Once Again Nader and West Team to Elect a Republican President

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Once Again Nader and West Team to Elect a Republican President

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WEST SUCKIN' UP -

BUT LOOK AT OBAMA'S FACE

So Ralph Nader and Cornel West have teamed up yet again to sabotage the Democratic Party. They’re currently canvassing the country for Democratic opponents to challenge Obama in the primaries. According to Nader, "Without debates by challengers inside the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries, the liberal/majoritarian agenda will be muted and ignored." And he goes on to say, "The one-man Democratic primaries will be dull, repetitive, and draining of both voter enthusiasm and real bright lines between the two parties that excite voters."
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If my grandfather was still around he’s say, "These two fools have more nerve than a brass-ass monkey." And he would be right. I’m shocked that either of them have the nerve to even open their mouths, because the last time they teamed up during the 2000 election to "excite the voters," they excited the Democratic Party right out of office. I used to jokingly tell friends that after Bush was sworn in, his very first act as president was to take down a picture of George Washington and replace it with a picture of Ralph Nader in the Oval Office.
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Admittedly, many of us are frustrated by President Obama’s lack of assertiveness toward the GOP, but the point of an election is to vote your interest, not your frustration. If you were Jewish in pre-Nazi Germany and frustrated with the administration in office, would you squander your vote to vent your frustration at the sitting administration, or would you vote to make damn sure that Hitler didn’t win the election? That’s the situation that we’re currently in here in the United States.
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I’ve written several articles criticizing of Barack Obama, but I’ve always tried to remain constructive, and I’ve limited my criticism to specific issues instead of launching unsubstantiated attacks on his overall character. As I see it, that’s the difference between attempting to have a positive impact on policy, as oppose to engaging in the destructive practice of pursuing a personal agenda.
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Obama has caused me tremendous frustration on several issues, but simple common sense dictates that my being frustrated is far preferable to allowing the GOP to come into power and turn the United States into a nation of corporate feudalism. That’s a level of common sense that Ralph Nader, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West seems to be lacking. Tavis seems to be keeping a low profile in this effort, by the way, but somehow I still visualize West sitting on his knee with Tavis’ hand in his back.
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Isn’t it curious how all of their criticism is directed at Obama while, this point, it has become abundantly clear that the GOP has turned into a group of radical lunatics with absolutely no sense of limits, or any respect for the United States Constitution?
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The GOP literally stole the 2000 election, invalidating the votes of literally millions of Americans; they invaded an innocent country, killing over a million Iraqi citizens – the majority of whom were innocent women and children; they’ve thrown away the lives of thousands of our troops in pursuit of corporate greed; they ravaged our economy and are using it as a pretext to abolish Social Security and all other elements of the social safety net; their radical Supreme Court has given multinational corporations more control over our electoral system than American citizens, and they’ve effectively turned the state of Michigan into Michighanistan by taking away the citizens’ right to self-determination. Yet, Nader and West would risk turning the nation over to these people, yet again, because they’re personally irritated with Barack Obama?
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Anyone – and I do mean ANYONE – who would do that is either stupid, insane, think they’ll benefit from a GOP victory in some way, or are so blinded by an oversized ego that they’ve lost all connection with reality. It is clear to most thinking people that President Obama, flaws and all, is our best defense against turning the nation over to a GOP who want’s to drag us back into the Middle Ages. If that wasn’t the case, Nader and West wouldn’t have to mount a talent search. Thus, it’s one thing to have individual principles, but placing the entire nation in jeopardy to indulge those principles suggests an egomania that, at the very least, borders on psychosis.
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It’s time for Nader and West supporters to realize that neither of these two individuals are grounded in reality. They both have a proven track record of being politically naive, at best, and delusional at worst. They both fail to recognize that while it’s an admirable ideal to want to vote one’s conscience, that’s all it is – an ideal. Politics is about being practical, and the inescapable fact is, their consciences can’t hold political office – and even if they could, I wouldn’t want to rely on the consciences of men with such poor judgment in the first place. So while they might want to fall on their swords in the name of political purity, the rest of us would rather settle for a functional democracy.
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Again, this is not the first time that Nader and West have engaged in this failed strategy. West supported Nader in his self-serving and childishly petulant campaign during the 2000 election that led to the appointment of George W. Bush. So while West is running around claiming to be so outraged over the economy and lack of jobs for the poor and middle class in this country, he’s partially responsible for it. In a previous article,
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The Tavis/West Poverty Pimp Tour, I point out the following:
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"Those of us who are students of political history have seen this Tavis/West demagoguery before. They’re following directly in the footsteps of Ralph Nader, one of the worst turncoats in American history.
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"Nader should have pushed his agenda during the Democratic primaries, then if his position was rejected, he should have fallen in line and supported the Democratic candidate, if for no other reason than to support the public good. But instead, when his position was rejected, he took it as a personal rejection and acted like a petulant child. He ignored the greater good and purposely sabotaged the Democratic agenda – along with all of the causes that he was supposed to be so passionate about all of his life – and took his ball (and votes) and went home.
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"By doing so, Nader negated everything that he ever accomplished in his life. He also betrayed the fact that everything he ever accomplished was done purely for self-promotion and not for the public good, as we had previously assumed. His miserable act of treachery during the 2000 election was purposely designed to help George Bush to win that election in order to deny the Democrats after rejecting him as a candidate. That makes him just as culpable as Bush and Cheney for the death of over a million Iraqi citizens, the maiming and death of thousands of American troops, and even the nations current economic condition, which is a direct result of the Bush administration’s purposeful plundering of the United States treasury. Nader supporters would say that he stood on principles, but his "principles" have led to the death and misery of literally millions of innocent people. Thus, Ralph Nader should be remembered as one of the most miserable and self-serving snakes in all of U. S. History.
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"Tavis and West are engaged in the very same sort of treachery as Nader, and it may very well lead to the same result, or worse. Because you see, this time we’re going to be left with a fascist state."
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But if you confront members of the Nader/West coalition with these facts, they’ll immediately begin to obfuscate and engage in intellectual gymnastics in an attempt to avoid responsibility for the horrific fate that they brought upon the country. They’ll say things like, "It’s not our fault that Gore lost. He just didn’t fight hard enough for a recount." But by using such arguments what they’re actually saying is, "Gore just didn’t work hard enough to undo the damage that we’d done." But the bottom line is this – Gore lost the 2000 election to Bush in Florida by 537 votes, and the Nader/West coalition peeled off 97,488 votes from Gore in Florida alone. So don’t take my word for it – you do the math.
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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/

Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

The American People Are being Flimflammed, Bamboozled, and Hornswoggled by the GOP

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

The American People Are being Flimflammed, Bamboozled, and Hornswoggled by the GOP

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At the very outset I’d like to make an unequivocal assertion - entrusting our economy and the wellbeing of the poor and middle class to the GOP is like entrusting the well being of a child to a convicted child molester. If you think that’s hyperbole, simply ask yourself who was the last Republican president who didn’t drag our economy into a ditch. If you want to say Ronald Reagan, forget it. In spite of the fact that Reagan ran on a platform of limited government and economic responsibility, during his tenure he not only tripled the national debt, but did more spending than all of the presidents who preceded him - COMBINED.  In addition, he effectively destroyed our industrial base in the process.

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The GOP is only good at two things - propagandizing, or reframing their message to put the best face on their grossly malevolent agenda, and squandering our national resources in pursuit of that agenda. You see, they love the economy just the way it is - the rich are making money hand-over-fist, the government doesn’t have the resources to sufficiently regulate their activities, and the poor and middle class are in such dire straits that instead of making demands, they’re fighting among themselves for any crumbs that the rich are willing to throw at their feet.
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In short, the GOP is engaged in the process of lowering the standard of living of the American middle class in order to make their corporate friends more competitive in the new global economy. So if they have their way, our current condition will never change. In fact, they intend to make it a lot worse.
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And why shouldn’t they? After all, the recession isn’t having a negative impact on them or their corporate constituency - they’re doing better than ever. It’s only the poor and middle class that’s suffering, and once they get rid of Social Security, Medicare, and the unions, we’ll be totally dependent on the corporate class for our very survival. Then they’ll be right back up in the catbird seat, just like the good ole days, before they had all these pesky rules and regulations, and before that "socialist," Franklin Roosevelt, decided the American people needed to be protected. "Let ‘em protect themselves; that’s the American way, survival of the fittest - cope or die" It’s interesting to note, however, that they didn’t feel that way when their corporations were in trouble.
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It is in pursuit of this agenda that Grover Norquist, one of the most powerful men in the GOP - a man who’s gotten virtually every Republican in congress to sign a pledge to NEVER vote to raise taxes - indicated that he wanted a government small enough to drown in a bathtub. Specifically, he said, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
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Thus, the GOP wants a government just large enough to protect the interest of their corporate cronies around the word, send American youth to their death in pursuit of their corporate greed, and large enough to cover their gambling losses on the global market. But they want that same government to be too small to protect the American people from contaminated food, drugs, and water, and much too small to protect us from corporate manipulation, and safety, health, and fairness issues on the job - and they certainly want it too small to administer programs like Social Security and Medicare.
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This is a totally un-American and ruthless bunch. Norquist is also quoted as saying, "Our goal is to inflict pain. It is not good enough to win; it has to be a painful and devastating defeat. We're sending a message here. It is like when the king would take his opponent's head and spike it on a pole for everyone to see." The opponent that Norquist is talking about is the well being of the American people, and all those who advocate in their interest.
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Take a moment to consider the ramifications of his pledge to never raise taxes. That permanently protects the rich from having to pay their fair share of any burden, regardless of the national emergency. Thus, no matter what tragedy might befall this nation, if we can never raise taxes, that means that the burden of addressing that emergency must come out of the pocket of the poor and middle class in the form of fewer governmental services and protections. That’s their way of attacking the poor and middle class safety net. Since Social Security and Medicare are much too popular among the American people to attack head on, their strategy is to ravage the United States treasury in order to make them too expensive to fund.
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We currently see this strategy at work in congress as we speak. Republican House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, is refusing disaster relief funding for states hit by Hurricane Irene without being offset with spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. Talking Points Memo reports that Laene Fallon, a spokesperson for Cantor, said that "We aren't going to speculate on damage before it happens, period. But, as you know, Eric has consistently said that additional funds for federal disaster relief ought to be offset with spending cuts."

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This episode betrays much about the GOP mindset. First and foremost, it clearly demonstrates that the GOP leadership couldn’t care less about the welfare of the American people. Secondly, it clearly illustrates their gross hypocrisy. They claim that they’re so concerned about the national debt that they’re willing to deny disaster relief to Americans suffering the ravages of a hurricane, yet, they’re not so concerned that it prevents them from giving trillions of dollars away to the top 2% of the population.  Thus, by their demonstrated behavior, the GOP has betrayed their belief that subsidizing the wealth of the wealthy should take priority over relieving the suffering of poor and middle-class Americans - and these people are asking us to turn the government over to them? Please.  
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And Mr. President, the facts presented above are exactly why it’s so important that you refrain from confronting your base with terms and phrases like 'compromise,' 'bipartisan,' and 'shared sacrifice' for the rest of your days in office. Your base is sick to death of hearing them. We’re not stupid, and we understand that the American people have been compromised to the hilt. And engaging in bipartisanship with the GOP constitutes nothing less than consorting with the enemy of American democracy.
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As for "shared sacrifice," that’s really a joke. What you’re asking us to do is cut a pie into ten pieces, give the GOP nine of them, and then engage in negotiations over the sliver that's left. Give us a break, Mr. President. Stand up and fight. Give the American people a clear choice, and start lecturing the GOP like you did the Congressional Black Caucus.
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Oh, and one more thing. Get that quiver out your voice. We know you ain’t Martin Luther King, and we also know you’re in campaign mode, so don’t insult our intelligence. It’s disrespectful.
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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
　

How Do Politicians Get People to vote Against Their Own Interests

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

How Do Politicians Get People to Vote Against Their Own Interest?

I was watching the Republican debates the other night and it astounded me to see how many people were applauding proposed policies that would cut their throats. During the debates I watched people whose very lives are dependent on social security applauding enthusiastically in support of the views of Rick Perry, Republican governor of Texas, a man who is on record as saying he believes that social security is unconstitutional.

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So how do politicians get people to vote against their own interest? A classic example of the technique at work can be found in how the Republican Party manipulated the American people during the sixties. When you consider how methodically conservatives went about mounting their assault on the liberal agenda you can't help but recognize that it was a stroke of genius.
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Ironically, the conservatives took the Democratic Party's strength and made it a political liability. First they took the party's penchant for being concerned with the plight of the downtrodden and coined phrases like "bleeding heart liberals" and "tax and spend Democrats." They then played on the frustration of the middle class by tying civil rights legislation, welfare, and crime together as the source of middle class woes; then they attributed all of these problems to what they called the Democrat's tendency to be " bleeding heart liberals". Once the connection was made between minorities, welfare, crime, and the liberal agenda, it was then just a matter of repeatedly hammering the message home. Thereafter, whenever they mentioned the word "liberal," a sizable portion of the American people heard "minorities, welfare, and crime."
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So, by simply associating the word liberal with any policy or individual, that policy or person became toxic, because through extension, the public associated it or them with all the things they'd been conditioned to hate. The GOP has used this technique very effectively to play on their constituency’s prejudices and to whip them into a frenzy against their own interests.
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The effectiveness of that campaign can still be seen today in the Tea Party. The primary reason that the GOP dubbed healthcare reform "Obamacare" was to play on the prejudices of their base. By calling it Obamacare it distracts their base from the recognition that healthcare reform is a policy that would not only benefit, but protect their families. But instead of recognizing that glaring fact, all they’re thinking about is their hatred of Barack Obama, and as a result, act against their own interests.
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Demagogues within the Democratic Party has learned this technique well. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have used that very same technique to undermine President Obama and to promote their own political agenda. When Cornel West decided to mount his attack on Obama, instead of addressing specific policies, which would have been the responsible thing to do, he started attacking Obama’s overall character by indicating that Obama was somehow uncomfortable with "free Black men," and then went on to associate him with the White power structure - "plutocrats and oligarchs."
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Just like the Republicans, West was attempting to circumvent the peoples’ minds, and appeal directly to their emotions and the negative attitudes that many Black people and White liberals harbor toward the White power elite. That way, instead of having to substantiate his claims, all he’d have to do thereafter was use buzz words like "oligarchs" and "plutocrats" to stir the people’s emotions, much like the Republicans use the word "liberal."
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But you can always see these people coming and identify who they are by asking yourself one simple question - is this person appealing to my ability to think, or simply trying to inflame my emotions?
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If you’ll notice, neither the GOP nor Smiley and West ever have any positive ideas to add to the political debate. All they ever talk about is what they don’t like. Neither do they ever offer any alternative suggestions on how the current policy can be improved. Everything they do or say is designed to provoke anger and hostility, because rational thought is their enemy.
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The GOP doesn’t want to discuss the pros and cons of healthcare reform. All they want to do is attack it as an overall policy that’s "un-American." They’ll say something like, "Obamacare is un-America. The liberals are engaged is a socialist plot to protect your family."
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The same is true of Smiley and West. Instead of addressing specific policies or how they can be improved, all they want to talk about is why Obama is no good - and when interviewed, they speak in gross generalities, and the fact that they haven’t been invited to the White House will invariably be mentioned. But we have yet to hear them discuss anything concrete. If you don’t like President Obama, who should we run instead? They don’t want to address these sort of issues, because that might get the people thinking again.
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So the American people need to understand that they're being manipulated by demagogues of every stripe. Therefore, if we ever want to improve our current condition, first, it is incumbent upon us to stop depending on others to do what we need to do for ourselves; and second, we need to start doing a lot  less feeling, and a whole lot more thinking.
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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

President Obama: Protect America From Economic Terrorists

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

President Obama: Protect America From Economic Terrorists

The primary reason that the American people are suffering is because President Obama is allowing the GOP to define our priorities. The very worst thing that could ever happen to the Republican Party is for the economy to improve, people to start going back to work, and for the American people to be happy during the next election. So the GOP has a vested interest in seeing to it that the American people are hungry, miserable, and divided until after the 2012 election. 
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In fact, the plan is to keep us hungry and miserable beyond the 2012 election, because the overall game plan is to lower the American middle-class standard of living to conform to the new global economy. Instead of enhancing economic uniformity by fighting for the rights of workers around the world, as we've done in the past, they've now decided that it would be easier and much more profitable to simply lower the American standard of living.
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The GOP is accomplishing this agenda by turning common sense on its head. They’ve been running around telling any and everyone who will listen that the way to improve the economy and create jobs is by funneling all of the nation’s wealth to the rich, and then cutting spending - that’s politispeak for cutting all programs that will put a dollar in the pocket of the poor and middle class. But that’s exactly what we don’t need, because jobs are not created by the rich. Jobs are created by the poor and middle class spending money on goods and services. That results in businesses having to hire workers to produce those goods and services.

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For this reason, Republicans are in Washington blocking any and everything the president does to stimulate the economy, and at the same time voting for every measure that they can come up with to keep money out of the hands of the American people. They’ve voted against extending benefits for the unemployed, they’ve voted against funding benefits for 9/11 first responders, and House Republican Leader, Eric Canter, has even threatened to block disaster relief for states hit by Hurricane Irene unless President Obama agrees to more budget cuts to offset any emergency funding. They know that as long as the American people don’t have money to spend on goods and services, unemployment will stay high and they’ll have a much better chance of regaining power. So essentially - no, literally - the GOP's best interest lies in engaging in economic guerilla warfare against America. Rush Limbaugh said it most plainly -"I want President Obama to fail." So in short, they want America to fail.

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The GOP is engaged in a confidence game against America, but a grossly uninformed American public keeps going for it over and over again. Once one generation finally catches on, the GOP will simply wait eight years and run the very same game all over again on the next generation. They’ve been running the very same game for at least a hundred years. They’re currently telling the American people the very same lie that Ronald Reagan told us thirty years ago.

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I pointed out the pattern in my article, "The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling the American People":

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"One would think that conservatives would have seen the light, but their passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to supersede all logic. Therefore, from the moment that the New Deal went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. The closest they've come to succeeding started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics" - and the battle is currently raging in Washington, D.C. as we speak.

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"Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. When the plan was first floated, even George Bush, Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."

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"Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planned.
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"Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.

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"And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capital gains tax cut - for the rich.

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But what’s so curious about the current situation is, this time, even though we have extensive video and internet documentation of the disaster that took place under both Ronald Reagan, and later, George W. Bush, both Obama, and the news media, are simply ignoring it as though it doesn’t exist. They’re simply sitting around debating this Republican scheme as though it's a perfectly legitimate and viable option, while they have unequivocal proof that's it's nothing but a scam against the American people, and has been proven as such time and time again for decades.

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They could blow GOP claims completely out of the water with just one carefully edited video. They don't even need a video - everything the GOP is proposing was in place during the Bush administration, yet Bush's eight-year reign created the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression. So it’s extremely curious to me why neither Obama, nor the news media, will simply say, these people are running a game on you - look. 

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While I’m not prone to buying into conspiracy theories, this an issue that we really need to take a look at. Why are both political parties, and the media, going out of their way to completely ignore facts that are so glaring that we have to shield our eyes to keep from going blind?

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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.