Demographics Are Against the GOP, So They’ve Become Dangerous

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Demographics Are Against the GOP, So They’ve Become Dangerous

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Godwin's Law Notwithstanding,
What if the Comparison to the Nazis 
is Accurate?

It seems that the GOP’s outreach program to recruit minority voters has gone bust, and with good reason. Contrary to what the GOP seems to think, the problem that the Republican Party is having with recruiting minority voters has absolutely nothing to do with merely communicating their agenda more effectively - it’s their agenda itself that's the problem. The minority community is not dumb.  They understand that the Republican agenda is so toxic to the American people as a whole that they have to use racist and bigoted rhetoric and policies just to gain what little support they do have from their conservative base.
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Thus, covert racism and bigotry is the only thing the GOP has to offer to justify their current existence, since for the past 70 years their primary agenda has been to return poor and middle-class Americans (of every race) to the condition that they suffered prior to the New Deal that brought them relief from the effects of the Great Depression. But the American people are simply not going to buy into that, so the Republican Party has had to sugarcoat their message by cloaking it in the tried-and-true emotional appeal of good old American hatred, anger, and bigotry (See Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc.).
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But demographics are now working against them, and they know it. So they’ve gotten desperate - the mere fact that they even attempted minority outreach clearly attests to that desperation - and since they’re also without limits, if they EVER regain control of this government, they're not letting it go again, regardless to WHAT they have to do.
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They're already experimenting with despotism in the state of Michigan (or what I've come to call, "Michighanistan") to see what they can get away with without causing civil unrest. Gov. Rick Snyder has replaced many duly elected officials with his handpicked corporate cronies under the pretext of an economic emergency. As a result, many citizens in the city of Detroit have absolutely no say in government, or the actions of these unelected managers. They’ve been effectively disenfranchised. After all, what sense does it make to vote if the politicians that you elect aren’t allowed to hold office? If the GOP successfully gets away with that, and then extend that policy on a national level, this will no longer be America. So it's time for the people to turn off BET, MTV, and ESPN, and wake up.
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Retired Army General said He’s Willing to Mount A Military Assault on the White House and Congress.

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Retired army general, and FOX News analyst , Paul Vallely, is quoted as telling the Arizona Tea Party Patriots, "I had a call this afternoon from Idaho. The gentleman said, ‘If I give you 250,000 Marines to go to Washington, will you lead them?’" Vallely said as the group laughed and gasped. "I said, ‘Yes, I will, I’ll surround the White House and I’ll surround the Capitol building, but it’s going to take physical presence to do things."
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That’s chilling, and it's just as chilling that the remark isn’t front page news, and this retired general is walking around free.  While I'm no conspiracy nut, I think I'm on firm ground in suggesting that the situation boggles the mind, and that serious considerations must be taking place that the public isn't privy to that's preventing the government from taking action against such people.

LIBERTARIANS: CORPORATE FEUDALISTS IN DRAG

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The growing popularity of Ron and Rand Paul among, normally, clear-thinking and intelligent people is also of great concern. Their Libertarian rhetoric is nothing more than garden variety Republicanism with a twist of lime to disguise the bad taste of their Republican agenda. They are both corporate feudalists who are intent on weakening the government in order to create a vacuum of power so the most malevolent forces in society, the corporate feudalists, can step in and occupy that vacuum. So they’re engaged in conventional Republicanism, but with a twist.
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"David H. Koch was a Libertarian Vice-Presidential candidate in 1980. He advocated the abolition of Social Security, the FBI, the CIA, and public schools.[12][13] Koch put $500,000 of his own money into the race,[13] and he and Ed Clark, his presidential running mate, won 1.1% of the vote – the best Libertarian showing in a U.S. presidential race to date.[14] But the experience caused David Koch to change course: "I had enough ... [W]e are not a nation that debates issues. We vote on candidates' personalities." By 1984, David had parted company with the Libertarian Party, because, he said, "they nominated a ticket I wasn't happy with" and "so many of the hard-core Libertarian ideas are unrealistic."[13]"
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"Charles Koch funds and supports libertarian and free-market organizations such as the Cato Institute,[16] which he co-founded with Edward H. Crane and Murray Rothbard in 1977,[17] and is a board member at the Mercatus Center, a market-oriented research think tank at George Mason University. Charles Koch supported his brother's candidacy for Vice President on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980.[3] After the bid, Charles told a reporter that conventional politics "tends to be a nasty, corrupting business ... I'm interested in advancing libertarian ideas".[3] In addition to funding think tanks, the brothers support libertarian academics;[18] since 1992, Charles has funded the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program through the Institute for Humane Studies, which mentors young, self-described libertarians.[19] Charles also organizes twice yearly meetings[20] with Republican donors.[16]
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"The brothers promote the ideal of economic freedom as essential to society's well-being.[21]"
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These people are against everything that protects the middle-class standard of living. Of course they're for legalizing weed, but that doesn't make them either cool, or concerned about Black incarceration rates - they're for legalizing anything that will keep us distracted and doesn't cost them anything. They'd love it if the entire country would stay so high and euphoric that they could rob us blind - and besides, if we kept the munchies we wouldn't notice the rat meat spliced into our ground beef, or the fact that they'd made the government so weak that it couldn't protect us.
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The Republicans have been trying to undermine the New Deal, along with its attendant social safety net, every since it’s inception. But they’ve been unsuccessful because these programs enjoy overwhelming public support. So the Libertarians have decided to take a new tact. They are cherry-picking issues that have broad public support, like abolishing certain drug laws, and then playing on the public desire to be left alone by the government, in order to garner wider support. But what their single-issue supporters fail to realize is, once Libertarians gain power, they intend to turn this nation into a corporate state, just like most other Republicans are intent upon.

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RAND PAUL PLOTTING WITH THE GOP
All we have to do is keep lying, and we can win.

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Another thing that Paul supporters are not considering is that as much as many people hate our government and the way it's being manipulated on behalf to the rich, we have the power to control the government. All we have to do is wake up, organize, and vote the right people into office. But once the corporate feudalists take over, we won’t have that option - ask the people of Michigan (Michighanistan) whose duly elected officials have been thrown out of office by Gov. Rick Snyder and replaced with corporate cronies who have absolutely no obligation or allegiance to the voters. It’s a classic scam of bait-n-switch. Take a minute to acknowledge your lying eyes. Here’s Libertarian liberty and democracy in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txU55iFG9UA

One of the biggest problems that we have in this country is that we allow malevolent factions to throw us a bone and then use our votes to undermine our interests. The reason we allow this to happen is because we’re so gullible that we tend to believe that any faction that supports any issue that we’re passionate about is our friend, and that tendency has repeatedly been used against us. Over the years that has repeatedly caused the American people to forge alliances with the very people who want to cut their throats.
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The one factor that has contributed most to the GOP’s ability to bamboozle the American people is that the Democratic Party has allowed conservative Republicans to seize control of the political rhetoric. The Democrats have just sat back, without rebuttal, and allowed themselves, their constituency, and their agenda to be redefined in the eyes of the American people by conservative Aspin doctors.@ As a direct result, they've allowed the term "liberal" to become a bad word in the political lexicon.  
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Actually, when we 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 primary 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.
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As a direct result, the GOP and their corporate cronies have conditioned the American people to ignore their own interests to vote AGAINST the interests of minorities instead - and that’s without ever considering the fact that when they vote against the interest of minorities, they’re voting against themselves as well. That’s the primary reason that the GOP has been engaged in a brutal assault on our educational system for the past thirty-five years - they don’t want thinking Americans. They directly benefit from having a nation filled with people whose intellect is easily circumvented, so they can manipulate their emotions.

THE POVERTY PIMPS

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And many Black voters suffer from the very same problem. Many Black people have a tendency to support poverty pimps like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, in spite of the fact that they both have a vested interest in Black misery - in fact, they’re in the Black misery business. If Black people woke up, educated themselves, and became a viable and enlightened political force tomorrow, that would have an horrific impact on the bank accounts of both of these individuals. The only thing that’s propping Tavis Smiley up is Walmart - a member of ALEC, THE biggest enemy of Black people and poor and middle-class America as a whole in the world.  So if Black people became so enlightened that they didn’t allow Smiley to influence them, Walmart would no longer have any use for him. They’d dump him, and that would effectively put him out of business.
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The same is true of Cornel West. The vast majority of his wealth was accumulated through Black misery. It is only our misery that allows him to go around giving $30,000 an hour speeches about how miserable we are. So do we really believe that he wants that misery to come to an end? I don’t think so. Personally, I believe that’s why he worked so hard to get George Bush elected. During the 2000 election he CLAIMED that his motive was to make the Democratic Party do more for the people, so he teamed up with Ralph Nader and helped George Bush win the election by winning the state of Florida by a mere 537 votes. Nader and West took 97,488 votes away from the Democrats. That got George Bush elected, and led directly to the condition that we currently find ourselves.
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So could Cornel West, this supposedly "brilliant" man, really have been so dumb that he didn’t know what he was doing? I don’t think so. Clear evidence of that is he tried to team up with Nader again in the 2012 election to do the very same thing to Obama, and anyone with a lick of sense, or any knowledge of history at all, should know that allowing the Republican Party to regain control of this government, and our economy, is both the moral and logical equivalent of entrusting our children to the care of a convicted child molester.
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Yet, consider the following.  In his article, "My Republican Party has Abandoned Me," Black Republican activist, Raynard Jackson, says the following:
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"For many years, I have approached the party and its supporters about underwriting programs to bring together Blacks who are Republican or lean Republican so we can weave them into every facet of the party structure. The answer is always, no! But, twice this year some of these same people have approached me about funding for some election year tricks that they (White Republicans) have conjured up and simply need a Black face to execute the plan. On these two separate occasions, these funders were willing to spend upwards of $20 million to have me organize a national campaign to identify Blacks who would be critical of President Obama."
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Most Black people understand these facts intuitively, so no matter how many Herman Cains or Dr. Ben Carsons the Republican Party trots out, they’ll never obtain the Black vote. In fact, trotting out such people only serve to stoke the flame of their animosity even further, because it's clear to them that the GOP is not only trying to insult their intelligence, but they’re manipulating the very least among them to try to achieve that goal - even when they have to resort to the lunatic fringe:

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GOP History Over the Last Hundred Years

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In 1921 -- eight years before the great depression -- Republicans took over the helm of this nation for 12 years. During that time there were three Republican administrations, the first of which was the administration of Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding's administration for one thing more than anything other -- scandal. It was during Harding's presidency that the Teapot Dome Scandal erupted. His administration was considered the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States -- until Nixon's, then Reagan's, and finally Bush's.
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Next, in 1923, came Calvin Coolidge, the president that Ronald Reagan is said to have most admired. Coolidge's policies of large tax cuts, allowing business a free-rein, and his encouragement of stock speculation contributed greatly to the impending stock market crash and the Great Depression that was to come.
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Then in 1929 Herbert Hoover came to power. During his administration the stock market crashed, starting the Great Depression. In spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. During Hoover's administration 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
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Finally in 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal democrat, was elected overwhelmingly. He immediately surrounded himself with a group of the finest minds in the country, including Columbia professors Adolph A. Berle, Jr., Rexford G. Tugwell, and Raymond Moley, known at the time as the "Brain Trust." After assembling these men and others he went about the business of developing a" New Deal" for the working class people of this country.
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The New Deal had two components -- one to help the economy to recover from the effects of the Great Depression, and a second component to give relief to the American people and to insure that they would never be placed in a position of total destitution again. To help heal the economy Roosevelt created programs that regulated business, controlled inflation, and brought about price stabilization; to bring relief to the people he signed The National Labor Relations Act which guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining, and he created the Social Security Administration to guarantee workers some sort of income once they became too old to work. He also signed the Fair Labor Standards Act which protected workers rights and set a minimum wage for workers.
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The GOP has been on a near single-minded mission to abolish each and every one of those programs every since. The entire Republican agenda is, literally, designed to return the American worker to pre-Great Depression conditions in order to promote the interest of big business.
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But with his New Deal in place, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this "bleeding heart liberal", not only led this country out of the worst, Republican-generated crisis that this country has ever faced, but went on to lead the free world in victory over Hitler in WWII. He then ushered in the most sustained prosperity that the world has ever known.
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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 poor and middle class seemed 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 that battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.

REPUBLICAN ECONOMICS

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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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So 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 did the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut -- for the rich.
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Due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion.
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Then in 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement.
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Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving John McCain. The scandal was very similar to the one that is currently playing out on Wall Street. He was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name.
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In 1976 Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corporation. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan and began to engage in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. In 1989 the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars.
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After having received over a million dollars from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five--Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConini, Alan Cranston, and Sen. John McCain--attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators. Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the senate for attempting to influence regulators on Keating's behalf. Charles Keating ended up being convicted for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he received 10 years by the state court, and a 12 year sentence in federal court. After spending four and a half years in prison, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pled guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served.
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Then came the George W. Bush administration that caused close to a million people to die uselessly in an illegal war in Iraq, robbed the American people blind, whose fumbling ignited the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, and whose greed came very close to sending the nation into yet another depression.
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Now, after all of their repeated efforts to deplete the national treasury, they're unanimously voting against every piece of legislation that the Democrats propose to repair the damage they created, and bring relief to the American people. And now they have the audacity to claim that they're doing it because they're concerned about deficit spending!!!? The very gall of the GOP is unbelievable.
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The GOP is against affordable health care for American families; they're against any kind of spending to put Americans back to work, and they're against extending unemployment insurance to relieve the burden of America's unemployed. What's particularly telling, however, is they're also against any kind of strong legislation to prevent the financial community (them) from being able to rob the American people in the future.
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The fact is, what they really want is to maintain the status quo, and make damn sure that the American people remained miserable, hungry, and divided throughout the Obama administration so they'll have a better chance to regain power and raid the treasury again thereafter. Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was frustrated and reckless enough to say it out loud - "Our No. 1 priority is to make this president a one-term president" - not to save America, or to bring relief to the American people, but to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Flag pens in lapels and patriotic rhetoric notwithstanding, that says it all about the GOP's lack of concern for America, or the American people.

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TEA PARTIER PICKS FIGHT WITH FOREIGN PRESIDENT.

IT DIDN'T GO WELL

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Now that the GOP has lost the election, their agenda has shifted to making sure that President Obama is not successful, because if he is, and you combine that with the rapidly changing demographic and Hillary Clinton's popularity, that could spell doom for the future of the GOP - and it should, because they're grossly out of touch with reality, and, America's best interest. They're out to create a corporate feudalist society. The government shutdown alone, clearly demonstrates that they have absolutely no respect for democracy.

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And this is not just political rhetoric. Here is the activity of the Republican congress who ran in the 2010 election on their claim that their number one priority was to bring economic relief, and create jobs for the American people:

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History is clear. Conservative Republicans don't mind spending money, they just don't want to spend it on those who need it - us. Remember, they're the party of Alexander Hamilton, one of this country's founding fathers who believed that only those who owned property should even be allowed to vote. He also said:

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"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).

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So, let's set the record straight. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that "bleeding heart liberal", not only brought the nation back from the Great Depression and saved the world from Hitler during his life, but his "New Deal" for the American people gave us the greatest prosperity we've ever known, and it  allowed him to reach back from the grave to save the nation from Ronald Reagan 50 years after his death.

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That isn't to say that the liberal Democratic philosophy corners the market on what is in the best interest of the nation. It is clear that both parties have had illustrious moments in the past - though, with respect to the GOP, that moment hasn't been since the Eisenhower administration over sixty years ago, and he was an aberration, who, as his very last act of office, warned us about exactly what's going on now -- but rather, this is one of those defining issues in American politics that determines whether this is to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, or a government where the citizens are nothing more than disposable resources for big business.
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Again, history is clear. It reflects and documents a pattern that repeats itself for nearly one hundred years. The facts clearly show a nation being repeatedly destabilized by Republican excess, selfishness, and greed, forcing the Democrats to step in and have to waste time rescuing the country instead of spending that time moving the nation forward. Then every time the Democrats do manage to move the nation one step forward, the Republicans assume office and drag us two steps back - and this is not partisan rhetoric - it's a historic pattern that anyone can research.
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Yet, now, the GOP has the gall to lecture the nation on fiscal responsibility, while continuing to promote the same old tried-and-died policies that have repeatedly destabilized our economy for the past hundred years. That, makes yet another fact indisputably clear - for the GOP, freedom, and their vision of a perfect America, represents a nation where the rich are free to manipulate and abuse the poor and middle class in any way they see fit, in the face of a government that's too weak to do anything about it - period. And any American who can't see that, is living in a delusion.
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One needs to ask themselves only one question to get to the bottom line – who was the last Republican president who DIDN’T drag America under a bus?

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GOP STRATEGY: DIVIDE AND CONQUER

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THE GOP HAS MORPHED INTO THE DOMESTIC ENEMY
OF THE UNITED STATES
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Princeton Scientific Study: America is No Longer a Democracy; It is Now an Oligarchy   

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2014/04/princeton-scientific-study-america-is.html

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Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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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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Has the GOP Become a Threat to America?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Has the GOP Become a Threat to America?

The current leadership of the GOP is the most dangerous threat to America in the history of this country. Hyperbole? I wish it were. But the evidence clearly demonstrates that the GOP has mounted a concerted effort to circumvent the American people and install a modern-day feudalism that effectively abolishes the will of the people and their elected officials to allow our cities and states to be run by corporate-like CEOs - and there’s no telling where it will go from there.

In spite of the GOP claim that they believe in limited government, The Michigan Messenger has reported that newly elected Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is poised to sign an emergency management bill that will hand total control of local governments over to "emergency managers" appointed by the government.

The Messenger reports:

"In a party line vote, and despite impassioned speeches of protest by the body’s Democratic minority, the Michigan Senate approved legislation that threatens to take over and even dissolve local governments that refuse to balance their budgets by breaking labor contracts.

"According to the law, which has already been approved in the House, the governor will be able to declare "financial emergency" in towns or school districts and appoint someone to fire local elected officials, break contracts, seize and sell assets, and eliminate services."

According to the Messenger, in a last ditch effort to protect the rights of the citizens, Democrats tried to add an amendment that would require "Emergency Managers" to hold monthly public accountability meetings to inform the citizens of how they are governing, but the amendment was voted down by the Republican senate.

Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan state AFL-CIO is quoted as saying,

"It takes every decision in a city or school district and puts it in the hands of the manager, from when the streets get plowed to who plows them and how much they are paid. In schools, the manager would decide academics or if you have athletics. This is a takeover by the right wing and it’s an assault on democracy like I’ve never seen."

Thus, the GOP, this party of "limited government," intends to completely take over the local governments under their jurisdiction, rescind the will of the voting public, and thumb their noses at any amendment that will require public accountability. And this power-grab is also taking place in other Republican-led states around the country.

This action and what’s going on in Wisconsin and other Republican-led states clearly demonstrates that the leaders of the modern GOP are without limits. To put it bluntly, these people are un-American. They are fundamentally opposed to our way of life, and greatly prefer a dictatorial form of government. George W. Bush let the cat out of the bag by admitting it when he said, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier…just as long as I'm the dictator."

Americans need to wake up and connect the dots. The GOP now claims that they are so concerned about the deficit that they must suspend the United States Constitution, yet they weren’t concerned enough about it to suspend giving the top 2% of the population a tax cut that will add $4 Trillion to the deficit over the next ten years. Neither were they concerned enough about the deficit to discontinue taxpayer subsidies to Exxon, one of the riches corporations in the world, nor prevent the political class in congress from giving themselves an extra $93,000 in "petty cash."

And while they claim to love our troops, they rushed them into battle in Iraq without the necessary gear to protect their lives, and they awarded Dick Cheney’s former corporation, Halliburton (KBR), a no-bid contract to provide the troops with contaminated water and do such shoddy contracting work that at least 18 of our troops were electrocuted while in the shower. The Department of the Army classified their deaths as "negligent homicide." Then, if that weren't enough, the GOP fought tooth and nail against giving the troops any additional benefits when they left the service - inspite of the fact that our troops in Iraq were forced into extended tours of duty and spend more tours of duty in a battle zone than any other troops in American history.

The GOP has demonstrated over the past forty years that they are conniving, lack limits, self-serving, and have little or no respect for the rule of law. Richard Nixon was forced to resign after being involved in the plot to burglarize the DNC in theWatergate Scandal, and there’s evidence that strongly suggests that Ronald Reagan was in collusion with the Iranians to hold American hostages until after he won the presidential election (The hostages were released immediately after he took the oath of office). Reagan also traded arms with his newfound friends during the Iran/Contra scandal. In addition, he flooded American inner cities with drugs to support his illegal war in Nicaragua, then suggested that inner city children "just say no."

Republican, George W. Bush then went on to lie us into the war with Iraq, costing more than a million lives, including the killing and maiming of thousands of Americans troops. His administration also spied on American citizens, Cheney committed treason by outing a CIA agent, they committed war crimes that included torturing prisoners, and they purposely ravaged the national treasury. Now they’re using the excuse of a depleted treasury to claim "a national emergency" in order to mount yet another assault on the Constitution. And in the meantime, Republicans in congress are demonizing an entire religion as "Islamofascists" to spread hatred and fear and to distract our attention from their horrific agenda.

Doesn’t that feel just the least bit like deja vu?  If it doesn't it's probably because you're a victim of the GOP assault on our educational system. They have a vested interest in keeping you uninformed, because they don't want you to realize that while you may be on their side, they're not on yours.  They think of the American people as stupid, and they want to keep us that way.

"Fascism: A radical, authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy." - Wikipedia

RELATED ARTICLE

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The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling The American People

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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The Religious Right: A Threat to America (Reprise)

BENEATH THE SPIN · ERIC L. WATTREE

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The Religious Right: A Threat to America (Reprise)

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When I became of age one of the first things I did was to reassess all of my previous beliefs and attitudes. Thereafter, I discarded as invalid anything that didn't stand up to logical and objective scrutiny, because even at that young age, I'd lived long enough to recognize that most of the problems in this world are a direct result of our failure to re-examine our illogical views of reality.
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Most religious zealots not only fail to go through that process, but refuse to as a matter of religious doctrine. It is due to that kind of zealotry, along with their doctrinal obligation against even considering the fact that they just might be zealots, that makes the religious right a clear and present danger to both the United States, and the world.
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Now, I don't have anything against religious people, per se - I was raised by Christians, and they were wonderful and loving people. In fact, I'm very spiritual myself. But if you show me a man who believes that Moses parted the Red Sea, I'll show you a man whose logical assessment of reality cannot be relied upon.
.
Such people fail to realize that efficient thought require that we must first see reality as it is, and only then, as we would have it. But these people have a tendency to try to force reality to conform to what they want it to be, then demonize, and in many cases condone the slaughter, of others who they even suspect might view the world differently. Thus, it is primarily their kind of thinking that introduced into the world the related horrors of xenophobia, homophobia, racism, etc.
.
And the GOP leadership is expert at dipping into this well. While most GOP leaders could personally care less about religion, the intolerance of religious zealotry is one of their most potent weapons. As we speak, they're mounting a combined campaign of racial intolerance against President Obama, religious intolerance against Muslims, and sexual intolerance toward gays. And to demonstrate just how virulent and un-Godly that campaign is, just tune in to FOX. The zealots are literally wallowing in their hatred like hogs in slop, even though it means possibly destroying this nation.
.
And the irony is, these zealots don't really care about religion, at least, as it relates to God. If they did, they wouldn't be so mean-spirited, selfish, and wedded to the instruments of death. They insist on following the Constitution to the letter when it comes to their right to bear arms, but they're more than anxious to trash that very same document if it means they can take away the right of innocent people to love as they see fit.
.
Another indicator of their mean-spirited hypocrisy is how they only embrace those tenents of their religion and/or patriotism when it promotes their point of view. Take school prayer, for example. Again, while these zealots are ready to lay down their lives for their Constitutional right to come armed to the teeth to a presidential assembly, they're prepared to ignore both the Bible and the Constitution when it comes to the separation of church and state.
.
Matthew 6:6 says the following:
.
"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."
.
Thus, according to Matthew, public prayer is not the proper thing to do (and by extention, I would imagine that God also wouldn't be impressed by the ostentation of flags and crosses being worn as lapel pins). But these zealots aren't interested in that scripture, because it neither contributes to their point of view, nor is it conducive to their campaign to demonize others.
.
They also tend to conveniently overlook the fact that their entire concept of God is merely an accident of birth. If they'd been born in in the Middle East, chances are they would have been Muslims. If they'd been born in China they'd probably be Buddhist, or if in India, a Hindu or Sikh.
.
That immediately suggests that religious doctrine is more a cultural manifestation of man than it is a dictate from God. So anyone who has surrendered his or her soul to any organization, be it religious or otherwise, and have a mind that is so closed to reality that they don't recognize that fact, makes me very nervous, because they're obviously more interested in hating others than they're into loving God. After all, the only reason that we're wasting young lives in Afghanistan is because we're trying to keep Pakistan's nuclear missiles out of the hands of religious zealots - and by definition, a zealot's a zealot, regardless to what country he's from. They're all out of touch with reality, whether they be Christian, Muslim, or Jew.
.
One would think that any clear-thinking person would recognize that God - or Nature, if you will - provided us with a sense of ethics, common sense, and empathy to guide us through life. So man doesn't require a user's guide any more than birds require a calendar or map to fly South for the winter. And since ninety-nine percent of all the conflicts throughout the world involve a religious component, common sense should tell us that religious doctrine not only does NOT come from God, but indeed, represents the very darkest side of man.
.
Think about it, with all of the organized religions throughout the world, and all of the billions of people who claim to love God, why is there so much cruelty, murderous atrocities and suffering in the world? Why is it that with all the collection plates being passed around, collecting billions of tax-free dollars in the United States, that there's any homelessness or suffering anywhere in this country? And most instructive of all is, why is it that the Bible belt was the birthplace of slavery, and the most bigoted part of this entire country?  Certainly bigotry isn't a part of God's will.
.
I'll tell you why that's the case - because our religious doctrines are not focused on teaching us to love our fellow man. They're more focused on teaching us that other people who are unlike ourselves and have different beliefs are heathens. It is in our churches where we learn that God is on our side, and "those others" who don't look and think like we do are un-Godly and are going to be condemned by God to eternal damnation. No? I'd be willing to bet a years pay that some of these so-called "men of God"are condemning me right now for having the audacity to speak the truth.
.
That's what makes it so easy for us to commit the most horrendous atrocities against others. Our religious leaders spend all of their time teaching us to "have faith" in what we're being told, and hardly any time at all teaching us to love our fellow man.
.
Man's need to control the minds of the masses dictate that they focus on teaching us to be selfish, hateful, and fearful rather than loving and Godly. It's all about saving MY soul from the devil, and what God is going to do for ME, instead of what I'm going to do to make this a better world. After all, if I start spending my money on helping  my neighbor I'll have less money to give the church, and the church can't have that.
.
Consider what man has told us to have faith in. Over the centuries we've been told such things as God wants us to burn young women at the stake because they're a little different. They told us that God wanted us to excommunicate Galileo and threaten other brilliant scholars with death before the inquisition for having the audacity to try to educate us and give us the benefit of their God-given brilliance. And why? Because their brilliance betrayed the erroneous thinking of church leaders who claimed to be getting their information from a direct pipeline to God. We see that very same Mindset today. Many church leaders dismiss the validity of evolution, even in face of the fact that every time we get our children vaccinated it validates the fact that man is evolving.
.
When we're vaccinated we give our bodies a manageable dose of a disease. This allows our bodies to evolve to the point that it can tolerate a disease that would otherwise kill or disable us. But the church has a vested interest in discounting evolution, because new knowledge is often in direct conflict with their version of creation. Thus, for their own selfish reasons many religious leaders dispute evolution, global warming, and other valuable knowledge, even though every bit of new knowledge we've ever collected has served to glorify God's wondrous creation much more thoroughly than Biblical authors could have ever imagined. But these so-called religious leaders don't care about glorifying God - they're only interested in saving face, and revenue.
.
Consequently, some of the most serious problems that we have in the world today is a direct result of our organized religious leaders having our minds on lockdown. Their activity in that regard is a direct assault on the will of God, since God clearly made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. We know this, because all of the evidence available to man shows that God made man's ability to think the key to his survival.
.
Man arrived on this hostile planet as a necked ape, but with neither a legitimate ape's agility or strength. Man wasn't as ferocious as the lion, as strong as the elephant, nor could he soar above danger like the eagle. He should have been dead on arrival, but God provided him with one tool to help him to survive - the human mind. And it is through the development of that tool that man, this most unlikely and fragile of creatures, has established dominion over the entire Earth, and in an incredibly short period of time. Now, through our God-given intellect, we've become more fearsome than the most ferocious lion, we've created machines that are thousands of times more powerful than the strongest elephant, and we can now soar far beyond the eagle's domain. We've even left the planet to explore other worlds.
.
Thus, it was clearly God's will that we be logical, thinking beings. So for us to now allow man to come along and tell us that we should suspend our nature as thinking beings, and "have faith" in what, he, man tells us, is a slap in the face of God. By doing so we're showing more faith in what man says, than what God has done.
.
That is the source of all of our problems; we're not remaining true to our nature. To tell a man not to think is like telling a fish not to swim, or a bird not to fly. If either of those creatures were stupid enough to comply, they would not survive. And if man continues to listen to other self-serving men instead of utilizing his mind as God intended, he's not going to survive.
.
It was through putting our faith in man that we believed that God condoned the Manifest Destiny, that led to the genocide of Native Americans. It was through our faith in man that we believed that God condoned the brutal enslavement of millions of African Americans. It was also man's faith in man that allowed Hitler to convinced the German people that God condoned the murder of six million Jews. And more recently, it was through having more faith in George Bush and Dick Cheney than in the common sense that God gave us, that the American people were convinced that God condoned the sacrifice of our youth and the blatant murder of  hundreds of thousands innocent Iraqis - people who did absolutely nothing to us, other than being in the unfortunate position of sitting on the oil that we coveted.
.
Now, don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with being spiritual. But we must always remember, just because a man has the gift of gab and says he's a man of God, that doesn't mean that God sees it that way. God doesn't speak to him any louder than he speaks to you, and no man speaks for God. So whenever you want to hear God's word, just listen to your heart, and God will speak to you directly.
.
And there's one other thing. While admittedly, I don't speak for God either, I think I'm pretty safe in saying that God will never tell you to buy another man a big house and a new Cadillac - he didn't do it for Jesus, so why should he do it for these latter-day "saints?"
.
And for you zealots out there. Don't forget, God works in mysterious ways. He might have led you to read this piece. So maybe you should think about what I'm saying - it just might spare your child an early death . . . all alone, in the desert.
.
"Fascism: A radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

.

Look familiar?

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Onward Christian Fascists

.
Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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 Teabaggers Want their Country Back - Preferably, Circa 1860

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE The Teabaggers Want their Country Back - Preferably, Circa 1860 I just saw another one of those videos. You know the kind - the ones that Fox "News" love to show of the clueless teabagger with tears in her eyes, complaining that she wants her country back. These sound bites are designed to tug at our heartstrings, but they have just the opposite effect on me. What I see is a social bigot who thinks the world is about to come to an end because Barack Obama is the president instead of the White House butler. The complete irony of that clip is the fact that, that very Black man that she's complaining about is actually the one who's trying to give her a country that she can call her own, while the Republican that she's crying to secretly looks upon her, and her kind, as ignorant trailer trash that's only good for contributing to their wealth and power, pumping out babies that they can grind up in their war machine, and making a fool of herself in their staged videos. The man can barely disguise his disgust as he's looking at her. I find myself making the very same point article after article, but what else can I do when such a large part of the population has been so thoroughly brainwashed that they can't see what's right before their eyes? Let me amend that. I think they can see it, but they refuse to recognize a reality that they don't want to accept. Not all, but many of these people know that it's driving them crazy that a Black man is in the White House. But since it's no longer socially acceptable for them to be blatantly racist, they have to disguise their racist attitudes by couching them in other issues with a wink. "It's not that I hate that Black man in the White House, it's just that I hate everything he represents, even if what he represents directly benefits my family." These people are indulging in a classic example of cutting off their nose to spite their face. One might argue that many people were also against health-care reform under President Clinton, and he was White. That is true, but they hated Bill Clinton, liberalism, and the Democratic Party almost as much as they hate Obama, because all three advocated the "slippery slope" that led to Obama. The GOP is very good at marketing, and they mounted a brilliant campaign to demonized the word "liberal" in the political lexicon. During the sixties they mounted a campaign against liberalism by equating it with the push for civil rights, being "soft on crime," and promoting welfare - which was politispeech for coddling Black people. Then by repeatedly combining these concepts, the word liberal became associated, at least, in the uneducated mind, with "those who coddle Black people, who are criminal, lazy, and want to take your money while they sit on welfare and take drugs." Through the use of that tactic the GOP successfully turn the word liberal into now, what is essentially, a racial slur. So it's no wonder the Teabaggers are up in arms. As far as they're concerned, the country is being run by a criminal (who's probably taking drugs in the White House), who wants to take their money so he can set up lazy Black people to lay-up on welfare and have babies at their expense. Many of these people have been programed all of their lives to believe that propaganda, so that Mindset is as much a part of them as their religion - and the Republican Party is continuing to reinforce that belief with every sound bite. So in short, with every teabag rally, the GOP is purposely trying to incite insurrection. Am I overstating my case? Is it possible that the GOP is legitimately concerned about the plight of the American people? I don't think so. The Republicans have become so blatant in their attempt to manipulate the people that they've become predictable. I did an experiment. Right after I heard about the Fort Hood shooting I rushed to Twitter to record my prediction that GOP supporters were going to find a way to twist the facts to involve President Obama as part of their demonization campaign: Twitter: Let's see how long it takes for the Republicans to try to twist the Fort Hood Shootings into a political attack on Obama. 12:39 PM Nov 5th from web. The next day's entry: Yesterday I said let's see how long before wingnuts blame [the fort Hood] shooting on Obama. Well... http://bit.ly/uLhxS, 6:31 PM Nov 6th from web. Just as I predicted an article was published in the WorldNet Daily, a publication founded by arch conservative, Joseph Farah, claiming that the shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was an advisor on President Obama's transition team. But of course, it was a lie. Nidal simply attended a conference hosted by George Washington University. He had absolutely nothing to do with the Obama transition team. And Farah's not just some blogger who didn't get his facts straight. He's a life long "journalist" and long time conservative operative. Prior to founding WorldNet Daily, Farah was executive editor of the now defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and later, the editor of the Sacramento Union. While at the Union, he persuaded Rush Limbaugh to write a daily front page column. He also collaborated with Limbaugh on the book, See, I told You So, in 1994. Farah is also a prominent birther, who's quoted as saying, regarding the birther's claim that President Obama wasn't born in the United States, that "It'll plague Obama through out his presidency. It'll be a nagging issue and a sore on his administration, much like Monica Lewinsky was on Bill Clinton's presidency," and, "It's not going to go away, and it will drive a wedge in an already divided public." So there you have it - not in my words, but in the words of a prominent conservative operative. The Republicans' primary agenda is not to pull the people of this country together in order to weather two wars, the loss of homes and jobs, and the deepest recession since the Great Depression, but to "drive a wedge in an already divided public." What a fine bunch of patriots, these Republicans. Every time the word "America" comes out of their mouths, it makes me want to throw up.   Eric L. Wattree wattree.blogspot.com   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 Religious Right: A Threat to America

BENEATH THE SPIN · ERIC L. WATTREE The Religious Right: A Threat to America . When I became of age one of the first things I did was to reassess all of my previous beliefs and attitudes. Thereafter, I discarded as invalid anything that didn't stand up to logical and objective scrutiny, because even at that young age, I'd lived long enough to recognize that most of the problems in this world are a direct result of our failure to re-examine our illogical views of reality. Most religious zealots not only fail to go through that process, but refuse to as a matter of religious doctrine. It is due to that kind of zealotry, along with their doctrinal obligation against even considering the fact that they might be zealots, that makes the religious right a clear and present danger to both the United States, and the world. . Now, I don't have anything against religious people, per se - I was raised by Christians, and they were wonderful and loving people. In fact, I'm very spiritual myself. But if you show me a man who believes in talking snakes and that Moses parted the Red Sea, I'll show you a man whose logical assessment of reality cannot be relied upon. . Such people fail to realize that efficient thought require that we must first see reality as it is, and only then, as we would have it. But these people have a tendency to try to force reality to conform to what they want it to be, then demonize, and in many cases condone the slaughter, of others who they even suspect might view the world differently. Thus, it is primarily their kind of thinking that introduce into the world the related horrors of xenophobia, homophobia, racism, etc. . And the GOP leadership is expert at dipping into this well. While most GOP leaders could personally care less about religion, the intolerance of religious zealotry is one of their most potent weapons, and as we speak, they're mounting a campaign of intolerance against President Obama. And to demonstrate just how potent that weapon is, just tune in to FOX. The zealots are currently wallowing in their intolerance like hogs in slop, even though it means cutting their own throats. . Because the fact is, the zealots don't really care about religion themselves, at least, with respect to how it relates to God. If they did, those very same people wouldn't be so mean-spirited, selfish, and wedded to the instruments of death. . Another indicator of that is how they only embrace those tenents of their religion and/or patriotism when it promotes their point of view. Take school prayer, for example. While these zealots are ready to lay down their lives for the constitution when it comes to their right to come armed to the teeth to a presidential assembly, they're prepared to ignore both the Bible and the constitution when it comes to the separation of church and state . Matthew 6:6 says the following: . "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." . So, according to Matthew, public prayer is not the proper thing to do (and by extention, I would imagine that God also wouldn't be impressed by the ostentation of flags and crosses being worn as lapel pins). But the zealots aren't interested in that scripture, because it neither contributes to their point of view, nor is it condusive to their campaign to demonize others. . Another thing that zealots tend to conveniently overlook is the fact that their entire concept of God is merely an accident of birth. If they'd been born in in the Middle East, chances are they would have been Muslems, or if they'd been born in China they'd probably have been a Buddhist, or in India, a Hindu or Sikh. . That immediately suggested that religious doctrine is more a cultural manifestation of man than it is a dictate from God. So anyone who has surrendered their soul to any organization, be it religious or otherwise, and have a mind that is so closed to reality that they don't recognize that fact, makes me very nervous, because they're obviously more into hating others than they're into loving God. After all, the only reason that we're wasting young lives in Afghanistan, is because we're trying to keep Pakistan's nuclear missiles out of the hands of religious zealots - and by definition, a zealot's a zealot, regardless to what country he's from. They're all out of touch with reality, whether they're Christian, Muslim, or Jew. . One would think that any clear-thinking person would recognize that God - or Nature, if you will - provided us with a sense of ethics, common sense, and empathy to guide us through life. So man doesn't require a users guide any more than birds require a calendar or map to fly South for the winter. And since ninety-nine percent of all the conflicts throughout the world involve a religious component, common sense should tell us that religious doctrine not only does NOT come from God, but indeed, represents the very darkest side of man. . Think about it, with all of the organized religions throughout the world, and all of the billions of people who claim to love God, why is there so much cruelty, murderous atrocities and suffering in the world? Why is it that with all the collection plates being passed around, collecting billions of tax-free dollars in the United States, for example, that there's any homelessness or suffering anywhere in this country? And most instructive of all is, why is it that the Bible belt was the birthplace of slavery, and the most bigoted part of the entire country? . I'll tell you why - because our religious doctrines are not focused on teaching us to love our fellow man. They're more focused on teaching us that other people who are unlike ourselves and have different beliefs are heathens. It is in our churches where we learn that God is on our side, and "those others" who don't look and think like we do are un-Godly, and are going to be condemned by God to eternal damnation. No? I'd be willing to bet a years pay that some of these so-called "men of God"are condemning me right now for having the audacity to speak the truth. . That's what makes it so easy for us to commit the most horrendous atrocities against others. Our religions spend all of their time teaching us to "have faith" in what we're being told, and hardly any time at all teaching us to love our fellow man. Man's need to control the minds of the masses dictate that they focus on teaching us to be selfish and hateful, rather than loving and Godly. It's all about saving MY soul from the devil, and what God did or is going to do for ME, instead of what I'm going to do to make this a better world. . Consider what man has told us to have faith in. Over the centuries we've been told such things as God wants us to burn young women at the stake because they're a little different. They told us that God wanted us to excommunicate Galileo and threaten other brilliant scholars with death before the inquisition for having the audacity to try to educate us and give us the benefit of their God-given brilliance. And why? Because their brilliance betrayed the erroneous thinking of church leaders who claimed to be getting their information from a direct pipeline to God. We see that very same Mindset today. Many church leaders dismiss the validity of evolution, even in face of the fact that every time we get our children vaccinated it validates the fact that man is evolving. . When we're vaccinated we give our bodies a manageable dose of a disease. This allows our bodies to evolve to the point that it can tolerate a disease that would otherwise killed or disabled us. But the church has a vested interest in discounting evolution, because new knowledge is often in direct conflict with their version of creation. Thus, for their own selfish reasons religious leaders dispute evolution, global warming and other valuable knowledge, even though every bit of new knowledge we've ever collected has served to glorify God's wondrous creation much more thoroughly than Biblical authors could even dream of. But religious leaders don't care about glorifying God - they're only interested in saving face, and revenue. . Thus, some of the most serious problems that we have in the world today is a direct result of our organized religious leaders having our minds on lockdown. Their activity in that regard is a direct assault on the will of God, since God clearly made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. We know this, because all of the evidence available to man shows that God made man's ability to think the key to his survival. . Man arrived on this hostile planet as a necked ape, but with neither a legitimate ape's agility or strength. Man wasn't as ferocious as the lion, as strong as the elephant, nor could he soar like the eagle. He should have been dead on arrival, but God provided him with one tool to help him to survive - the human mind. And it is through the development that tool that man, this most unlikely and fragile of creatures, has established dominion over the entire Earth, and in an incredibly short period of time. Now, through our God-given intellect, we've become more fearsome than the most ferocious lion, we've created machines that are thousands of times more powerful than the strongest elephant, and we can now soar far beyond the eagle's domain. We've even left the planet to explore other worlds. . Thus, it was clearly God's will that we be logical, thinking beings. So for us to now allow man to come along and tell us that we should suspend our nature as thinking beings, and "have faith" in what he tells us, is a slap in the face of God. By doing so, we're showing more faith in what man says, than what God has done. . That is the source of all of our problems, we're not remaining true to our nature. To tell a man not to think is like telling a fish not to swim, or a bird not to fly. If either of those creatures were stupid enough to comply, they would not survive. And if man continues to listen to other self-serving men instead of utilizing his mind as God intended, he's not going to survive. . It was through putting our faith in man that we believed that God condoned the Manifest Destiny, that led to the near genocide of Native Americans. It was through our faith in man that we believed that God condoned the brutal enslavement of millions of African Americans. It was also man's faith in man that allowed Hitler to convinced the German people that God condoned the murder of six million Jews. And more recently, it was through having more faith in George Bush and Dick Cheney than the common sense that God gave us , that the American people were convinced that God condoned the sacrifice of our youth and the blatant murder of 102 thousand innocent Iraqis, who did absolutely nothing to us, other than being in the unfortunate position of possessing the oil that we coveted. . But don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with being spiritual. But always remember, just because a man has the gift of gab and says he's a man of God, that doesn't mean that God sees it that way. God doesn't speak to him any louder than he speaks to you, and no man speaks for God. So whenever you want to hear God's word, just listen to your heart, and God will speak to you directly. . And there's one other thing. While admittedly, I don't speak for God myself, I think I'm pretty safe in saying that God will never tell you to buy another man a big house and a new Cadillac - he didn't do it for Jesus, so why should he do it for these latter-day saints? . And for you zealots out there. Don't forget, God works in mysterious ways. Although, personally, I don't think God works in this way, based on your religion, he might have led you to read this piece. You don't have to have "faith" in one word I've said. Every word is based on fact . . . and according to the Bible, "the truth shall set you free." So maybe you should think about what I'm saying . . . if you're allowed to. . Eric L. Wattree wattree.blogspot.com 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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