Dr. Cornel West And The Art Of Intellectual Rice Cake (Revision)

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

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Dr. Cornel West And The Art Of Intellectual Rice Cake
(Revision)

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I thought I was done discussing the illustrious Dr. Cornel West, but he just won’t seem to go away. But that’s ok, because he’s serving a useful purpose. The Cornel West saga has served to open the eyes of many in the Black community to the petty, self-serving agenda of many of the so-called Black intellectuals, and none too soon. The time is way past due for the Black community to wake up to the fact that the only intellect that they can truly depend on is their own.
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But once again Dr. Boyce Watkins and many other Black scholars are running to the defense of Cornel West, trying their best to defend the indefensible. The question is why? Is it really a matter of principle or are they actually trying to defend their stature in the Black community? Are their efforts actually an attempt to cover up the fact that many within their ranks are absolute idiots? If the latter is the case, they might as well give up because, thanks to Cornel West, the cat is out of the bag, and I'm loving it.
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Yes, Boyce Watkins has written yet another article in defense of Cornel West for Your Black World - “Dr. Boyce: Tom Joyner’s Tasteless Assault on Tavis Smiley and Cornel West.” As the title suggests, Watkins still doesn’t seem to understand that there is no difference between an ad hominem attack on the character of President Obama, and the same kind of attack on Cornel West. He seems to take the position that an attack on the character of the president is a “critique,” while an attack on the character of Cornel West is grossly unconscionable.  Go figure it.
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As a columnist I’ve become accustomed to seeing that kind of convoluted thinking, so I simply use it as grist for my mill, but what concerns me are those who rely on the efficient thought of the scholars who engage in it. After all, if you look up to those who constantly engage in inefficient thinking, you’re going to become a flawed thinker yourself, and that’s a big problem, not only in the Black community, but in America as a whole.
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Here’s an example. One responder to Dr. Watkins’ article said the following:
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“Dr. Cornel West is easily twice as intelligent as Tom Joiner (sic). In fact Dr. West is a genius and Mr. Joiner realizes this.”
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What evidence does the writer have to substantiate that statement? Absolutely none. Like many of us, the writer is confusing literacy with intellect.  Intelligence is the capacity to assess and creatively manipulate information that literates merely regurgitate.  Thus, all the writer could possibly know with respect to the relative intelligence of West and Joyner is West's propensity to regurgitate.  He knows absolutely nothing regarding Joyner's ability to assess and process that information. So the writer's thinking is flawed, just like the people he apparently relies upon for his information.
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The writer's simply another victim of Cornel West’s corporate sponsors. As I’ve mentioned before, Cornel West is a Harvard-anointed preacher - period. So the writer is only assuming that Cornel West is more intelligent than Tom Joyner because West has been given the accoutrements of alleged knowledge, wisdom, and intellect that the puppeteers confer upon the people they handpick for us to listen to.
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Even as Cornel West runs around ranting about the corporate “oligarchs and plutocrats” he’s wallowing in the benefits and privilege that those very same people have bestowed upon him. Clear evidence of that is West’s outrage at not being given preferential treatment for inaugural tickets over the guy who “carried my bags.” In spite of all of West's many claims of being a man of the people, he clearly betrayed an arrogant sense of entitlement and superiority over the working class.
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His defenders try to fluff that off as an inappropriate slip of the tongue, but it’s much more than that. What they’re characterizing as a slip of the tongue actually represents a rare, if not unprecedented, opportunity to see the innermost thoughts of a demagogue. West's remarks clearly revealed that he thinks he’s above the average working-class American - Black or White.
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The reason that West feels so entitled is because he plays his role so well. The corporate manipulators need people like West. All of his rantings give the people a sense that help is just over the horizon. That “keeps hope alive,” and thus, the people from rebelling in the street. So people like Tavis, West, and a lot of others who we think we can depend upon play an indispensable role in our subjugation.
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In order for the manipulators to control our minds and behavior they create symbols that tell us who’s been certified for us to listen to. Then, in order for us to clearly identify who’s been anointed, they give them robes, uniforms, badges, and titles that either look or sound impressive. If it weren’t for those symbols we wouldn’t know the "anointed ones" from any other fool running off at the mouth. My son is a federal agent, and I'm sure that when he walks up to people and pulls out his credentials it scares them to death. But to me he's still that little boy who used to come cuddle up next to me at night because he was afraid of the dark.  Think about it. How much reverence would you bestow upon a judge who was sitting behind the bench in a jogging suite?
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So I suggest that people really start listening to Cornel West. I’ve been doing it every since he betrayed his ignorance by allowing Tavis Smiley to stick his hand in his back and sit him on his knee. A truly intelligent man wouldn’t allow that to happen, because he’d understand the value of integrity and independent thought - and he especially wouldn’t allow someone like Tavis Smiley to control him, because from what I see, Tavis is far from an intellectual giant.
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I specialize in the use of words myself, so I have a pretty good understanding of their power, meaning, and the way they can be manipulated to mislead. So when I started listening to Cornel West intently, it immediately became clear to me that he specializes in stringing a lot of impressive sounding phrases together that don’t mean a thing. It takes West twenty minutes to say what any reasonably intelligent person can say in one short sentence.
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The reason for that is, West’s primary intent is not to inform but to mislead less than critical thinkers into thinking that he’s saying something significant. He uses a lot of convoluted phrases and multisyllabic terms that never resolve into a cogent thought. He uses that technique so people who are unsophisticated in the use of words are so impressed by the sound of the words that they don’t realize that he’s using them to camouflage the fact that he’s not saying nothing. He specializes in quoting dead White men, and never thinks for himself - and the fact that he's so reverent of dead White men speaks volumes about who he really thinks is significant in life.
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So Cornel West can't be taken seriously. He uses whatever subject matter he's SUPPOSE to be discussing as a pretext to promote Cornel West. He's a name dropper and regurgitator. His primary motive is never to actually make a point, but to try to impress the listener with how well read he is. The subject can be about tooth decay and he'll find a way to mention everybody from John Coltrane to Aristotle in making his pointless point. His dialogue goes something like this - at least, this is the way he sounds to me:
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"Whenever the subject of tooth decay comes up, the soaring eloquence of the illustrious John Coltrane always comes to mind. Trane's horn tended to be the very antithesis of poor dental health. If you want to prevent tooth decay, you've got to have the very same level of respect for your teeth as John Coltrane had for his tenor saxophone when he, and McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on Bass, and Elvin Jones on drums played 'A Love Supreme' in 1965 for Impulse Records. In addition, Chaka Khan and Whitney Houston, BOTH said, 'I'm Every Woman,' and Socrates said, 'The only true knowledge is to know that you know nothing.' And while Ray Charles had Georgia on his mind, B.B. King followed up by saying, 'The thrill is gone' - and they ALL had teeth."
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And speaking of John Coltrane, when I listen to Cornel West, he reminds me of when I was a young musician. We all loved Trane because his mind was so quick. He strung so many musical ideas together, and so fast, that his music was extremely busy. That’s why so many of us used to try to emulate him. I got to be very good at it, so the guys on the block who loved jazz, but had little or no formal musical training, thought I was a young genius. But what they didn’t understand was there was a huge, and very significant, difference between John Coltrane and myself - Trane was actually saying something, while I was just making a lot of noise.
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That’s Cornel West - the wooly hair, the shaggy beard, the over-the-top, super-cool demeanor - it’s all affectation. He wants us to think that he’s so deeply avant-garde in his thinking that he’s hard to understand - that he’s the Ornette Colman of academia. But the fact is, he’s just a brother who makes a lot of noise and takes a very long time to say very little.
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Listening to West is like eating rice cake – you can feel it in your mouth so you know you’re chewing something, but it has absolutely no taste or substance. You might as well eat the box that it came in.  And the fact that so many other so-called intellectuals can’t seem to see that renders them equally suspect.
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So I strongly suggest that before people go running headlong into this corporate-sponsored mind control that they stop and ask themselves one very simple question: Can I think of any memorable concept or phrase of any significance that originated with Cornel West in his more than thirty-five or so years of public exposure?
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Take your time and give it some thought.

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Pseudo-intellectual: One who imparts common knowledge like he's telling you something new.
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ONCE AGAIN NADER AND WEST TEAM TO ELECT A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT
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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.

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The Modern GOP - The Most Dangerous Force in America

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

The Modern GOP - The Most Dangerous Force in America

IF THE GOP HATES GOVERNMENT
LET'S ACCOMMODATE 'EM

So once again, in spite of all their claims of loving America and being solely dedicated to promoting the nations best interest, the GOP has found yet another pretext to hold America hostage and twist the arm of the American people in an attempt to force the nation to accept the malevolent agenda of their corporate cronies. And this is not the first time - it’s becoming a recurring event.
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When my daughter was a teenager, and young boys started knocking at my door to profess their love, knowing that I would never be able to hold back the force of nature, I armed her with what I considered sage advice instead. I told her to "Pay no attention to what these young boys say. Watch what they DO." That advice served her well, and it seems that it is now an excellent rule of thumb for the American people in dealing with the modern GOP, because their repeated behavior and obvious disregard for what’s in the best interest of the United States comes nowhere close to matching their political rhetoric.
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Richard (R.J.) Eskow, a former executive experienced in healthcare, benefits and risk management, finance, and information technology, also a senior fellow with the Campaign for America's Future and who hosts The Breakdown, says in his Huffington Post article, "The Shutdown: Republicans Win Standoff, Shoot Hostages Anyway," the following:
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"Even some other Republicans were appalled. One House member, mixing metaphors as effortlessly as his peers mix martinis, described his fellow Republicans as ‘lemmings with suicide vests.’
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"What are they thinking? It's hard to tell, since the GOP itself appears to be in complete chaos. But make no mistake about it: That is a hostage crisis, and however long or short the government shutdown turns out to be, the hostages -- the American people -- are already paying the price."
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Eskow goes on to point out, "The economy has begun shrinking. Morgan Stanley analysts estimate that the Republican shutdown will "trim annual GDP growth by approximately 15 basis points per week of closing."
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Newsmax reported former Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine as saying the Republican Party has bowed to extreme elements, making it unrecognizable from the GOP she joined years ago. Sen. Snowe said:
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"Obviously it’s moved to the extremes. I wouldn’t characterize everybody within the tea party movement, but certainly there are broad elements within the party now that are driving their own agenda for their own advantage, irrespective of what implications it has for the Republican Party,"
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Then Sen. Snowe goes on to tell Ashleigh Banfield of CNN Newsroom, "And certainly, this isn’t a party that I recognize and the party that I joined when I first enrolled, and that’s regrettable."
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It has become clear that the GOP's 30-year assault on our educational system has finally filtered down to having a negative impact on its own politicians. You cannot dumb-down America without also dumbing down the caliber of the politicians who assume elective office, and that has clearly taken place in the Republican Party. That's why we're witnessing unprecedented stupidity in government.
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Many of these politicians fail to realize that giving political games priority over the interest of the nation is not only a blatant act of irresponsibility, but political malfeasance. That’s why this Republican congress has been rated lower than any congress in the history of this nation. They’re like a bunch of irate children. They’re stomping their feet and having a tantrum because America voted against letting them have their way.
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This is not a debatable issue. As President Obama pointed out in his response to the government shutdown, there was absolutely no reason for the Republicans in congress to shutdown the government. It serves no useful purpose other than to inflict pain upon the American people in order to punish America for not letting them have their way. The president said the following:
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"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans. In other words, they demanded ransom just for doing their job . . .
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"And of course what's stranger still is that shutting down our government doesn't accomplish their stated goal. The Affordable Care Act is a law that passed the House, that passed the Senate, the Supreme Court ruled constitutional. It was a central issue in last year's election. It is settled, and it is here to stay.
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"And because of its funding sources, it's not impacted by a government shutdown. And these Americans are here with me today because even though the government is closed, a big part of the Affordable Care Act is now open for business."
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So the problem is, the GOP has become so radical in its agenda that it has a vested interest in electing ideologues over anyone with any kind of intellectual acuity. In fact, the GOP’s agenda is so toxic to America to anyone with common sense that it's necessitated the Republican Party becoming openly hostile to all intellectuals, potential statesman, and even independent thought itself. In addition, their pretexts to push their agenda that is so obviously toxic to the American people has become so convoluted that they’ve become so prolific in their lies that if they ever did decide to tell the truth, it would only be in an attempt to confuse the public.
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The facts are clear to anyone who's truly interested in facts. Take a moment to ask yourself, who was the last Republican president who DIDN’T drag America under a bus? With the exception of Ike Eisenhower, the GOP has a one hundred year history of swindling the American people (http://wattree.blogspot.com/2010/10/gop-one-hundred-year-record-of.html). Period.
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That’s how we’ve ended up with what we have today - a Republican congress filled with complete idiots who are totally oblivious to tradition, limits, and what's in the best interest of the nation. As I’ve pointed out in previous articles, and with complete candor, if Al Qaeda represents a rattle snake in America’s garden, the current GOP constitutes a python in the bedroom. Because as big a threat as Al Qaeda is to America, they can only destroy buildings, but the modern GOP is out to destroy the very foundation upon which this nation rests. Thus, it is incumbent upon America to correct that situation in the very next election. It just may be our last chance.

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OBAMA WASN'T THE FIRST PRESIDENT

THE REPUBLICANS CALLED A SOCIALIST

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Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com

 

Eric L. Wattree

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.

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President Obama: Let Us Not Forget

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

A MESSAGE TO BUSHLAND

(July 11, 2006)

It’s scary how easily the American people can be manipulated to the point that they find the death of entire families a hoot; How we can sit in front of the tv set with chili dogs and fries and cheer on the death of others like we’re watching the Super Bowl. And it’s a tribute to psychosis how America can unleash mass destruction in "an attempt to prevent mass destruction," in the name of God.

Can’t you see that many of "those towel-heads" are children just like your own? You didn’t really think the U.S. could unleash destruction like we saw and not kill children did you? Rumsfeld said, "Well, [shit] happens." But shit doesn’t just happen--you allowed it to happen. You made it happen. You cheered it on! Consider that as the children bleed and you're admiring the beauty of "Shock and Awe."

Think about your own children as "collateral damage." Think about them screaming in horror while you're helplessly watching their limbs being blown off. Think about them desperately reaching out to you for comfort as life slowly drains from their tiny bodies. Think about foreign boots kicking down your front door, and strangers walking through your home systematically killing every man, woman and child. Imagine the last sight you ever see on this Earth is of your loving child with her brains spilling from her tiny little head. Think about that picture, America--then ask yourself, who's really the terrorist?

Where has America gone? Who’s left to standup for justice and humanity? You say, God Bless America? You'd have to be a fool to think God is gonna bless America after what we’ve done--for choosing Standard Oil over Justice, and Exxon over God himself. In God we trust? How dare you blame this atrocity on God! It is in Bush you trust:

You trust Bush that God has entrusted you to blow off Iraqi arms and wrap them around you to enable them to embrace your benevolence. And you trust Bush that you must lovingly pluck out Iraqi eyes to enable them to see the wisdom of viewing the world through your own. And you trust Bush that in the name of all that is good you must slaughter their children in a desperate attempt to provide them with a better future. You also trust Bush that you must rape their land and steal their wealth in order to allow them to choose the government of their choosing-- (so long as they choose the government that Bush chooses for them to choose). And you trust Bush that you do all this in the name of American charity.

You also trust Bush that God will bless America--but this Ain’t America. America is the land of the free, and home of the brave, the land of just souls who freed their slaves. No, this is not America, this is Bushland–the land of small pox infected blankets; the land of public lynchings and church–place bombings; the land of imprisoned Japanese-Americans, and corporate murderers.

Yeah, God Bless Bushland! The land of the free and home of the slave; the land of My Lai, and Calley’s mass grave. And you trust that God will bless Bushland?

Well, trust this–You are blind, my friend.

... and those who do make it home are denied a living wage

 

Eric L. WattreeHttp://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.

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Mitt Romney: A Monument to American Gullibility

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Mitt Romney: A Monument to American Gullibility

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Every time the American people look at Mitt Romney they should get angry, because he’s the walking, breathing, personification of the biggest scam ever perpetrated on America, "trickle down" economics. Romney is the very embodiment of trickle-down economics returning to rub our stupidity in our face, right down to his cynical pauses . . . and sideways half-smile that seems to say, "Now, let’s see if you’re dumb enough to swallow this load of crap, yet again." He’s such a cynical, insincere, and obvious con man that if he didn’t exist Saturday Night Live would have created him. He’s as stiff and emotion free as Max Headroom, and just as contrived: "Yes, my good friends, and what I love most about your fair city is the height of the trees." What!!!?
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Trickle Down, or Supply- Side Economics, which came to be known as "Reaganomics," 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. Sound familiar? According to the scheme, 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 planed. 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 millions of jobs, and the country itself, 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 - fifteen years before the Great Depression.
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Even though this scheme has brought economic disaster to the American people several times in the past thirty years, the Republican party continues to repackage it and trot it back out every eight years or so. They tend to wait until after the Democrats have rescued the nation, and their previous disaster has retreated from the collective memory of the American electorate.
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Clear evidence of that is in spite of Ronald Reagan's grandiose 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 in history, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined.
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Reagan tripled the national debt. It went from $712 billion in 1980 to $2,052 billion in 1988. And what was the Republican Party’s plan to deal with that disaster? In it’s "contract with America" (Republicans are real good with slogans), Newt Gingrich’s Republican-run congress proposed a capitol gains tax cut, for the rich.
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It took Democrat, Bill Clinton, to rescue the nation. David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University, said the following regarding Bill Clinton’s presidency:
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"The Clinton years were unquestionably a time of progress, especially on the economy [...] Clinton's 1992 slogan, 'Putting people first,' and his stress on 'the economy, stupid,' pitched an optimistic if still gritty populism at a middle class that had suffered under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. [...] By the end of the Clinton presidency, the numbers were uniformly impressive. Besides the record-high surpluses and the record-low poverty rates, the economy could boast the longest economic expansion in history; the lowest unemployment since the early 1970s; and the lowest poverty rates for single mothers, black Americans, and the aged."
On September 27, 2000, CNN reported:
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President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion. ‘This represents the largest one-year debt reduction in the history of the United States."

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Then came George W. Bush, with his huge tax cuts for the rich, and reinstituting the Republican philosophy of trickle-down economics and reckless deregulation. That led to the 2008 economic crash, bringing the nation within a hair’s breath of a second Great Depression, and creating the conditions under which we are currently suffering.
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The primary reason that the American people continues to be stiffed by the Republican Party is because the average American fails to understand that we don’t have just one economy, we have two. We have one economy that governs the prosperity of the investor class, and yet another that governs the prosperity of working class. And both classes are in direct competition for their part of the same economic pie.
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Thus, the problem is, in order for the investor class to prosper, they must squeeze every penny and concession out of the working class. So when Wall Street is celebrating a robust economy, that means they are producing more product with fewer jobs, fewer work hours, and lower pay for the workers. That’s how they make their profit.
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You see, in the past when the United States had a strong internal industrial base, the investor class and the working class complimented one another. The corporate community provided the working class with, essentially, lifetime jobs with solid security and a living wage. As a result, the working class could afford to purchase the goods and services that the corporations produced. So the working class and investor class had a symbiotic relationship. One insured the prosperity of the other.
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But now, in the new global economy, where what used to be considered American corporations have become international conglomerates that have to compete with countries that are paying their workers less per week than most Americans spend on lunch per day, the American worker has become a liability. Thus, the corporate community has a vested interested in lowering the standard of living of the American middle class.
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In order for them to make ever greater profits, they feel that they must squeezing every concession that they can get out of America, and the American worker. That accounts for the aggressive assault on our educational system. They need more worker bees and fewer thinkers - or trouble makers. It also accounts for the assault on collective bargaining, and all manner of corporate regulations and employee rights. In short, they’re on a mission to convert America from a democratic republic, to a corporate sweatshop.
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Now enter Mitt Romney. If we elect Romney, we’ll not just be electing an Republican politician who is highly sympathetic to the investor class, we’ll be electing, indeed, the poster child of the investor class, and the old trickle-down economics crowd. In fact, the Chairman of the Board, as it were. It would be like entrusting our child to one of the most infamous child molesters in the country.
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The New York Post reported in the Josh Kosman article, "Romney’s Past is More a Working Class Zero," "Romney's private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts." But of course, the businesses generally couldn’t manage that, so workers were laid off and the businesses would go into bankruptcy.
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The article goes on to list some of the businesses that Mitt Romney squeezed the profits from, then sent into bankruptcy:
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"* Bain in 1988 put $5 million down to buy Stage Stores, and in the mid-'90s took it public, collecting $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000.

* Bain in 1992 bought American Pad & Paper (AMPAD), investing $5 million, and collected $100 million from dividends. The business filed for bankruptcy in 2000.

* Bain in 1993 invested $60 million when buying GS Industries, and received $65 million from dividends. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001.

* Bain in 1997 invested $46 million when buying Details, and made $93 million from stock offerings. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003."
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So say what you will about President Obama, but it seems to me that the credentials of Mitt Romney and his Republican cohorts’ as job creators makes the president look like Santa Claus. If you agree, go tell a hungry Republican. He might be Black, but that IS a pork chop in his hand.

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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.

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Dr. Cornel West: Public Intellectual, or Entertainer?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Dr. Cornel West: Public Intellectual, or Entertainer?
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Ghetto Wisdom 101:

"Never choose a ‘crime partner’ who tries to be too cool. First, they're only trying to be cool to mask their insecurity. Second, they're using so much of their brain power trying to maintain their image that there's nothing left to think with. So always remember, young brother, super cool brothers are bad news. They have diarrhea at the mouth, they lack character, they’re always the scariest ones in the crowd, and they’re unfailingly the first to cave under pressure. In short, they can't be trusted." - Sweet Willie

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INTRODUCING DR. CORNEL WEST
A MAN WHO TAKES A VERY LONG TIME TO SAY VERY LITTLE

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Dr. Cornel West and Intellectual Rice Cake

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.comEwattree@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.
　

　

Sphere: Related Content

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM: A MESSAGE TO BUSHLAND

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

 

A MESSAGE TO BUSHLAND

(July 11, 2006)

It’s scary how easily the American people can be manipulated to the point that they find the death of entire families a hoot; How we can sit in front of the tv set with chilli dogs and fries and cheer on the death of others like we’re watching the Super Bowl. And it’s a tribute to psychosis how America can unleash mass destruction in "an attempt to prevent mass destruction," in the name of God.

Can’t you see that many of "those Towel-Heads" are children just like your own? You didn’t really think the U.S. could unleash destruction like we saw and not kill children did you? Rumsfeld said, "Well, [shit] happens." But shit doesn’t just happen--you allowed it to happen. You made it happen. You cheered it on! Consider that as the children bleed and you're admiring the beauty of "Shock and Awe."

Think about your own children as "collateral damage." Think about them screaming in horror while you're helplessly watching their limbs being blown off. Think about them desperately reaching out to you for comfort as life slowly drains from their tiny bodies. Think about foreign boots kicking down your front door, and strangers walking through your home systematically killing every man, woman and child. Imagine the last sight you ever see on this Earth is of your loving child with her brains spilling from her tiny little head. Think about that picture, America--then ask yourself, who's really the terrorist?

Where has America gone? Who’s left to standup for justice and humanity? You say, God Bless America? You'd have to be a fool to think God is gonna bless America after what we’ve done--for choosing Standard Oil over Justice, and Exxon over God himself. In God we trust? How dare you blame this atrocity on God! It is in Bush you trust:


 You trust Bush that God has entrusted you to blow off Iraqi arms and wrap them around you to enable them to embrace your benevolence. And you trust Bush that you must lovingly pluck out Iraqi eyes to enable them to see the wisdom of viewing the world through your own. And you trust Bush that in the name of all that is good you must slaughter their children in a desperate attempt to provide them with a better future. You also trust Bush that you must rape their land and steal their wealth in order to allow them to choose the government of their choosing-- (so long as they choose the government that Bush chooses for them to choose). And you trust Bush that you do all this in the name of American charity.

You also trust Bush that God will bless America--but this Ain’t America. America is the land of the free, and home of the brave, the land of just souls who freed their slaves. No, this is not America, this is Bushland–the land of small pox infected blankets; the land of public lynchings and church–place bombings; the land of imprisoned Japanese-Americans, and corporate murderers.

Yeah, God Bless Bushland! The land of the free and home of the slave; the land of My Lai, and Calley’s mass grave. And you trust that God will bless Bushland?

Well, trust this–You are blind, my friend.

... and those who do make it home are denied a living wage

Eric L. Wattree
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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.

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Dr. Cornel West and Intellectual Rice Cake.

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
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Dr. Cornel West and Intellectual Rice Cake

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I thought I was done discussing the illustrious Dr. Cornel West, but he just won’t seem to go away. But that’s ok, because he’s serving a useful purpose. The Cornel West saga has served to open the eyes of many in the Black community to the petty, self-serving agenda of many of the so-called Black intellectuals, and none too soon. The time is way past due for the Black community to wake up to the fact that the only intellect that they can truly depend on is their own.
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But once again Dr. Boyce Watkins and many other Black scholars are running to the defense of Cornel West, trying their best to defend the indefensible. The question is why? Is it really a matter of principle or are they actually trying to defend their stature in the Black community? Are their efforts actually an attempt to cover up the fact that many within their ranks are absolute idiots? If the latter is the case, they might as well give up because, thanks to Cornel West, the cat is out of the bag, and I'm loving it.
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Yes, Boyce Watkins has written yet another article in defense of Cornel West for Your Black World - “Dr. Boyce: Tom Joyner’s Tasteless Assault on Tavis Smiley and Cornel West.” As the title suggests, Watkins still doesn’t seem to understand that there is no difference between an ad hominem attack on the character of President Obama, and the same kind of attack on Cornel West. He seems to take the position that an attack on the character of the president is a “critique,” while an attack on the character of Cornel West is grossly unconscionable.  Go figure it.
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As a columnist I’ve become accustomed to seeing that kind of convoluted thinking, so I simply use it as grist for my mill, but what concerns me are those who rely on the efficient thought of the scholars who engage in it. After all, if you look up to those who constantly engage in inefficient thinking, you’re going to become a flawed thinker yourself, and that’s a big problem, not only in the Black community, but in America as a whole.
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Here’s an example. One responder to Dr. Watkins’ article said the following:
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“Dr. Cornel West is easily twice as intelligent as Tom Joiner (sic). In fact Dr. West is a genius and Mr. Joiner realizes this.”
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What evidence does the writer have to substantiate that statement? Absolutely none. Like many of us, the writer is confusing literacy with intellect.  Intelligence is the capacity to assess and creatively manipulate information that literates merely regurgitate.  Thus, all the writer could possibly know with respect to the relative intelligence of West and Joyner is West's propensity to regurgitate.  He knows absolutely nothing regarding Joyner's ability to assess and process that information. So the writer's thinking is flawed, just like the people he apparently relies upon for his information.
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The writer's simply another victim of Cornel West’s corporate sponsors. As I’ve mentioned before, Cornel West is a Harvard-anointed preacher - period. So the writer is only assuming that Cornel West is more intelligent than Tom Joyner because West has been given the accoutrements of alleged knowledge, wisdom, and intellect that the puppeteers confer upon the people they handpick for us to listen to.
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Even as Cornel West runs around ranting about the corporate “oligarchs and plutocrats” he’s wallowing in the benefits and privilege that those very same people have bestowed upon him. Clear evidence of that is West’s outrage at not being given preferential treatment for inaugural tickets over the guy who “carried my bags.” In spite of all of West's many claims of being a man of the people, he clearly betrayed an arrogant sense of entitlement and superiority over the working class.
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His defenders try to fluff that off as an inappropriate slip of the tongue, but it’s much more than that. What they’re characterizing as a slip of the tongue actually represents a rare, if not unprecedented, opportunity to see the innermost thoughts of a demagogue. West's remarks clearly revealed that he thinks he’s above the average working-class American - Black or White.
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The reason that West feels so entitled is because he plays his role so well. The corporate manipulators need people like West. All of his rantings give the people a sense that help is just over the horizon. That “keeps hope alive,” and thus, the people from rebelling in the street. So people like Tavis, West, and a lot of others who we think we can depend upon play an indispensable role in our subjugation.
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In order for the manipulators to control our minds and behavior they create symbols that tell us who’s been certified for us to listen to. Then, in order for us to clearly identify who’s been anointed, they give them robes, uniforms, badges, and titles that either look or sound impressive. If it weren’t for those symbols we wouldn’t know the "anointed ones" from any other fool running off at the mouth. My son is a federal agent, and I'm sure that when he walks up to people and pulls out his credentials it scares them to death. But to me he's still that little boy who used to come cuddle up next to me at night because he was afraid of the dark.  Think about it. How much reverence would you bestow upon a judge who was sitting behind the bench in a jogging suite?
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So I suggest that people really start listening to Cornel West. I’ve been doing it every since he betrayed his ignorance by allowing Tavis Smiley to stick his hand in his back and sit him on his knee. A truly intelligent man wouldn’t allow that to happen, because he’d understand the value of integrity and independent thought - and he especially wouldn’t allow someone like Tavis Smiley to control him, because from what I see, Tavis is far from an intellectual giant.
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I specialize in the use of words myself, so I have a pretty good understanding of their power, meaning, and the way they can be manipulated to mislead. So when I started listening to Cornel West intently, it immediately became clear to me that he specializes in stringing a lot of impressive sounding phrases together that don’t mean a thing. It takes West twenty minutes to say what any reasonably intelligent person can say in one short sentence.
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The reason for that is, West’s primary intent is not to inform but to mislead less than critical thinkers into thinking that he’s saying something significant. He uses a lot of convoluted phrases and multisyllabic terms that never resolve into a cogent thought. He uses that technique so people who are unsophisticated in the use of words are so impressed by the sound of the words that they don’t realize that he’s using them to camouflage the fact that he’s not saying anything.
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Cornel West can't be taken seriously. He uses whatever subject matter he's SUPPOSE to be discussing as a pretext to promote Cornel West. He's a name dropper and regurgitator. His primary motive is never to actually make a point, but to try to impress the listener with how well read he is. The subject can be about tooth decay and he'll find a way to mention everybody from John Coltrane to Aristotle. His dialogue goes something like this - at least, this is the way he sounds to me:
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"Whenever the subject of tooth decay comes up, the soaring eloquence of the illustrious John Coltrane always comes to mind. Trane's horn tended to be the very antithesis of poor dental health. If you want to prevent tooth decay, you've got to have the very same level of respect for your teeth as John Coltrane had for his tenor saxophone when he, and McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on Bass, and Elvin Jones on drums played 'A Love Supreme' in 1965 for Impulse Records. In addition, Chaka Khan and Whitney Houston, BOTH said, 'I'm Every Woman,' and Socrates said, 'The only true knowledge is to know that you know nothing.' And while Ray Charles had Georgia on his mind, B.B. King followed up by saying, 'The thrill is gone' - and they ALL had teeth."
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And speaking of John Coltrane, when I listen to Cornel West, he reminds me of when I was a young musician. We all loved Trane because his mind was so quick. He strung so many musical ideas together, and so fast, that his music was extremely busy. That’s why so many of us used to try to emulate him. I got to be very good at it, so the guys on the block who loved jazz, but had little or no formal musical training, thought I was a young genius. But what they didn’t understand was there was a huge, and very significant, difference between me John Coltrane and myself - Trane was actually saying something, while I was just making a lot of noise.
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That’s Cornel West - the wooly hair, the shaggy beard, the over-the-top, super-cool demeanor - it’s all affectation. He wants us to think that he’s so deeply avant-garde in his thinking that he’s hard to understand - that he’s the Ornette Colman of academia. But the fact is, he’s just a brother who makes a lot of noise and takes a very long time to say very little.
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Listening to West is like eating rice cake – you can feel it in your mouth so you know you’re chewing something, but it has absolutely no taste or substance. You might as well eat the box that it came in.  And the fact that so many other so-called intellectuals can’t seem to see that renders them equally suspect.
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So I strongly suggest that before people go running headlong into this corporate-sponsored mind control that they stop and ask themselves one very simple question: Can I think of any memorable concept or phrase of any significance that originated with Cornel West in his more than thirty-five or so years of public exposure?
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Take your time and give it some thought.

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Pseudo-intellectual: One who imparts common knowledge like he's telling you something new.
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ONCE AGAIN NADER AND WEST TEAM TO ELECT A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT
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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.

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A Retrospective Against GOP Revisionism

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

A Retrospective Against GOP Revisionism

I hate to base an entire article on an ad hominem, but the GOP is proving to be such an manipulative, disingenuous, and petulent bunch that it’s virtually impossible to discuss their machinations without using terms like plot, un-American, and collusion. Any attempt to describe their politics without doing so renders the writer disingenuous as well. A good rule of thumb when trying to understand GOP motives, therefore, is to always remember that whatever they accuse their opponent of, is more often than not, exactly what they’re engaged in.

One of the founding fathers of conservative thought was Alexander Hamilton. He was an aristocrat who advocated that poor and middle-class Americans should be relegated to second-class citizenship, and the GOP has fully embraced his agenda. Hamilton said the following:

“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.”
Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17, 1787).

While Hamilton’s position was resoundingly rejected by the vast majority of the founding fathers - whose primary reason for coming to America in the first place was to get away from the European class system - there were many of Hamilton’s ilk who chose not to recognize the American ideal that “All men [and women] are created equal.” Then they were later joined by Southern Dixiecrats, or social bigots, who also rejected the ideal of human equality.

These are the people who currently run the modern day GOP - corporatists and social bigots who tend to believe that America belongs to them, and the rest of us are simply tolerated due to their “good will and Christian charity.” This is the primary reason that the Republican party’s platform is fiercely hostile to education (‘elitistism’), labor unions, and ‘big government.’ That’s also why they’re such strong advocates of state’s rights.

The corporatists within the GOP are hostile to education because they don’t want the “lower-class” social bigots within in their ranks to realize that they’re being duped into working against their own interests - like healthcare reform, for example. They’re hostile to organized labor and big government because both institutions also tend to protect the rights of the poor and middle class. And they’re strong advocates of state’s rights because the social bigots within their ranks blame big government for usurping the rights of the Southern states by ushering in integration and civil rights.

Thus, the GOP is a party that’s made up of oil and water. The corporatist agenda of those who control the party is diametrically opposed to the interests of their lower-class soldiers who they depend on to stay in power.

The corporatists, for example, want to import as many undocumented workers into the country as possible in order to lower the wages of the American middle class, while many of their socially bigoted soldiers don’t even want legal Hispanics in the country, much less undocumented.

So for many years, in order for the corporatists to make their extremely unpopular agenda palatable to the American people they have had to constantly engage in campaigns of disinformation, conflation, the ‘isms’ (convincing the people that anything that doesn’t cater to the rich and ‘wellborn’ constitutes the un-American‘evil of socialism’), and other divisive tactics that keep the American people engaged in knee-jerk emotionalism instead of logical thought.

Their tactics are clearly transparent. Take the term ‘Obamacare’ for example. The term was coined to keep those who hate that we have a Black president focused on Obama rather than the merits of the program. And the same is true of the term ‘Islamofascists.’ The term was coined in order to promote endless war (and war profits) because it suggests that the war is not just about terrorists, but all Muslems.

If we carried that rationale to its logical conclusion, however, we would have to also condemn all Christians, since those who lynched Blacks in the South and committed genocide against Native Americans were of the Christian faith.

In my article, Ode to a Bleeding Heart , I point out how they used conflation to demonize liberalism:

“When you consider how methodically the conservatives went about mounting their assault on the liberal agenda you can't help but recognize that it was a stroke of genius. Ironically, the conservatives took the Democratic Party's strength and made it a political liability. First they took the party's penchant for being concern with the plight of the downtrodden and coined phrases such as ‘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 into one neat bundle 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 just a matter of repeatedly hammering the message home.

“In addition, conservatives used such tactics as spitting out the word ‘liberal’ as though they were saying rapist. In that way they not only implanted a negative attitude toward liberalism in the mind of the voter, but it was said in such a way that the implication was made that it went without saying that all the negative stereotyping of liberalism was true. In other words, their attitude seemed to suggest, ‘I could substantiate what I'm saying about liberals, but I don't think it's necessary, since we all know what they're like.’ And in the election that spawned the ‘Republican revolution’ the voters said, yes, we do."

But now the GOP has come upon interesting times. Now, in order to finalize their ultimate objective - to transfer what’s left of the nation’s wealth to the rich, and lower the standard of living of the American middle class - they’re going to have to show their true colors, just like they’re currently doing in Wisconsin.

Injustice and hunger has a way of opening the people’s eyes, however.  So it won’t be long before the people begin to see that the GOP, in collusion with the corporatists, purposely drove America into a ditch by using the Iraq war to ravage the treasury. They then sent our jobs overseas to purposely create high unemployment to restore the GOP to power and depress incoming tax revenue to give themselves an excuse to attack the poor and middle-class safety net.

Eventually the people are going to ask themselves a couple of questions. First, if the GOP is truly concerned about the national debt, why did they give a tax cut to the top 2% of the population that will add an additional $3.7 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years? And secondly, why didn’t we hear a peep about the debt, while we were losing our homes and jobs, and congress was voting themselves a $93,000 raise, over and above their salaries, in ‘petty cash?’



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.

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In President Obama's Own Words, the U.S. Postal Service is Guilty of Human Rights Abuse

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

In President Obama's Own Words, the U.S. Postal Service is Guilty of Human Rights Abuse

President Obama is undoubtedly a very intelligent man, so I'm sure it wasn't lost on him why he found himself walking on eggshells when the Egyptian people rose up against the corruption and human rights abuses of President Hosni Mubarak. The incident demonstrates two points unequivocally. First, we need to stop trying to talk out of both sides of our mouths, because nobody is fooled by it; and secondly, while compromise is generally a very good thing, compromising with the Devil is not compromise at all. It's collusion, regardless to whether we're talking about dictators abroad, or corporatists here at home.

It was embarrassing having to watch the president struggle to find just the right tone for his response, especially after the way we're always foaming at the mouth about freedom, justice, and democracy. Because the fact is, truth has no tone. It's simply truth. So if the United States government is truly in support of justice and democracy as we claim to be, why couldn't the president just say so instead of tap dancing around the issue in order to give cover to a tyrant?  I know that sounds simplistic, but truth tends to cater to simplicity.

The reason for his tepid response is clear. While we love to pay lip service to freedom, justice, and democracy when the spotlight is upon us, we have a long history of playing footsie with people like President Mubarak, and many other dictators around the world, when the lights are out. We've been in collusion with dictators who subjugate their people throughout our history, and now we're in collusion with international corporations in the subjugation of our own people.

Clear evidence of that collusion can be found in the fact that in spite of record profits by major corporations in this country, unemployment remains high. The primary reason for the continuing high unemployment rate is that the corporations are purposely sending our jobs overseas and the banks are refusing to make loans to small businesses in order to get the American middle class accustomed to accepting a lower standard of living. The tactic is also used to restore the GOP to power, and thus, the status quo.

If the American people would simply take a moment to think instead allowing the corporate noise machine to think for them, they would recognize the fallacy in the GOP claim that pampering the top 2% of the population will create jobs and enhance the lives of the middle class. The GOP had thirty years to prove that theory, yet every Republican administration since, and including, Ronald Reagan's have been an abject failure in managing the economy. President Obama has created more jobs in his first two years than Bush did during his entire presidency.

That's why Obama's base is so frustrated. They're disgusted by his accommodationist attitude. While the GOP is aggressively destroying the country by chipping away at the middle class, sending our jobs overseas, passing ridiculous rulings like Citizens United, assaulting our educational system, polluting our environment, and taking over our media, he's talking about compromise. He doesn't seem to understand that some issues are worth fighting for - like the rule of law, for example.

The American people need to wake up, face reality, and stop being blinded by GOP public relations manuals. Here's one example of the gross hypocrisy that's serving to open my eyes. In a speech given in Cairo in June of 2009 President Obama said the following:

But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.

"Everywhere," Mr. President? Why don't we simply start right here in your very own United States Postal Service? Unless President Mubarak is physically torturing his citizens, he couldn't possibly be treating his people any worse than your agency is treating its employees. If what's currently going on in the postal service wasn't so tragic, your words would be absolutely laughable.

In your Cairo speech you said, all people yearn for confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice, yet you improperly intervened in the administration of justice by preventing your attorney general from holding Bush and Cheney accountable for their war crimes, rendering them a class above the law. And in your very own postal service, while you have craft employees being fired for accepting one coupon from a customer, you have executives falsifying governments documents to steal millions of dollars a day in wages from gainfully employed workers with complete impunity. In addition, the failed postmaster who reigned over the employee abuse walked away from a nearly bankrupted postal service as a multimillionaire. How does that differ from what President Mubarak is engaged in?

There are those who say you must not know what's going on. I find that hard to believe. I think the United States has simply embraced a new business model in order to accommodate corporate greed. That's why the poor and middle class are suffering while the top 10% are living higher on the hog than at any other time in our history - they no longer even feel obliged to help defend the nation. Dying for our country is a job for the "little people."

Listen to an objective view of what you're allowing to happen on your watch. In his book, Beyond Going, Postal Dr. Steve Musacco, a therapist and organizational psychologist with thirty years experience in the postal service, said the following:

"On the morning of June 2, 2009, a city letter carrier went to work and reportedly fatally shot himself in the head in the locker room at a postal facility in Gastonia, North Carolina . . . Prior to my retirement from the USPS, at a former district I worked for, there were three suicides within a two year period that I concluded were contributed to in significant part by how these employees were treated in the workplace. The third employee, a city letter carrier, fatally shot himself in a postal jeep and left a letter stating that he could no longer take the job. The night before he committed suicide he told his wife he did not know if he would be able to handle his job anymore. How do I know? His wife told me this one day after his suicide.

"In order for the U.S Postal Service to become a safe and healthy organization and thereby prevent future workplace tragedies, which have been at an epidemic level over the past three decades, there is an urgent need for congressional intervention and legislation to address its toxic postal culture. Dr. Gary Namie and his wife, Dr. Ruth Namie, along with their colleague Dr. David Yamada, have for years pushed for such legislation at the state and federal level. In order for national legislation for the prevention of workplace bullying to have the intended impact, it would require sanctions to employers or their representatives who are in violation of a new workplace statute that defines workplace bullying as a harmful and illegal activity."


In another case addressing the postal service's routine practice of falsifying documents to steal pay from its employees, Arbitrator Sherrie Rose Talmadge said in her December 2, 2009 decision that “Management’s violations were so egregious over a period of many years that punitive damages were awarded to deter the service from further clock ring violations.”

So, Mr. President, we need to start practicing the virtue of defending human rights here at home before we start lecturing others abroad, because the only thing that rivals the horror of what this United States Government agency is doing to its employees is what it's doing to your stature and credibility in the eyes of people who want very much to respect you.

I suggest that you get out in front of this issue before the GOP propaganda machine latches on to it, because it's an outrageous scandal with the potential to bring you down - and please remember, you heard it here first.


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.

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