A RETROSPECTIVE ON AN 'UN-AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE' FED UP WITH THE ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

A RETROSPECTIVE ON AN 'UN-AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE'

FED UP WITH THE ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY

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There are many in the mainstream media who don’t take writers and journalists outside the mainstream, and corporately controlled, media seriously. In fact, they consider us presumptuous to even have the audacity to offer a considered opinion.  A few years back, Chris Matthews made the remark on his show, Hardball, that "I don't consider them [progressive bloggers] Democrats. I consider them Netroots. And if I see they vote in every election, or most elections, then I'll be worried. But I'm not sure they're regular, grown-up Democrats. I think a lot of these people are troublemakers who love to sit in the back seat and complain. They're not interested in governing this country. They never ran for office, they're not interested in working for someone in public office. They get their giggles out of sitting in the back seat and bitching."
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In response, Markos Moulitsas, founder and spiritual leader of the very popular website, Daily Kos, set that loudmouth gasbag straight, very effectively, and in no uncertain terms. He pointed out the following:
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"In 2003, when Bush landed his plane in the aircraft carrier, and spoke in front of the banner that said, 'Mission Accomplished,' Chris Matthews had an entire show based on that event, and he said everybody knows that we won the war, except a few critics. Well, I was one of those few critics. People like me in the Netroots were some of those critics. And it turns out that we were right and the Beltway conventional wisdom was wrong. And once again, we're in a situation where people like Chris Matthews don't learn from these mistakes. They're trapped in this bubble and they think that they know better."
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And he handled Tom Tancredo several weeks earlier with the very same finesse. He literally ran Tancredo off the Ed Show, and again, without busting so much as a sweat bubble. The reason he doesn't have to raise his voice, is because he's confronting Washington hypocrisy with facts and courage - something that the mainstream media seems to have lost. The mainstream media has degenerated into cheerleaders with an unspoken agreement not to step outside the approved parameters of the status quo. Then Moulitsas is that guy who shows up at the dinner party with a crude but unyielding truth: "No, that's not a bad egg - somebody farted." That's who bloggers are, and that's exactly what America needs.
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When I started writing over two decades ago, a serious journalist could pick and choose what publications he or she wanted to contribute to, but many of those resources have dried up as the corporate media has consumed and sucked all of the air out of the free press in order to dumb down America and propagate their conservative, self-serving, and narrow point of view. That’s why you’ll find some of the oldest and most prestigious publications in America begging for donations over the internet just to stay afloat.
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So serious, objective, and conscientious bloggers represent the new face of the American press. We’re what mainstream reporters and columnists USED to be - remember those old-school reporters of the 30's and 40's in the rumpled suits, a crumpled hat, and a pencil behind their ear? Those are who serious bloggers are today. Those bigshots who sit on plush sets in flawlessly tailored suits, and who never ask the hard questions or follow up, they're not journalists, they're corporate hacks.
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So we’ve got to learn to listen to one another, do our own research for the facts, and most important of all, learn to think for ourselves. We've got to redefine journalism in this country. So seek out those bloggers that you find to be trustworthy and credible, and then support their blogs. That way, YOU choose who you want to place your trust in, not some executive directed by Wall Street. 

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If we fail to do those things we’re lost, because there’s a new paradigm at work in this country today that many of us haven’t caught on to yet. We’re used to a situation where it’s Blacks against Whites, Jews against Gentiles, gays against straights, and so on. But in today’s world there’s only two factions, at least to the ruling class - the 1%ers against the working class. And as I write this, only five (5) corporations control 90% of all of the information that we consume, so we’re being drenched in corporate propaganda. They’re telling us what is acceptable, what’s not acceptable, who to like, and who not to like - and they have absolutely no compunction against sending your children off to die in order to fatten their bank accounts. They’ve already done it in Iraq. So we should keep these facts in mind - especially Black people when they sit their children in front of the sillyvision to be mesmerized.  The mass media is teaching Black children that it is their role in life to be criminals, drug addicts, and at the very bottom of society. 

WOULD BUSH'S SABER RATTLE AS LOUDLY AGAINST CHINA?

On September 15, 2002 - six months and four days prior to the Iraqi invasion - I published an article entitled "Would Bush's Saber Rattle as Loudly Against China?" in the Portland Independent Media Center (no one else would publish it at the time) that said the following:

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Now that we've reached the anniversary of 9-11, I am consumed by one thought - in light of what I've seen over the past year I find myself much more afraid of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft than I am the Al Qaeda. While I understand that terrorists strike without warning to destroy life and property to promote their own agenda, it has become increasingly clear that Bush and his cohorts threaten to be even more destructive by attacking life, liberty, and the very foundation of this nation in the promotion of theirs.
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Over the past year these conservative war mongers have been playing the American people like a fiddle. Now they want to sacrifice American lives for nothing more than their own political advantage. Just ask yourself, what does Saddam Hussain have to do with 9-11? Absolutely nothing. Evidence of that can be found in the fact that if Saddam had been involved in 9-11 the administration would have gone after him initially. So why is it suddenly so imperative that we invade Iraq now? I'll tell you why. Since Bush was unable to produce the head of Osama Bin Laden, he now needs another villain to take Bin Laden's place in order to keep his numbers up in the polls - and if that means having to sacrifice a few American lives and ignite even more terrorist activity on American soil in the process, so be it.
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It is a well known political fact that the American people tend to rally around the president when the country's at war. That's why the Bush Administration fell all over themselves after 9-11 to declare "a war against terrorism." And the American people reacted just as planed - Bush's numbers immediately went up in the polls. But now with the mystery surrounding the fate of Osama Bin Laden, the administration has found itself without a war to sustain those numbers, so now they have to create one.
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While I'm not prepared to say that the Bush Administration allowed 9-11 to take place, it is clear that the timing of the 9-11 tragedy was without a doubt the best thing that could ever happened to Bush's presidency. Bush was a lame duck the minute he was sworn in. It seems that as soon as Bush entered The Oval Office the stock market began to falter and the economy started to weaken. And whenever he spoke, the next day's news was not so much what he said, but whether or not he got through the speech without falling on his face. In addition, his big tax cut that was touted as the key to boosting the economy turned out to be a bust, and he was so inept in dealing with congress that a Republican senator changed parties costing Bush control of the senate. As a result, when 9-11 took place, it was embraced by conservatives more like it was a football rally than the sober occasion that it was - thus, all the flag waving, ceremonies, and strutting about.
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But where was all that bluster prior to 9-11? ABC News reported on May 16th of this year that the Bush Administration acknowledged that U.S. Intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before 9-11 that Osama Bin Laden's terrorists might try to hijack a plane. It was also reported that Bush privately alerted transportation officials and security agencies, but other than that, he simply sat on the information. The administration claims that the information they received was non-specific, but one would think that even if they couldn't determine exactly when and where the attack was going to take place, at the very least they could have warned the American people. If they had, maybe some of the people who died would have chosen not to fly - or possibly, chosen to leave their children behind. But no, this president who now claims to be so concerned with protecting our welfare that he feels compelled to launch an unprovoked attack against Iraq, was at that time more interested in the impact that warning us would have on the airline industry.
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What the American people needs to understand is that the power elite in this country doesn't view the United States in the same way as its citizens. They see the United States as a huge corporation, with its various industries as its subsidiaries. They see American citizens, particularly the lower and middle class, as simply pawns to be cajoled and manipulated in whatever way is necessary to meet the goals of the corporation. Therefore, they didn't view the tragedy of 9-11 in the same patriotic way as the average American citizen. After the initial shock, they saw 9-11 in terms of dollars and cents. Ultimately, it was viewed as an assault on their corporate superstructure. Later they recognized that the incident could be used as a distraction for the American people, and still later, an opportunity to move on Middle Eastern oil interests.
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So let there be no doubt, all of the flag waving, ceremonies, and patriotic speeches have nothing to do with 9-11; they are designed to whip the American people into such a frenzy that they're blinded to Bush's actual agenda. And that agenda includes the following.
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1).Committing America (and American lives) to a war in order to get himself reelected.
2).Taking control of Iraqi oil fields to benefit his friends in big business.
3).Keeping the American voter distracted from considering the ramifications of the recent corporate scandals.
4).Keeping the American people from recognizing how inept he is as president.
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The rest of the world sees Bush's agenda for what it is, and the American people would too if they'd stop waving their flags long enough to consider the flag's true meaning. The American flag represents freedom and justice, not trying to dictate who should lead other countries. It represents the open debate of issues, not intolerance to any and everyone who disagrees with your point of view. It represents the guarantee of personal freedom, not the suspension of the Bill of Rights. If the American people would just stop to consider these facts, it would become clear that even while Bush and his conservative cohorts are frantically waving our flag, they are simultaneously waging war against the very values that the flag and this great country represents.
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These issues can, and will, be debated ad nauseam, but the American people need only ask themselves two questions to put all of the administration's nonsense into perspective. First, would the administration be so anxious to go to war if we were talking about China as opposed to Iraq? And secondly, do we think that invading Iraq will make us more, or less safe from terrorist attacks? If we answer those questions honestly, it becomes clear that the administration is being disingenuous at best.

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Could Obama Fall Victim to a Change We Can't Believe in?

At this point Obama's presidency could go either way - he can either become one of the greatest presidents this country has ever known, or go down as an exciting experiment that went bad. It's all up to how he handles the expectations of Independents.

The biggest problem that Obama currently faces is becoming a victim of his own effectiveness. During the campaign he raised the nation's expectation so high that just being a good president won't do. He promised a change that we can believe in, which led many of us to believe that he intended to trash the way business is done in Washington, but that promise seems to be totally inconsistent with what seems to be his irrepressible desire to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with the very Republican leaders from which we wanted a change.

This has fueled the growing suspicion by many that both parties are beholding to the same cabal of power, and only feign having differing philosophies toward governance. That suspicion lies very close to the surface for many Independents - after all, that's why they're Independents in the first place.

And President Obama hasn't helped himself in that regard. For a man who is ordinarily so politically astute, even before he became president he did a curious flip-flop on the FISA issue. According to Greenchange.org, on October 24, 2007, Bill Burton of the Obama campaign indicated, "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." But by June 20, 2008, Obama issued a statement reversing his position, indicating that our national security needs were more important than his objections.

That deeply disappointed many Independents, since a citizen's right to sue a telecommunications company for invading his or her privacy in violation of the law has nothing to do with national security. Those are the very constitutional rights that we're trying to keep secure. But while many Independents have kept that in mind, at least Obama had the integrity to take that stand prior to our making the decision on whether or not to vote for him.

But then once he was elected President, Obama made another curious statement with regard to the criminal activities and alleged war crimes committed by the Bush administration. In spite of the fact that there are strong allegations and prima facie evidence of torture, and some of the most unconscionable violations of the Geneva Convention since the Nuremberg trials, President Obama stated that he wanted to move the nation forward, and not look back.

Many Independents have two problems with that. First of all, President Obama seems much too willing to move forward with regard to the fat cats, while lower-ranking personnel are rotting in prison. That's in direct conflict with the American ideal of equal justice under the law. And secondly, since most of these atrocities were committed against the citizens of other nations, it is the height of arrogance for us to be "the deciders" of whether or not those responsible should be held accountable. That also runs contrary to American ideals, and the concept of "a shining city on the hill."

And now we're talking about sending thousands of more troops to Afghanistan. The question is, why? The nation has yet to be provided with a reasonable explanation of why we should be meddling, once again, in another country's internal affairs. One would think we would have learned something about the futility of that by now. It's a recipe for disaster.

There's only two legitimate reasons to have our troops in that part of the world. The first is obvious - to make damn sure the nuclear missiles in Pakistan don't fall into the hands of Al Qaeda. The second reason is to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. So why can't we simply pull out of Afghanistan and deploy enough troops in Pakistan to protect the missiles, then let the CIA and law enforcement deal with Osama? That way we save both treasure and lives, and we're not creating more enemies for the United States by killing innocent people.

But many Independents suspect that there's another agenda afoot. Actually, Cheney's giving it away. Independents recognize that Dick Cheney has absolutely no integrity, so when he gets passionate over an issue we know to follow either the money or power. Thus, many Independents suspect that what's actually behind Cheney's insistence that we go recklessly rushing into Afghanistan has much more to do with Halliburton's bottom line than it does America's best interest. And while Obama has shown himself to be an excellent president in many ways, his one shortcoming - and a shortcoming that may very well bring him down in the end - is his tendency to try to appease the stupidity and greed of the GOP.

The President needs to recognize that there is nothing he can do that's going to make him acceptable to the GOP - that is, unless he agrees to appoint a Republican vice president, then resign. By now it should be clear that even while he's asleep, the GOP is trying to hatch plans to destroy him. So by spending more time thinking about them than he is his base, he's playing right into their hands.

I mentioned power as one of the reasons that Cheney's trying to rush the president into Afghanistan. I wonder if the president has considered the fact that Cheney just might be trying to get him to make the same kind of mistake in Afghanistan that the Bush Administration made in Iraq in order to take the Iraq issue off the table for the 2012 election? If during the 2012 campaign America is bogged down in Afghanistan with the useless death of thousands of U.S. troops, all of a sudden, Bush, Cheney, and the GOP won't look all that bad. The president should think about that possibility, since the machinations of Dick Cheney makes Machiavelli look like a trainee.

On the other hand, if the president would have the CIA go after Osama Bin Laden (through the use of intelligence, instead of blindly shooting at rocks), then pull out of Afghanistan, and make an agreement with the government of Pakistan to help them protect their nuclear arsenal, he'll be looking pretty good in 2012, and he won't have the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops to have to justify.

And he'd look even better if he allowed Attorney General Holder to do his job with respect to the Bush administration's war crimes. First, he'd firm up his base by restoring their confidence that he stands for the rule of law, and he would also allay the fear that he might be a puppet, controlled by some powerful cabal.

Another upside to that is that once Holder begins his investigation into the Bush administration, there's absolutely no doubt that he's going to find criminality, cronyism, and corruption seeping so deep within the GOP that Republicans will be so busy snitching on one another, and covering their own asses, that they won't have the time to plot against either him, or the American people.

Now, THAT, would be a change that we could believe in.

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George W. Bush and Dick Cheney squandered over $3 trillion of taxpayer funds "chasing" Osama Bin Laden. President Obama brought him down with 2 helicopters and 2 detachments of Navy Seals. If Bush had done that he'd be on Mt. Rushmore today, but the mainstream media all but ignored what Obama had accomplished.
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An Open Response to Halliburton's
Demand That I make A retraction

Ms. Gabriel,

I’m writing in response to your June 23rd request for an immediate correction to a statement made regarding the Halliburton Corp. in my June 20th article, Healthcare: Why Can't We Get the Congressional Option? Your communication reads as follows:

FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION

The article, “Healthcare: Why Can't We Get the Congressional Option?” posted Saturday, June 20, on The Wattree Chronicle contains information about Halliburton that is completely misleading and incorrect.

Halliburton is not a military contractor. Halliburton is one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the energy industry, and serves the upstream oil and gas industry throughout the lifecycle of the reservoir – from locating hydrocarbons and managing geological data, to drilling and formation evaluation, well construction and completion, and optimizing production through the life of the field.

You will note that all of the government services and engineering and construction businesses have been and remain with KBR. To confirm, KBR and Halliburton are completely separate and independent of each other. Halliburton separated KBR from the company in April 2007 (http://www.halliburton.com/public/news/pubsdata/press_release/2007/corpnws_040507a.html.

We respectfully request you make this correction immediately.
Kind regards,

Diana Gabriel
Senior Manager, Public Relations
Halliburton
diana.gabriel@halliburton.com
Office: 713.759.2608
Cell: [Redacted]
Fax: [Redacted]

While I am always careful to obtain multiple sources for any assertions that I make in my articles, nevertheless, I went back to objectively revisit the facts just in case it was necessary to accommodate your request. Halliburton is only mentioned one time in the entire article, and the paragraph reads as follows:

“And there's a very logical reason for that. Business, by it's very nature, is designed to generate profit, not to provide services - there was ample evidence of that during the Bush administration. Prior to the military turning over many of its support services to Halliburton, for example, we never heard about our troops being given contaminated water or being electrocuted in the shower. The reason for that is our military's top priority was maintaining the troops, while Halliburton's top priority is maximizing its profits. The very same dynamic is at work when it comes to insuring our citizens - and the politicians know it, but they don't care, because again, for them, it's about me first, and only then, the public good. I mean, am I the only one sick of these people dictating what is on and off the table? I don't think so.”

Try as I might, Ms. Gabriel, I can’t find anything inaccurate about that statement. While you pointed out that “Halliburton separated KBR from the company in April 2007," testimony before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee indicates that KBR was providing our military with substandard services long before then - and then, being rewarded for it.

On May 20, 2009 Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, opened the hearings on “Rewarding Failure: Contractor Bonuses for Faulty Work in Iraq,” with the following statement, which reads in part:

“Today’s hearing is a result of this Committee’s continuing investigation into the deaths of over a dozen U.S. soldiers by electrocution in Iraq. That investigation has led us to internal Pentagon documents showing that in 2007 and 2008, contractor KBR received bonuses of $83.4 million for work that, according to the Pentagon’s own investigation, led to the electrocution
deaths of U.S. troops.”

That doesn’t mean that the work was performed in 2007 and 2008 - that’s when they received the bonuses.

The committee’s third witness was Mr. Charles Smith. Mr Smith was the former Chief of HQ, Army Field Support Command, Field Support Contracting Division. According to Sen. Dorgan’s opening statement, “In that capacity, he [Mr. Smith] managed the massive LOGCAP contract that the Pentagon awarded to KBR, until he was forced out of his job in 2004 when he refused to approve paying KBR more than $1billion in questionable charges." He went on to say, "I should note that Mr. Smith was removed from his job despite the fact that in November 2004 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld awarded him the Department of Defense’s Medal for Distinguished Civilian Service.”

Mr. Smith’s testimony includes the following:

“In August 2004, the Army’s approach to KBR underwent a complete change. The goal of award fee boards became one of making KBR financially sound, even if it was not performing in accordance with the contract. This was consistent with actions to rescind the 15% withhold definitize contract cost estimates well above the DCAA recommended amounts, and remove me from my position. The Army’s stated reason is that it was afraid KBR would cease performance or allow their subcontractors to cease performance. I did not think this was a credible threat, as KBR would have lost its military business entirely by this action. I do not believe the Army has
stated the real reason for its change in approach to KBR.”

So frankly, Ms. Gabriel, I don’t see where I was inaccurate at all. In fact, Halliburton’s position seems to be completely analogous to a man who gets his hand shot off while committing a robbery, then pleads not guilty on the grounds that he’s no longer associated with the hand that held the gun.

Thus, with all due respect, I think I’ll let the article stand as is. I don’t see where it is the least bit misleading. In fact, upon review, I don’t think I went far enough - but I fully intend to remedy that situation in the very near future.

ADDENDUM

So what I'd like to know is this - if a shade tree journalist sitting up in his den in the heart of a Los Angeles ghetto could see what was going on in these instances, why couldn't the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, CNN and all of the other media networks; why couldn't Harvard, Yale, and all of the various and sundry Ph.D.s from America's great institutions of learning; and why couldn't the nation's so called "think tanks," all of the nation's political scientists, and the United States Congress figure it out?
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The answer is, they had, but they simply turned their backs and allowed young patriotic Americans to march off to their deaths, because that was more profitable. The most irrefutable evidence of that? None of their children died. 
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Now, the Mainstream Media - and the New Democratic Party, of all things - is doing the EXACT same thing to this nation, and on behalf of the EXACT same people (the 1%ers) by turning their backs once again on the law, democracy, and common sense:
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The Clintons acted with great enthusiasm when it came to the mass incarceration of Black people, but what about when they break the law? Massachusetts law is clear and unequivocal:
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"Within 150 feet of a polling place…no person shall solicit votes for or against, or otherwise promote or oppose, any person or political party or position on a ballot question, to be voted on at the current election. No campaign material intended to influence the vote of a voter in the ongoing election, including campaign literature, buttons, signs, and ballot stickers, may be posted, exhibited, circulated, or distributed in the polling place, in the building where it is located, on the building walls, on the premises where the building stands, or within 150 feet of an entrance door to the building. ( 950 CMR 53.03(18); 54.04.22),)"  
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But in spite of that law - THE PEOPLE'S LAW - Bill Clinton feels so entitled and thinks the people are so stupid, that we can't recognize that he constitutes a walking 'Bill'-board for Hillary Clinton. He also retards the vote by creating a distraction, his presidential entourage prevents people from getting into the polls, and it extends the time that voters have to wait in line - time that many voters don't have.  Didn't Bill Clinton know this,?  If he didn't, he has very poor judgment, If he did, what was his motive?  He wasn't voting, so why did he have to enter the polling site in the first place?  The answer is clear - to cheat, to circumvent the law, and to do whatever he had to do to get what he wanted. Haven't we had enough to these dishonest slicksters in office?  Aren't these exactly the kind of people we're trying to get OUT of office? Can you even imagine Barack Obama doing something like that?  Could you imagine Bernie Sanders doing something like that?  Absolutely not! And that's exactly why this nation can't be trusted in the hands of people like the Clintons. They lack character, they feel entitled, and they think that their interests - and the interests of their rich Wall St. cronies -  should be given priority over the interest of the average American.
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The DailyKos reported, ". . . the most serious charge leveled at Clinton’s March 1st Super-Tuesday antics is that he was blocking poor people from voting, in one of Massachusetts most distressed communities, where the median family income is $49,000, [which is] $110,000 less than the Massachusetts town where presidential candidate Hillary Clinton went to college, Wellesley.  Although electioneering within a polling place is a misdemeanor, interfering with voting rights is a state and federal civil rights violation and felony."

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Americans are currently living under the illusion of democracy. In a REAL democracy, Bill and Hillary wouldn't be celebrating a victory in the primaries, and in a REAL democracy, the people wouldn't be cheering them on and the Mainstream Media would be as silent as a church mouse. In a REAL democracy both Bill, and Hillary, would be out on bail and facing felony charges. So at the rate we're sliding downhill, this nation - at least as we've known it - can't possibly last.
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God help us.

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.

Sphere: Related Content

Why Conservatives Hate Barack Obama So Intensely (Reprise)

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Why Conservatives Hate Barack Obama So Intensely (Reprise)

 

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Racists tend to be the mediocrity of White society, so they try to use the fact that they were born White to define themselves and to compensate for their lack of personal value. Their entire sense of self-esteem is based more upon group association than individual value and accomplishment, and their entire claim to personal significance is, "Well, at least I'm better than them."
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That's what's driving radical conservatives so crazy about President Obama - he's walking, breathing, evidence that they cannot claim superiority by virtue of the color T-shirt they were born in, and that simple fact alone is causing them to suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance before the eyes of the entire world. That's also why they're so determined not to allow President Obama to be successful, even if it means destroying the country - and international corporatists are using the social division inherent in those sentiments to lower the standard of living of the American middle class.  
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Thus, this entire nation, and the future of our children, is being threatened by the desperate attempt of a handful of insecure bigots to maintain their delusions of superiority, and as far as they’re concerned, if the country has to be sacrificed for that cause, so be it.
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FELLOW AMERICANS, DON’T LET OUR IGNORANCE DESTROY US

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The racist animosities that are running rampant among ALL segments of the American people are playing right into the hands of the those who are our most insidious enemy – the global corporatists. These people are intent upon enslaving us all. The only difference between literal slavery and what they have in mind for us is we'll have to provide our own housing.
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These people are no longer Americans; they are now globalists, and America is just a virtual cotton field to them. And as long as they keep the poor and middle class fighting and hating one another, we’ll be powerless against their social and political manipulation. So "illegal aliens" and others are far from the biggest threat to the American way of life – the global corporatists are.
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If Al Qaeda represents a rattlesnake in America's garden, the corporate/GOP alliance represents a python under our bed. Al Qaeda can only destroy buildings, but the corporate/GOP alliance wants to destroy our entire way of life and replace American democracy with a system of corporate feudalism, where corporations, literally, control the nation.  So it is essential that every man, woman, and child who is a part of the poor and middle class begin to recognize that fact, put our petty hatreds aside, and come together to fight our most insidious enemy - the global corporatist.
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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 the founding fathers of fiscal conservatism who believed that only those who owned property should even be allowed to vote - and based on the voter obstruction laws currently being passed in Republican controlled states, they're heading in that direction again. Hamilton said the following:

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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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Hamilton's views were rejected by the founding fathers, mainly because many of them left Europe to escape the class system. But those who hold Hamilton's view are still among us. They simply have to remain discreet, and they must contrive various pretexts to camouflage their agenda in order to remain politically viable. But the agenda is clearly visible for anyone who takes the time to look. It's simply being disguised and hidden within the fabric of purposely instigated racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred and bigotry. The GOP specializes in using emotion to circumvent clear thinking.
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While they have the poor and middle class distracted by hating and fighting one another, the GOP/Corporate alliance is steeped in the process of undermining us all. Clear evidence of that is any and all legislation that benefits poor and middle class Americans is labeled "socialist," and the GOP fights it tooth-and-nail as "un-American." But they had absolutely no problem in bailing out Wall Street, even though the source of Wall Street's repeated problems result from their repeated attempts to swindle the American people. But Americans have been conditioned to believe that protecting ourselves is "un-American"; the American way of doing things is handing our wealth over to the rich. The scam is clear for anyone to see, but again, the American people have been conditioned to blame one another.
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The Republican Record of Economic Irresponsibility

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During the George W. Bush administration wasn't the first time that the American people had to bailout Wall Street as a result of Reckless Republican policies. As I pointed in my article, "The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling The American People,"  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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The GOP's passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to know no bounds and transcend all logic. From the moment the New Deal safety net to protect the American people went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. There are two reasons for that. The first is, it sets money aside for the American people that they'd like to get their hands on. The second is, it insulates the American people from being so vulnerable to corporate manipulation. We'll discuss how that works below.
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The closest the GOP has come to dismantling the New Deal started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics" - and the battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.
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Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would then not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. It's exactly the same plan the Republicans in congress are pushing today. But when the plan was first floated, even George Bush Sr., Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."
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Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planned.
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Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
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 And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut - for the rich.
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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. Bush.  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 played out on Wall Street in 2008. McCain 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. Then they have the audacity to claim that they're doing it because they're concerned about deficit spending.

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They're 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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Also interesting, considering their deep "concern" over the national debt, is the estimated $4 trillion Bush tax cut for the rich. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Considering  both the direct costs of the tax cuts and the associated increase in interest payments, the tax cuts would increase deficits by nearly $4 trillion between 2005 and 2014."
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1811
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So the fact is, what they really wanted prior to the 2012 election was to maintain the status quo, and make sure that the American people remained miserable, hungry, and divided until the elections so they'd have a better chance to regain power and raid the treasury again. 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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Now that they've lost the 2012 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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The Middle Class Slide Since the Reagan Administration

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"In 1982, Forbes magazine began its now much-read annual list of America’s richest men and women. At the time of the first list, there were 12 billionaires in the country and fewer than 200,000 millionaires. By the year 2000, there were nearly 300 billionaires and about 5 million millionaires. Smith’s account of the rise of the rich and super-rich tells the story of five types of individuals: entrepreneurs, dealmakers, investors, tycoons (corporate executives, who are distinguished from
entrepreneurs), and entertainers."
http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/the_rise_of_todays_rich_and_super_rich.html
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"No matter how you slice it, when it comes to income and wealth in America the rich get most of the pie and the rest get the leftovers. The numbers are shocking. Today the top 1 percent of Americans control 43 percent of the financial wealth (see the pie chart below) while the bottom 80 percent control only 7 percent of the wealth. Incredibly, the wealthiest 400 Americans have the same combined wealth as the poorest half of Americans — over 150 million people.".
A recent Princeton study Shows that America is no longer a democracy. We are now an Oligarchy, controlled by the rich. So it is essential that we wake up. Racism is no longer the war; racism is now merely a TOOL of war. We are now knee-deep in a CLASS WAR, and the American people are losing badly - ALL of the American people.
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Here’s the game that we're allowing the corporatists to run on us. They’ve convinced America that if we give the rich enough money, they’ll use that money to create jobs for the poor and middle class. Now, I don’t claim to be an intellectual giant, but it doesn’t take a great mind to understand that demand fuels supply, not the reverse.
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If I made my living selling Gucci Bags, for example, I don’t care how much money you give me, I’m not going to hire anyone to produce any more Gucci Bags than I have in stock if I'm being forced to sell those bags in a homeless shelter. It wouldn’t make sense, because in a homeless shelter no one would have the money to purchase my product. The only way that you’re going to get me to hire people to produce Gucci Bags is if you gave that money to the people in the shelter so they’d have the money to buy my merchandise.
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That's exactly what's happening in America today. Corporate profits are at record highs, and the information and charts above clearly show that corporations and corporate executives are currently making more money than they've ever dreamed of in the past. So there's no reason for high unemployment. The rich are not putting that money into creating jobs; that money is going into offshore accounts, and we never see it again. That's why the rich are getting so much richer, and the middle class so much poorer.
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On the other hand, if the Republican congress would allow President Obama to create jobs to repair American's infrastructure - repair bridges, dams, and interstate highways and the like - that money would create jobs, just like it did when it brought us out of the Great Depression. Then, Americans would have money to spend on goods and services. They would go on vacations, so hotels and restaurants would have to hire people to accommodate them, and the food industry would have to hire people to process and serve their food. They would also buy bicycles and toys for their children, and that would create jobs, and they would buy more clothing, gas, and make needed repairs to their homes, and that would create jobs. And as a result of all those jobs being created, more revenue would come into the government in taxes, which would allow us to pay down the national debt.
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Again, think about it - the business community is making more profits than they've ever made in their history, so there's no logical reason for unemployment in America to be so high. The reason that unemployment is so high is because it's being kept high on purpose.
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Consider this. In the sixties, Howard Hughes was famous for being one of the richest men in the world.  He was considered so incredibly rich that they made movies about him. But compared to today's billionaires, he'd qualify for food stamps. Howard Hughes only had $4 billion, but today, Bill Gates has $79.1 billion, David Koch, of the infamous Koch brothers has $41.3 Billion, and even the young man, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, has $29.9 billion.  So there is absolutely no reason for the American people to be suffering so severely, and for unemployment to be so high - yet, they have us hating and pointing the finger at one another as the cause of our misery, when as pointed out above, the wealthiest 400 Americans have as much combined wealth as the 150 million poorest half of Americans.
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So it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see where the wealth of middle-class America has gone. It hasn't gone to "illegal aliens," or people requiring food stamps. Corporate welfare is nearly double the cost of all social programs. About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent nearly 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.  http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-welfare-statistics-vs-social-welfare-statistics/
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The GOP's supposed concern for the national debt is only a pretext to block spending and keep unemployment high. They are purposely trying to turn America into a homeless shelter, because the GOP and its corporate cronies have a vested interest in keeping us angry, miserable, and divided.
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The GOP's motive is political - by keeping unemployment high and the American people miserable, it makes Obama and the Democrats look bad, and they're hoping that the resulting anger and division in the country will help them to get elected in a demographic that's shrinking to the GOP's disadvantage. And the corporatist are trying to squeeze the middle class. They’re trying to lower the American middle class standard of living to a level that conforms to the other countries in the global economy, where in many countries people make less per week than some middle-class Americans spend on lunch per day. So they're trying to squeeze the middle class to the point that it lowers our expectations, and we'll feel grateful for less.
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Their ultimate agenda is to turn America into a corporate feudalist state, where the American people are totally dependent on corporations for their survival. That will greatly enhance corporate profits, and essentially, allow them to control this nation. That's why the GOP is attacking unions, our educational system, and all social programs that prevent us from being totally reliant on the business community. They want to have complete control over our lives. Here's the philosophy behind it and how it works:
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I pointed out the following in a previous article:

Everything You Don’t Know About the GOP Philosophy, Strategy, and True Agenda

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In 1929 during Republican, Herbert Hoover’s administration, the stock market crashed - much like under the Bush Administration - starting the Great Depression, but back then there was no Barack Obama to come to the rescue or mitigate the damage early on. So in spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Herbert Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. Much like Republicans of today, Hoover and his Republican Party had absolutely no compassion for either the plight of the American people, or America’s veterans who had put their lives on the line for this country.

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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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The conditions were horrific. During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work they had no income, so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents. So three generations of a family could be living in one household - and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and the wife lived with the family.
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In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them - and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights, or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.
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They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and no paid vacation. In addition, since there was no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family - sick grandparents and all - would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
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As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery - the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
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Think back to the "Little Rascals" we use to watch as kids, and how ragged they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and would tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. Those are the conditions that they’re fighting to restore today.
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Think about it - while the GOP comes up with various pretexts to explain their actions, they are oppose to the minimum wage, they would cut unemployment insurance, "modify" Social Security, they’re against Affordable healthcare, they’re leaving no stone unturned to abolish unions, they’re blocking every jobs bill that comes before them, and in spite of record corporate profits, their corporate cronies are sending jobs out of the country and keeping unemployment high until the American middle class caves in and accept a lower standard of living.
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IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO MERELY SALUTE OUR HEROES

Keeping unemployment high also serves another purpose - it provides an endless supply of young American men and women to use as canon fodder for neocon military adventurism. But what else do you expect them to do? We certainly can’t expect them to send their children over there to die for the country. Dying for your country is no longer for the "rich and wellborn," that’s for the "little people." Then, IF your children come back home maimed and broken from their service to the country, the GOP has absolutely no compassion for them. Just like with Herbert Hoover, they call them deadbeats and a burden on the nation for having to beg for food stamps, and then throw them off the premises. And that’s in spite of the fact that most of the GOP ran - like Dick ‘five-deferment’ Cheney - when they were called upon to serve the nation. The GOP only love our troops as long as they can carry a weapon.
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I WOULD START THE SEARCH IN DICK CHENEY'S
OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS

The GOP/corporatist agenda also explains why they were so determined to send innocent American children to die in a senseless Iraqi war. The poor and middle class safety net put in place by the New Deal enjoys so much support among the American people that the GOP couldn't attack it head on. So they took us into Iraq to enrich their cronies and passed a tax cut for the rich that squandered trillions of dollars and ravaged our national treasury. That gave them a pretext to now claim, "We can no longer afford to fund the nation's safety net." But they could afford to build an embassy in Iraq that was so extravagant that it rivals the Vatican (U.S. Embassy Building will Rival the Vatican). And they could also afford to send so much unaccounted for CASH to Iraq that they could "MISPLACE" 6.6 BILLION dollars without a whimper from those who now want to count every penny that we spend on the poor and middle class.
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So we're being played America, and if we don't put our petty hatreds and prejudices aside and come together to fight this "Domestic Enemy" of the United States, the Tea party, the Klan, the Black Guerrilla Army, and the Mexican Mafia are going to find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder picking virtual cotton on the very same plantation, singing, "We Shall Overcome."

 

A Letter to Bush and Cheney From a Dying Vet

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OLD MARINES NEVER GIVE UP THE FIGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY

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So how do we fight against their control of our political system?

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Vote against ANY politician whose money isn’t coming directly from the people. And ALWAYS vote against the issues and politicians whose campaigns are flooded with money.

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LEARN THE ISSUES, ALWAYS VOTE FOR JUSTICE, AND NEVER, VOTE YOUR HATRED, OR IN RESPONSE TO MONEY. 

FOR THE JUSTICE THAT YOU VOTE AGAINST, WILL INVARIABLY, BECOME YOUR OWN. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1S_Pxw2n-U

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.

Sphere: Related Content

Why Conservatives Hate Barack Obama So Intensely

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Why Conservatives Hate Barack Obama So Intensely

 

 Racists tend to be the mediocrity of White society, so they try to use the fact that they were born White to define themselves in order to compensate for their lack of personal accomplishment. An individual's self-concept should be based upon who they are as an individual and their personal investment in self, not the claim of, "Well, at least I'm better than them." That's what's driving conservatives so crazy about Obama - he's walking, breathing, evidence that they're not superior by virtue of the color T-shirt they were born in, and that simple fact is causing them to suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance before the entire . That 's also why they're so determined not to allow Obama to be successful, even if it means destroying the country. Psychology 101.

FELLOW AMERICANS, DON’T LET OUR IGNORANCE DESTROY US

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The racist animosities that are running rampant among ALL segments of the American people are playing right into the hands of the those who are our most insidious enemy – the global corporatists. These people are intent upon enslaving us all. The only difference between literal slavery and what they have in mind for us is we'll have to provide our own housing.
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These people are no longer Americans; they are now globalists, and America is just a virtual cotton field to them. And as long as they keep the poor and middle class fighting and hating one another, we’ll be powerless against their social and political manipulation. So "illegal aliens" and others are far from the biggest threat to the American way of life – the corporatists are.
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If Al Qaeda represents a rattlesnake in America's garden, the corporate/GOP alliance represents a python under our bed. Al Qaeda can only destroy buildings, but the corporate/GOP wants to destroy our entire way of life and replace American democracy with a system of corporate feudalism, where corporations, literally, control the nation.  So it is essential that every man, woman, and child who is a part of the poor and middle class recognize that fact, put our petty hatreds aside, and come together to fight our most insidious enemy - the global corporatist.
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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 founding fathers of fiscal conservatism, who believed that only those who owned property should even be allowed to vote - and based on the voter obstruction laws currently being passed in Republican controlled states, they're heading in that direction again. Hamilton said the following:

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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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Hamilton's views were rejected by the founding fathers, mainly because many of them left Europe to escape the class system. But those who hold Hamilton's view are still among us. They simply have to remain discreet, and they must contrive various pretexts to camouflage their agenda in order to remain politically viable. But the agenda is clearly visible for anyone who takes the time to look. It's simply being disguised and hidden within the fabric of purposely instigated racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred and bigotry. The GOP specializes in using emotion to circumvent clear thinking.
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While they have the poor and middle class distracted by hating and fighting one another, the GOP/Corporate alliance is steeped in the process of undermining us all. Clear evidence of that is, any and all legislation that benefits poor and middle class Americans is labeled "socialist," and the GOP fights it tooth-and-nail as "un-American." But they had absolutely no problem in bailing out Wall Street, even though the source of Wall Street's repeated problems resulted from their attempt to swindle the American people. But Americans have been conditioned to believe that protecting ourselves is "un-American;" the American way of doing things is handing our wealth over to the rich. The scam is clear for anyone to see, but again, the American people have been conditioned to blame one another.
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The Republican Record of Economic Irresponsibility

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During the George W. Bush administration wasn't the first time that the American people had to bailout Wall Street as a result of Reckless Republican policies. As I pointed in my article, "The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling The American People,"  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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The GOP's passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to know no bounds, and transcend all logic. From the moment the New Deal safety net to protect the American people went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. There are two reasons for that. The first is, it sets money aside for the American people that they'd like to get their hands on. The second is, it insulates the American people from being so vulnerable to corporate manipulation. We'll discuss how that works below.
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The closest the GOP has come to dismantling the New Deal started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics" - and the battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.
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Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would then not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. It's exactly the same plan the Republicans in congress are pushing today. But when the plan was first floated, even George Bush Sr., Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."
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Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planned.
.
Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
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 And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut - for the rich.
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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. Bush.  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 played out on Wall Street in 2008. McCain was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name.
.

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.
.
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. Then they have the audacity to claim that they're doing it because they're concerned about deficit spending.

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They're 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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Also interesting, considering their deep "concern" over the national debt, is the estimated $4 trillion Bush tax cut for the rich. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Considering  both the direct costs of the tax cuts and the associated increase in interest payments, the tax cuts would increase deficits by nearly $4 trillion between 2005 and 2014."
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1811
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So the fact is, what they really wanted prior to the 2012 election was to maintain the status quo, and make sure that the American people remained miserable, hungry, and divided until the elections so they'd have a better chance to regain power and raid the treasury again. 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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Now that they've lost the 2012 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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The Middle Class Slide Since the Reagan Administration

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"In 1982, Forbes magazine began its now much-read annual list of America’s richest men and women. At the time of the first list, there were 12 billionaires in the country and fewer than 200,000 millionaires. By the year 2000, there were nearly 300 billionaires and about 5 million millionaires. Smith’s account of the rise of the rich and super-rich tells the story of five types of individuals: entrepreneurs, dealmakers, investors, tycoons (corporate executives, who are distinguished from
entrepreneurs), and entertainers."
http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/the_rise_of_todays_rich_and_super_rich.html
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"No matter how you slice it, when it comes to income and wealth in America the rich get most of the pie and the rest get the leftovers. The numbers are shocking. Today the top 1 percent of Americans control 43 percent of the financial wealth (see the pie chart below) while the bottom 80 percent control only 7 percent of the wealth. Incredibly, the wealthiest 400 Americans have the same combined wealth as the poorest half of Americans — over 150 million people.".
A recent Princeton study Shows that America is no longer a democracy. We are now an Oligarchy, controlled by the rich. So it is essential that we wake up. Racism is no longer the war; racism is now merely a TOOL of war. We are now knee-deep in a CLASS WAR, and the American people are losing badly - ALL of the American people.
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Here’s the game that we're allowing the corporatists to run on us. They’ve convinced America that if we give the rich enough money, they’ll use that money to create jobs for the poor and middle class. Now, I don’t claim to be an intellectual giant, but it doesn’t take a great mind to understand that demand fuels supply, not the reverse.
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If I made my living selling Gucci Bags, for example, I don’t care how much money you give me, I’m not going to hire anyone to produce any more Gucci Bags than I have in stock if I'm being forced to sell those bags in a homeless shelter. It wouldn’t make sense, because in a homeless shelter no one would have the money to purchase my product. The only way that you’re going to get me to hire people to produce Gucci Bags is if you gave that money to the people in the shelter so they’d have the money to buy my merchandise.
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That's exactly what's happening in America today. Corporate profits are at record highs, and the information and charts above clearly show that corporations and corporate executives are currently making more money than they've ever dreamed of in the past. So there's no reason for high unemployment. The rich are not putting that money into creating jobs; that money is going into offshore accounts, and we never see it again. That's why the rich are getting so much richer, and the middle class so much poorer.
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On the other hand, if the Republican congress would allow President Obama to create jobs to repair American's infrastructure - repair bridges, dams, and interstate highways and the like - that money would create jobs, just like it did when it brought us out of the Great Depression. Then, Americans would have money to spend on goods and services. They would go on vacations, so hotels and restaurants would have to hire people to accommodate them, and the food industry would have to hire people to process and serve their food. They would also buy bicycles and toys for their children, and that would create jobs, and they would buy more clothing, gas, and make needed repairs to their homes, and that would create jobs. And as a result of all those jobs being created, more revenue would come into the government in taxes, which would allow us to pay down the national debt.
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Again, think about it - the business community is making more profits than they've ever made in their history, so there's no logical reason for unemployment in America to be so high. The reason that unemployment is so high is because it's being kept high on purpose.
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Consider this. In the sixties, Howard Hughes was famous for being one of the richest men in the world.  He was considered so incredibly rich that they made movies about him. But compared to today's billionaires, he'd qualify for food stamps. Howard Hughes only had $4 billion, but today, Bill Gates has $79.1 billion, David Koch, of the infamous Koch brothers has $41.3 Billion, and even the young man, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, has $29.9 billion.  So there is absolutely no reason for the American people to be suffering so severely, and for unemployment to be so high - yet, they have us hating and pointing the finger at one another as the cause of our misery, when as pointed out above, the wealthiest 400 Americans have as much combined wealth as the 150 million poorest half of Americans.
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So it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see where the wealth of middle-class America has gone. It hasn't gone to "illegal aliens," or people requiring food stamps. Corporate welfare is nearly double the cost of all social programs. About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent nearly 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.  http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-welfare-statistics-vs-social-welfare-statistics/
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The GOP's supposed concern for the national debt is only a pretext to block spending and keep unemployment high. They are purposely trying to turn America into a homeless shelter, because the GOP and its corporate cronies have a vested interest in keeping us angry, miserable, and divided.
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The GOP's motive is political - by keeping unemployment high and the American people miserable, it makes Obama and the Democrats look bad, and they're hoping that the resulting anger and division in the country will help them to get elected in a demographic that's shrinking to the GOP's disadvantage. And the corporatist are trying to squeeze the middle class. They’re trying to lower the American middle class standard of living to a level that conforms to the other countries in the global economy, where in many countries people make less per week than some middle-class Americans spend on lunch per day. So they're trying to squeeze the middle class to the point that it lowers our expectations, and we'll feel grateful for less.
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Their ultimate agenda is to turn America into a corporate feudalist state, where the American people are totally dependent on corporations for their survival. That will greatly enhance corporate profits, and essentially, allow them to control this nation. That's why the GOP is attacking unions, our educational system, and all social programs that prevent us from being totally reliant on the business community. They want to have complete control over our lives. Here's the philosophy behind it and how it works:
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I pointed out the following in a previous article:

Everything You Don’t Know About the GOP Philosophy, Strategy, and True Agenda

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In 1929 during Republican, Herbert Hoover’s administration, the stock market crashed - much like under the Bush Administration - starting the Great Depression, but back then there was no Barack Obama to come to the rescue or mitigate the damage early on. So in spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Herbert Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. Much like Republicans of today, Hoover and his Republican Party had absolutely no compassion for either the plight of the American people, or America’s veterans who had put their lives on the line for this country.

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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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The conditions were horrific. During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work they had no income, so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents. So three generations of a family could be living in one household - and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and the wife lived with the family.
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In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them - and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights, or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.
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They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and no paid vacation. In addition, since there was no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family - sick grandparents and all - would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
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As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery - the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
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Think back to the "Little Rascals" we use to watch as kids, and how ragged they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and would tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. Those are the conditions that they’re fighting to restore today.
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Think about it - while the GOP comes up with various pretexts to explain their actions, they are oppose to the minimum wage, they would cut unemployment insurance, "modify" Social Security, they’re against Affordable healthcare, they’re leaving no stone unturned to abolish unions, they’re blocking every jobs bill that comes before them, and in spite of record corporate profits, their corporate cronies are sending jobs out of the country and keeping unemployment high until the American middle class caves in and accept a lower standard of living.
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IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO MERELY SALUTE OUR HEROES

Keeping unemployment high also serves another purpose - it provides an endless supply of young American men and women to use as canon fodder for neocon military adventurism. But what else do you expect them to do? We certainly can’t expect them to send their children over there to die for the country. Dying for your country is no longer for the "rich and wellborn," that’s for the "little people." Then, IF your children come back home maimed and broken from their service to the country, the GOP has absolutely no compassion for them. Just like with Herbert Hoover, they call them deadbeats and a burden on the nation for having to beg for food stamps, and then throw them off the premises. And that’s in spite of the fact that most of the GOP ran - like Dick ‘five-deferment’ Cheney - when they were called upon to serve the nation. The GOP only love our troops as long as they can carry a weapon.
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I WOULD START THE SEARCH IN DICK CHENEY'S
OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS

The GOP/corporatist agenda also explains why they were so determined to send innocent American children to die in a senseless Iraqi war. The poor and middle class safety net put in place by the New Deal enjoys so much support among the American people that the GOP couldn't attack it head on. So they took us into Iraq to enrich their cronies and passed a tax cut for the rich that squandered trillions of dollars and ravaged our national treasury. That gave them a pretext to now claim, "We can no longer afford to fund the nation's safety net." But they could afford to build an embassy in Iraq that was so extravagant that it rivals the Vatican (U.S. Embassy Building will Rival the Vatican). And they could also afford to send so much unaccounted for CASH to Iraq that they could "MISPLACE" 6.6 BILLION dollars without a whimper from those who now want to count every penny that we spend on the poor and middle class.
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So we're being played America, and if we don't put our petty hatreds and prejudices aside and come together to fight this "Domestic Enemy" of the United States, the Tea party, the Klan, the Black Guerrilla Army, and the Mexican Mafia are going to find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder picking virtual cotton on the very same plantation, singing, "We Shall Overcome."

 

A Letter to Bush and Cheney From a Dying Vet

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OLD MARINES NEVER GIVE UP THE FIGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY

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So how do we fight against their control of our political system?

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Vote against ANY politician whose money isn’t coming directly from the people. And ALWAYS vote against the issues and politicians whose campaigns are flooded with money.

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LEARN THE ISSUES, ALWAYS VOTE FOR JUSTICE, AND NEVER, VOTE YOUR HATRED, OR IN RESPONSE TO MONEY. 

FOR THE JUSTICE THAT YOU VOTE AGAINST, WILL INVARIABLY, BECOME YOUR OWN. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1S_Pxw2n-U

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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