to leave Twitter over her treatment, prompting a major outburst on social media, engadget.com reported on Wednesday.

“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others,” Twitter said in a statement.

“Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension,” it added.

Yiannopoulos reacted to the ban, saying that the site has “confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and ‘Black Lives Matter’ extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives.”

The Breitbart tech editor has been disturbing Twitter users with his trolls for the past few years. Twitter earlier removed his verified status, but allowed him to keep tweeting.

Last March, Chuck Johnson who once argued that homosexuality caused a horrendous Amtrak train crash, was permanently barred from the site.

Just to verify this guy’s claims, I checked to see if other prominent conservative media personalities are still on Twitter.

Here is Rush Limbaugh’s Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/rushlimbaugh

Here is Bill O’Reilly’s Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/oreillyfactor

This is Ann Coulter’s Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter

Donald Trump also has a Twitter account, and uses it often:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

No, Yiannopoulos, you were not banned for being conservative, because they all are too. You were banned for being a worse racist asshole than any of them. And that is saying a LOT. So you lied and I am calling you out on it.

Governor Bevin is a traitor, just like his Confederate ancestors

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Read this horrible story:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kentucky-gov-matt-bevin-says-bloodshed-might-be-165058821.html

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin says bloodshed may be needed to protect conservatism

Michael Walsh

Reporter
September 13, 2016
Bevin speaks at a picnic on Aug. 6, in Fancy Farm Ky. (Photo: Timothy D. Easley/AP)
Bevin speaks at a picnic on Aug. 6, in Fancy Farm Ky. (Photo: Timothy D. Easley/AP)

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said conservatives may need to turn to physical violence in order to protect the United States against contemporary liberalism.

The Republican governor put forth the controversial suggestion after speaking of the “degradation of society” during an impassioned, 15-minute speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The provocative comments started to gain national attention at the start of this week.

“America is worth fighting for ideologically. I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically. But that may, in fact, be the case,” he told the crowd.

Bevin suggested that if Democrat Hillary Clinton were elected president, she would set the nation on a dangerous course that might require bloodshed to correct. He told the audience that the “candle” of liberty might go out “on our watch.”

To hammer home his point, he paraphrased a famous quote from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

“Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children,” he said. “It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Don’t let it happen.”

Bevin encouraged young conservatives to speak up, be bold, sound the alarm and wake up others. He told the conference attendees to not keep what they’ve learned from speakers and their books to themselves.

According to Bevin, too many people these days are following the example of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who infamously tried to appease Adolf Hitler and promised “peace for our time,” as opposed to his successor, Winston Churchill, who is widely celebrated for understanding and combating the threat of Nazism.

He said liberals mock conservatives into silence by accusing them of being intolerant when they speak their minds. He lamented, for instance, that many conservatives have remained silent concerning “the atrocity of abortion.”

“It’s a slippery slope. First we’re killing children. Then it’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Now it’s this gender-bending kind of ‘don’t ask, don’t be a bigot, don’t be unreasonable, don’t be unenlightened, heaven forbid, just keep your mouth shut.’”

On Friday, at a banquet in Washington, D.C., Bevin was awarded the Distinguished Christian Statesman Award from the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, a ministry of Evangelism Explosion International.

Bevin’s office has not responded to a request for comment from Yahoo News, but he did post a statement on Twitter encouraging people to listen to his comments in their entirety. He suggested that the mention of bloodshed in his remarks was a reference to military sacrifice and that “any intelligent person will easily understand the message” if they listen to the speech.

And some might call me intolerant for saying there should be no place for conservatism in our governments? This is why! If we do not destroy them, it is increasingly clear that they will destroy us, just as they tried to do 150 years ago during the American Civil War! It was indeed conservatives who led the southern states to secede from the union to preserve the institution of slavery, resulting in vast numbers of unnecessary deaths! And what motivated slavery in the USA? Racism. Indeed, racism and fascism are the actual ideological roots of modern American conservatism, not liberty and justice for all. Gov. Bevin is not fighting for America at all, nor is he asking his bigoted followers to do so, but to fight for the society he lives in to continue to be white dominated forever. BTW, need I mention that Thomas Jefferson was himself a southern slaveowner?

But no, I do not want conservatives like Bevin to be silent at all. The more those idiots rant, the more liberals like me can expose and react to their hateful rhetoric and discredit it at every turn.That’s what free speech and freedom of the press is all about.

Why party labels in the USA are completely useless

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Watch this video:

The anti-slavery party of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War was NOT the party of Big Business from the 1870s to the 1930s. The party that defended slavery before and during the Civil War was NOT the party that fights for the rights of blacks and other minorities today.  The Religious Right which infested the Republicans in the 1980s had almost nothing in common with the likes of Donald Trump now.

This is why we need a MULTI-PARTY system like in some European countries. The two-party system we Americans have always had is by nature misleading. The south has ALWAYS been conservative compared to the north. If the Ku Klux Klan was founded today, it would be founded by southern REPUBLICANS. Conservatism is the ideology we must always fight, no matter what party label it marches under.

For the record, it is not BIG government we should oppose, but STUPID government which is a problem no matter what its size. Did you know that Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, actually increased government by massive military spending….that we also never needed in the first place?! And why did Reagan do that? Because so many big businesses have had contracts with our military and profit from every war we end up fighting in! I can guarantee that if a Republican gets the Presidency in the next decade or so, then he will find an excuse, any excuse to get us into another overseas war like Bush Sr. did when he pushed us into war with Iraq in 1991. and his son did again in 2003. Consider yourselves warned!

As for illegal immigration, the rules were designed beforehand to exclude non-white people from Latin America, including Mexico. Ironic considering we conquered and annexed half of Mexico’s territory in the 1840s. “Hey, thanks for all your land, but we do not want your people! GO AWAY!!!” Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, which is majority Spanish-speaking and non-white, remains a mere possession of the USA and not a state. Go figure.

Even Republicans are waking up!

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In a previous blog entry, I wrote the following:

Notice what all these current front runners have in common? THEY ARE ALL WHITE MEN! And that is really all the Republicans are appealing to these days, as well as Christian bigots. And these different candidates are engaged in a brutal fight for the nomination that is splitting the party up…..all of them are appealing to a core constituency, white males, who are no longer the overwhelmingly dominant segment of the American population, even though they are still slightly more privileged than those who are non-white and/or female. The fact that John McCain lost in 2008 to Obama should have showed the futility of continuing to appeal to a base that is growing impotent. But the Republicans have not learned how to grow and diversify, have they?

This past year, we DID have a black man, a woman and a couple of hispanics running under the Republican ticket for President, along with several white men, but I’d swear every single one of them sounded like a white male bigot! Not one of them really took any positions or said anything that would be truly appealing to women or minorities. As horrible as Donald Trump may seem to be, at least he seems more honest about his bigotry and appealing to the bigotry of voters than most other conservatives out there. Continue reading →

Newton’s Laws of Politics, sort of

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Conservatives often complain that poor and minority peoples are never satisfied, despite the gains supposedly made for them over the past two centuries. So they assume that their opponents are just being greedy and bigoted against whites and the rich. But there is another way of seeing what has happened and what can be done to stop the problems. Consider Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Continue reading →

Another Conservative gets caught lying

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Read this silly article on a right-wing propaganda website. The article itself will be in red and my direct responses will be in blue  .

http://www.yesimright.com/heres-the-hilarious-difference-between-donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton/

Although we do try to report on hard-hitting issues, we’re not above a few good laughs at the expense of far-left nutjobs like Hillary Clinton. Here’s an amazing anecdote about the difference between a conservative and liberal, attributed to Jim Spivey on Facebook.

Right from the start, this writer starts misrepresenting one of her political opponents. Hillary, like her husband Bill, is not far-left.  She is actually a fairly conservative Democrat. It is Bernie Sanders, who is also running as a Democrat for the Presidency, who can be called a “far-left nutjob” because he professes to be a democratic SOCIALIST. Yet he seems to have far more integrity than most other politicians, including Hillary herself. 

It sums everything up perfectly:

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were walking down the street when they came to a homeless person. Trump gave the homeless person his business card and told him to come to his office for a job. He then took $20 out of his pocket and gave it to the homeless person.

Uh, NO! Usually when you fill out a job application, you must state your home address, thus preventing a homeless person from getting a job anywhere. This is exactly why being homeless is such a terrible trap!

Hillary was very impressed, so when they came to another homeless person, she decided to help. She walked over to the homeless person and gave him directions to the welfare office. She then reached into Trump’s pocket and got out $20. She kept $15 for her administrative fees and gave the homeless person $5.00.

Welfare offices DO serve homeless people in ways that private industry does not. And the implication here is that liberals must “steal” from the rich in order to give away money and other gifts to the poor. But that is a lie on several levels: First, taxation by legal definition is NOT and can never be theft. Second, government officials must eat too, so they do have to be paid for their services.  Or would you rather try to live without them and rely only on for-profit businesses for all your services?  You will end up even poorer as a result! And why would the writer say $15 for administrative fees and not a more reasonable amount like $5?  For hyperbole, of course. Note to right-wingers:  Private industry MUST make a profit to function, while governments do not!

Now, do you understand the difference between a Conservative and a Liberal progressive?

No, but I know a bigoted LIAR when I see one! Of course, the incident never happened anyway!

Pie charts and privilege.

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The basic conflict between conservatives and liberals can be illustrated by the following pie charts.

In the first, we see a typical arrangement in which a certain class that is privileged gets most of what they want, leaving only a little for members of a non-privileged class.

PieOne A truly just society, one that liberals would favor, would have an arrangement like this:

PieTwoBut this would cause the formerly privileged group to have less, which would go against their interests. But what if we could enlarge the amount of resources so that everyone could have more?

PieThreeSounds ideal, no? But conservatism depends on social inequality, so instead they might push for THIS instead!

PieFourIt does not matter how large or how small the pie is, as long as a privileged class gets most of it, period!

Maybe that explains this:  https://dalehusband.com/2009/07/13/the-absurd-scam-of-reaganomics/

An Open Letter to the American People

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August 3, 2013

To the concerned citizens of the United States of America,

The Republicans in the House of Representatives have tried dozens of times to repeal Obamacare and every time they have failed. They will always fail as long as the Democrats have a majority in the Senate and Obama, or any other Democrat, is President. So why do they bother?  If anyone else was caught wasting as much time at their jobs as the Republicans have, they would be fired. So the obvious solution is to vote at least some of the Republicans out of the House next year.

The truth is that the Republicans are living on borrowed time. It is a given that they will never capture the Presidency again; George W. Bush will be the last Republican ever to hold it. But once Obamacare is fully implemented and its benefits become obvious, the insane opposition the Republicans have shown to it will cause them to never be able to hold a majority in either chamber of Congress and their status as a major party in the United States will be finished.

If you really want limited government, vote for Libertarians. Most of them are not hypocrites. They are indeed the only true followers of the U S Constitution left. No, not even the “Tea Party” bigots among Republicans. The Tea Party was just another right-wing scam to get votes from people who were scared out of their wits by the election of a black man to the Presidency. Ironically, I think Obama has not been liberal enough and that we need to push government even more to the left over the next few decades.

Indeed, if we were true to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence (“we hold there truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…..”) there would be absolutely NO place in American politics for Conservatism. Why? Because Conservatism by its very nature is based on trying to maintain some sort of social inequality; some traditionally privileged class seeking to maintain its exalted status as opposed to some other disadvantaged class. It could be rich vs. poor, whites vs. blacks, men vs. women, Christians vs. non-Christians, or heterosexuals vs. homosexuals. Conservatism works by constantly appealing to the irrational prejudices of those who are in power and seek to keep the power to themselves rather than share power with those who do not have it. Both the Democrats in the late 19th Century and the Republicans in the late 20th Century to today were infested by Conservatism.

The Republicans today have caved in so deeply to bigotry that they are not even capable of representing the real needs of the people anymore; they are controlled by giant corporations that have been holding most of our economy hostage for decades and own media outlets like FOX News to lie to the American people constantly. These same corporations that outsourced so much of our manufacturing to China, but blame illegal immigrants for taking jobs from real Americans. Those same corporations that make vast profits from wars overseas and a military budget at least six times greater than that of any other nation while causing us to drown in public debt. Hypocrites! They are the real parasites and traitors to our nation, not welfare recipients or those who dare to blow the whistle on the corruption and abuses of our government!

So let us destroy the Republican Party! The madness must end!

Sincerely,

Dale Husband, the Honorable Skeptic

 

The Republican Party is broken and must be scrapped

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While the Democrats are firmly united under President Barack Obama, the Republican Party has been badly split among its Presidental candidates. After some of the loonier and less competent candidates have quit, there remain:

  1. Mitt Romney, a moderate with a genuine track record of success, but also a Mormon.
  2. Rick Santorum, an extremist appealing to the Religious Right bigots
  3. Newt Gingrinch, whose instant name recognition and deep well of experience is marred by his hypocrisy and public failures.
  4. Ron Paul, who professes libertarianism and a strict Constructionist view of the U S Constitution, but he is just too old to be a viable President. His son Rand Paul is a Senator and he might run for President later, and he is indentified with the Tea Party zealots.

Notice what all these current front runners have in common? THEY ARE ALL WHITE MEN! And that is really all the Republicans are appealing to these days, as well as Christian bigots. And these different candidates are engaged in a brutal fight for the nomination that is splitting the party up.

Four years ago, there was a simular fight between Hiliary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hiliary had a slight advantage because of her previous position as First Lady, while Obama was still only serving his first term as a Senator, so by all appearances Hiliary should have trounced Obama quickly. But in fact she did not, because blacks were so eagar to get one of their own as President that they pushed hard for him. Likewise, women wanting one of their own as President pushed hard for Hiliary. Blacks and liberal women are two of the Democratic Party’s strongest constituencies. The result was a battle that lasted for months and threated to severely damage the Democrats’ chances at winning in 2008.  And yet in the end the Democrats were so determined to defeat the Republicans who had disgraced themselves so badly under Bush Jr that they were able to put  aside their differences and win the election.

So why can’t the Republicans do the same and thus win this year? Because the differences between the front-runners are trivial compared to their simularities, yet they fight bitterly. In addition, all of them are appealing to a core constituency, white males, who are no longer the overwhelmingly dominant segment of the American population, even though they are still slightly more privileged than those who are non-white and/or female. The fact that John McCain lost in 2008 to Obama should have showed the futility of continuing to appeal to a base that is growing impotent. But the Republicans have not learned how to grow and diversify, have they?

So keep losing, Republicans! In a few more decades your party will be irrelevant! Like the Ku Klux Klan is now.

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The “Tea Party” is destroying the Republicans!

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Citizens registered as an Independent, Democra...

Image via Wikipedia

As much as I dislike the limits of the two-party system in the USA, it does have its benefits; it can grind extremist movements, both within the two major parties and outside them, to a halt, preventing them from gaining any power. We see clear evidence for that here [emphasis in these two articles below is mine]:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/pl_nm/us_usa_campaign_newyork

Democrat Kathy Hochul wins upstate New York race

By Neale Gulley Neale Gulley – Wed May 25, 10:49 am ET

BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) – Democrat Kathy Hochul drew on voter discontent over Republican plans to revamp Medicare to score an upset win on Tuesday in a special election to represent a conservative upstate New York congressional district.

Hochul defeated Republican Jane Corwin in a three-way race that also included self-described Tea Party candidate Jack Davis. The outcome did not affect Republican control of the House of Representatives.

“Tonight the voters were willing to look beyond the political labels and vote for a person, and vote for message that they believe in,” Hochul told cheering supporters minutes after taking a phone call from Corwin, a state assemblywoman.

“We can balance the budget the right way, and not on the backs of our seniors,” said Hochul, the Erie County clerk. “We had the issues on our side.”

Once expected to be a Republican landslide, the special congressional election tightened in the final days, with a spotlight trained on the national debate over the budget deficit, spending and Medicare — the government-run healthcare program for the elderly.

<snip>

Corwin came under heavy attack from Hochul for backing a divisive budget plan put forth by Republicans in the House, and also saw Davis siphon away support.

National parties and outside groups poured money into the district, hoping to claim victory in the battle over cuts in spending and Medicare first proposed by House Republican Paul Ryan.

“Kathy Hochul’s victory tonight is a tribute to Democrats’ commitment to preserve and strengthen Medicare, create jobs, and grow our economy,” Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

“It sends a clear message that will echo nationwide: Republicans will be held accountable for their vote to end Medicare.”

Only two Democrats since World War Two have represented the heavily Republican 26th Congressional District, which covers a big area of western New York near Buffalo.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions said in a statement that Corwin had to battle “two well-funded Democrats, including one masquerading under the Tea Party name.” The Tea Party is a conservative activist movement.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/05/democrat-wins-upset-victory-in-new-york-house-race.html

In a decisive victory Tuesday, Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican Assemblywoman Jane Corwin, 47 percent to 43 percent, in a heavily GOP congressional district.

The House Republican budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., became a focal point in the election as Corwin defended her support for it and Hochul, the Erie County clerk, played up her opposition to the plan’s unpopular restructuring of Medicare for those 55 and younger.

Jack Davis, a wealthy businessman who poured more than $2 million into his campaign, ran as a third party candidate on the Tea Party label and emerged with 9 percent of the vote. He had run as a Democrat in previous attempts at this House seat, and his presence in this special election certainly helped what should have been a slam dunk for Republicans become a competitive contest in the closing weeks of the campaign.

After spending the last two years on the defensive over the stimulus, health care and cap and trade, Democrats seem to have found an opening to play some offense using the Ryan budget, specifically its proposal to shift Medicare from a system where the government directly reimburses doctors to one where subsidies are provided to seniors and payments are made through private insurance companies.

To give you a sense of this Republican slice of New York: John McCain defeated President Obama in this district, 52 percent to 46 percent, in 2008. And despite Andrew Cuomo’s 63-33 statewide trouncing of Carl Paladino in the governor’s race last year, Paladino won here with more than 60 percent of the vote. Former Rep. Chris Lee won the district with 73 percent of the vote in 2010, just a couple of months before his infamous shirtless photo emerged, which led to his resignation and Tuesday’s special election.

Appearantly in New York, candidates can win elections with just a plurality of the vote, rather than an outright majority. It is most likely that Corwin would have won a majority in a runoff election. I wouldn’t be surprized if Republicans in New York try to change the election procedures later.

It should be noted that even if Davis was a Democrat years ago, he would have had to run with a lot of conservative positions to be competitive in such a conservative district. MANY Democrats are indeed like that, unfortunately. Therefore, I doubt that Hochul is a Progressive. Pete Sessions’ remarks are an insult to the general political climate in that area.

In any case, it is clear that the “Tea Party” has become a laughingstock that is ruining the power and credibility of the Republican Party. The biggest mistake Republicans like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and others made was to try to draw these dissenters into the Republican camp. Likewise, the Tea Party leaders should have rejected the Republicans and instead drew millions of people into the membership of the Libertarian Party, which would then overthrow the Republican Party to become the Democrats’ main opposition. Because that didn’t happen, there will be no real change in government over the next decade or so. A great opportunity for long-term reform was destroyed by the desire for short term political convinience.

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The absurd scam of “Reaganomics”

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I don’t claim to be an expert on economics, but I think I know enough to explain why I consider supply-side economics to have been such a disasterous failure since the Reagan years. It was nothing more than a scam to trick people into voting Republican.

When you cut taxes for the wealthy during a recession, they do indeed invest more in the economy, but mainly to benefit themselves rather than to benefit society as a whole. As a result, the gap between rich and poor increases, even as economic activity skyrockets. People become rich by hoarding money rather than spending it, and so the money supply circulating decreases. The Federal Reserve may attempt to solve the problem by printing more money, but this causes inflation, itself a sign of economic distress. Inflation hurts the poor and middle classes, while the wealthy accumulate still more money. Eventually, we end up with ANOTHER recession only a few years after the earlier one ended! So the economic growth caused by the tax cuts may make revenues appear to increase for a short time, but the crash that comes later makes that issue moot. And the default response of the “conservatives” to the new recession is…….more stupid tax cuts!

One thing that can definintely be said about the lies and hypocrisy of many Republicans was that while they did cut taxes, they did NOT reduce the size of government. In fact, they INCREASED it! The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security were both started under Republican administrations (and even this Liberal wants them shut down as unnecessary). And even Reagan blew up military spending while denouncing the excess size of government. Hey, the military IS part of the government! HELLO!!!!

The mistake the “conservatives” kept making was to judge the success of their economic policies by their short term effects, and ignore the downturns that their own policies caused later. What we really need is a set of policies that can generate long-term, slow, and steady economic growth and development that is not likely to result in a crash later. As the old saying goes, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” So maybe we could try this:

https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/my-plan-for-economic-recovery/