DONALD TRUMP PLACES RE-ELECTION BEFORE LIVES OF AMERICAN CHILDREN

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY

DONALD TRUMP PLACES RE-ELECTION BEFORE LIVES OF AMERICAN CHILDREN

OLIVIA TROYE

WHITE HOUSE STAFF MEMBER SPEAKS OUT

“You’re exchanging votes for lives, and I have a serious problem with that,” said Ms. Troye, who left the White House in August and has begun speaking out publicly against Mr. Trump.

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WHITE HOUSE AIDE ALLEGES THAT DONALD TRUMP DOCTORED CDC REPORTS TO REOPEN SCHOOLS BEFORE IT WAS DEEMED SAFE TO HELP HIM BE RE-ELECTED.

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HOW CAN WE TRUST TRUMP TO PROTECT AMERICA IF HE PLACES HIS OWN INTEREST BEFORE OUR CHILDREN?

Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com

BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS

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Religion: 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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Let's Not Get It Twisted - Conservatives Have Always Been This Nation's Bigots

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Let's Not Get It Twisted - Conservatives Have Always Been This Nation's Bigots

  

Ever since the Donald Sterling scandal erupted, conservative Republicans have been all over the airways and social media declaring that Donald Sterling was a Democrat, and that proves their ongoing contention that it is the Democrats who had the racist past, and it is the Democrats who are the racists today. Then these conservative Republicans go on to wrap themselves around President Abraham Lincoln, and declare themselves to be "the party of Lincoln."

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Nothing could be further from the truth and more blatantly manipulative of the American people. While it is true that Democrats, or "Dixiecrats," were virulent racist, since that time the Democratic and Republican Parties have completely changed political polarities. The Democratic Party was made up of conservatives back then. So in order to keep things in perspective, instead of thinking in terms of the Democratic and Republican parties, we need to think in terms of liberals and conservatives, and conservatives have ALWAYS been this nation's bigots, from day one, and regardless to what party they were in.

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So the mere fact that conservative Republicans continue to bring up this issue, and continue to try to obscure their historic genesis, makes it abundantly clear that one of two things are at work here - either they know that they’ve always been this nation’s bigots and they’re trying bamboozle the American people with a technicality, are they’re dumb, and they’re completely unaware of their own history. But considering the ideological confluence within the GOP, both issues are at work here. The leadership of the GOP, the fiscal (corporate) conservatives, know they’re being disingenuous, while their troops, the social conservative bigots, only know what they’ve been told, and what lends comfort to their bigotry.

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So is the modern Republican Party really “the party of Lincoln,” and responsible for freeing the slaves? I don’t think so. But the GOP regularly, routinely, and with a straight face makes that claim. One Republican recently confronted me and stated the following:

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"It was Republicans who beat Democrats in the Civil War, thus freeing the slaves. It was Democrats who started the KKK as its military wing to intimidate the (largely black) Republican party who were running the south after the war. Can a leopard change its spots?? Are the Democrats now the party FOR the black people after being against them for so long? So many of you are duped by the Devil's trickery. a few table scraps from massa's table and you run right back to his side. The Democrat is the racist."

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The above assertion is a prime example of how many Republicans can take a kernel of truth and create a banquet of lies. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and so was Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King. But since the Civil War the Republican and Democratic parties have completely changed their relative political positions, so relative to their political philosophy, the modern Republican party bears absolutely no relationship to its predecessor.

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Prior to the Civil War the Republican Party was made up of big business interests and Northern aristocrats, and the Democratic Party was made up of Dixiecratcs and Southern agrarian interests - farmers and slave owners. Thus, the Republicans were progressive liberals and the Democrats (or Dixiecrats) were Southern conservative slave owners.

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But that began to change during the Great Depression when Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came out against the corporations and to the aid of the poor with his "New Deal for the American People." With the “New Deal,” Democrats ushered in workers’ rights. They created Social Security so the elderly wouldn't have to go to the "Poor House" or become a burden on their children when they became too old to work.

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The Democrats also created unemployment insurance so people would have something to fall back on if they lost their jobs, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set rules of conduct for corporations that allowed workers to work with some semblance of dignity. The new law set a minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor standards, and many other regulations protecting workers.

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Prior to the FLSA corporations could work employees for as many hours as they liked, and they often set wages so low that families had to send their children to work just to survive - and many of those children were maimed or killed because they had to work under the most horrific conditions, such as in coal mines and the like.

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But after President Roosevelt brought relief to the people with these “big government, socialist programs,” the Democratic Party began to become associated with the common man, and the Republican party embarked upon a single-minded mission to reverse these "bleeding heart liberal" policies and return America to what had previously been the status quo.

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Then during the fifties the Democratic Party came out in support of the Civil Rights Movement. As a result, during the fifties and sixties the Southern Dixiecrats became disenchanted with the Democrats and migrated to the Republican Party. At the same time, many Southern Blacks began leaving the Republican Party to become Democrats.

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Thus, the Republican Party is now a coalition of three separate constituencies with confluent interests. The first group is made up of traditional conservatives. These are highly patriotic Americans who believe in limited government, the primacy of the people over government, and fiscal responsibility. But the other two groups that have coalesced within the GOP are much more malevolent - international business interests, and social bigots.

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It is the former of these two, international business, that controls the GOP. It's made up of wealthy and highly educated individuals with huge amounts of monetary resources, and thus, political influence - and they use every bit of that leverage to manipulate what has become their citizen army - the social bigots. These are the people who hate any and everybody who doesn’t look, think, and act like themselves.

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The social bigots are the people we see armed to the teeth at presidential speeches, disrupting town hall meetings, and fighting against their own interests. In short, these are the “Joe the Plumbers” of the world who are being deluded by corporatist propaganda. Also among their ranks are the diehard racists who are still fighting to promote a segregationist agenda.

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But the social bigots are merely the soldiers of the party. The corporatists, who control the GOP, have never lost sight of their seventy-year-old mission to undo the New Deal. But they've found that the safety-net that President Roosevelt provided for the people is much too popular to attack head on, so they had to devise a plan to chip away at it.

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Then came 9/11, so they decided to used the war in Iraq to ravage the national treasury. They then gave themselves a $4 trillion tax cut to further deplete the treasury, and now they're telling the poor and middle class, "Sorry, but we no longer have the revenue to fund the programs that you've come to depend on for the past seventy years. And in the meantime, Gov. Scott Walker is hard at work in Wisconsin trying to dismantle the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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So, can a leopard change its spots? Yes it can - and with regard to the Democratic and Republican parties, the leopard has changed in a very big way. But the modern GOP has never been prone to allowing the facts to distort a well-crafted lie. That's why they have such a fierce aversion to a well-educated electorate.
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Thus, the facts dictate that the modern GOP’s claim to have any connection with President Lincoln whatsoever - other than being the enemy of everything he stood for - is not only a gross misrepresentation of history, but a blatant lie. The fact is, if the Civil War was being fought today, the GOP would be the Confederacy.

 

. . . Don’t mention it, Abe. I got this.


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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War Crimes

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

War Crimes

It's been suggested more than once that the only reason I'm so passionate about having the Bush Administration charged with war crimes is because I'm a liberal, and therefore, harbor some sort of deep-seated hatred for George Bush. But that's not true. The fact is, I neither hate George Bush, nor any other conservative. I'm a progressive, not an ideologue, so I have no ideological motive to see any adversity brought into Bush's life, or anyone elses. My passion stems from the fact that because I am progressive, I have a progressive's lust for justice.

As I've mentioned in previous articles, progressives have but one guiding philosophy, one that entails the primacy of humanity, justice for ALL, and the search for truth - wherever that truth may lead, and regardless to whose ox is gored as a result. It's just happens that in this case, the ox that must be gored is in our own backyard.

But in today's political environment, I can certainly understand how people might feel the way they do - especially conservatives.  It is far from lost on me that many of those who claim to be progressives are actually quite partisan - they're ideologues. They view politics from the perspective of a sports fan - "it's our team against theirs, and the more pain their team sustains, the better we like it."

But I want to assure you that's not the case here. I'm looking at this situation purely from the perspective of what is just - and what is just in this case, is for Bush, Cheney, and their cohorts be held strictly accountable for their criminal conduct in Iraq - and I sincerely hope that once I've laid out my case that even the most cynical of you will understand my point of view - even if you disagree with it.

Let us go back to what we were feeling during Nine-Eleven for a moment. Think about how much horror and pain we went through as we witnessed three thousand of our citizens being brutally murdered. It was such a traumatic experience that now, close to a decade later, we're still traumatized by it. It seems like it only happened yesterday. 

But we've never once stopped to consider that if just that one day could be so traumatizing to the American psyche, what it must be like for the Iraqis who have been forced to watch hundreds of thousands of their people killed, and who have had to face the horror of a Nine-Eleven every day of their lives for the past seven years.  The horror that we've brought upon the Iraqi people goes far beyond what can be express here in words. The injustice that we've perpetrated on the Iraqis is bruatally unconscionable - and these people did absolutely nothing to us.

Just think of the pure hell they've had to go through just to try to protect their children in a Nine-eleven-like environment everyday for seven years; never knowing when something - anything - might explode tearing to shreds the little bodies of the children that mean more than anything else in the world to them.

Imagine what it would be like to have some country come over here and kill hundreds of thousands of Americans (millions in order to have the impact we've had on Iraq).  Then later, having that country say, "You know, now that we've thought about it, we shouldn't have done this. It was a mistake. But what the hell - what's done is done, so we need to look forward."

And even as they speak of "moving forward," you're thinking of the past - of happier times.  You think of your mother's smile, your father's laugh, the hopes and dreams of your beautiful young sister, and how goofy your silly little brother could be.  But now, they're all now gone. You're the only one left - so far.

Would you be willing to accept a simple apology? I don't think so. Well, that's what the United states is trying to give the Iraqi people in place of  justice - at least, President Obama is - Dick Cheney's only regret seems to be that he didn't torture enough of them.

For the U.S. to think it can just casually walk away from committing that kind of atrocity to hundreds of thousands of families, then simply say, "We're sorry for what happened, but now's the time to look forward - forward, but without any accountability - speaks volumes about American arrogance, who we are as a people, and why people want to kill us.

President Obama spoke of "change."  But what could he possibly be thinking, if this represents change?  What kind of change could he possibly be speaking of where politics is more important than the horror we've committed? Doesn't he realize that if we don't bring the people responsible for the atrocities in Iraq to justice America will never be safe again?   And  beyond that, the U.S. will never be able to look the world in the eye and claim to be a nation that believes in justice, or the rule of law, ever again.

And it's not only what we've done that's so horrible, the cynical, greedy, and corrupt motives behind our actions was almost as bad as the act itself - and that corruption of the American soul still walks among us.  We haven't learned a thing.  Dick Cheney claims that terrorists want to kill us because they're jealous of our freedom. That's complete bullshit. They want to kill us because we won't mind our own business, and we keep trying to steal their oil.

America has got to learn two things: First, if you keep slapping your neighbor and picking his flowers, eventually he's going to hit you back. We may think that we're "exceptional," but that doesn't give us the innate right to abuse others with impunity.  And secondly, if you break into your neighbor's home and wipe out his family, then you're caught with a pocketful of his valuables, trying to plead self-defense won't fly. Any court in the world will convict you of being a murderer and a thief.

We haven't executed one criminal in the history of America whose crimes even approached the seriousness of the crimes committed by Bush and Cheney - and many of those crimes were against our own troops. The crimes committed by Dick Cheney makes Tookie Williams look like a choirboy. Yet, now we want to simply walk away and expect the world to believe that America stands for justice? I don't think so.

As long as we continue to think the rest of the world is beneath us, and the lives of others aren't as valuable as our own, we'll never be just, we'll never be safe, and we'll continue to move farther away from what it means to be Americans:

A MESSAGE TO BUSHLAND

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, God Bless Bushland!

The land of the free and home of the slave; the land of My Lai, and Calley's mass grave.

And you trust that God will bless Bushland?

Well trust this -You are blind, my friend.

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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Accountability: America’s Moral Responsibility to Humanity

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE Accountability: America's Moral Responsibility to Humanity Eight years of Republican "leadership" has left America both economically devastated, and globally humiliated. Yet, far from apologizing for the damage that they've done to the stability and image of this great nation, instead, they've circled their wagons and gone into damage control mode–not to control the damage that they've done to the nation, but in an attempt to rewrite history in order to control the damage that they've done to themselves. So now, as President Obama goes about the business of desperately trying to return America to its former position of economic stability at home, and respect, admiration, and moral authority abroad, the GOP leadership seems to be completely oblivious to the nation's desperate and immediate need for a concerted effort in that regard. They're like clueless children who find it impossible to see the big picture. Thus, at this point it has become abundantly clear that their primary concern is not with restoring America to a sound footing in the world, but rather, simply restoring themselves to power at any cost. This situation points out the wisdom of always seeking to draw something of value from every adversity, and in this case, we should seek enlightenment. In spite of the fact that virtually everyone in the Bush administration managed to avoid serving this nation in uniform (Bush went AWOL, and Cheney obtained five (5) deferments), the GOP has somehow managed to pre-empt and wrap themselves in the glorious vestments of patriotism. But this current situation should teach us a valuable lesson in that regard–never go by what people say; always go by what they do. And what are they doing--while the American people are experiencing the kind of suffering that this country hasn't seen since the Great Depression, and the United States has become the "Dick Cheney" of the world, the GOP's one and only concern is how they can regain power. Is that patriotism? I don't think so. There's only one word to describe this current batch of Republican wingnuts--and you have to go outside the English language to find it--hutzpah. They've left this nation's global standing at its lowest ebb ever, and they've also left us much less safe. But in spite of that, Sean Hannity and FOX news have seen fit to trot out Dick Cheney to lecture President Obama on national governance and world affairs. What Makes these people think that anyone is interested in listening to anything this guy has to say? The vice president of the Crips has a higher approval rating than Dick Cheney, so they can have but one motive--to create division and disseminate propaganda. But Hannity's time would have been better spent holding a seance, then conjuring up the spirit of John Wayne Gacy to give us a lecture on child rearing. It couldn't have been any less productive, but at least there would have been an entertainment factor involved. Then you have Karl Rove trying to imply that President Obama is turning America into a banana republic. When I first heard him, the word "stupid" immediately came to mind. Either Rove is stupid, or he thinks the American people are complete fools. Now, think about it. Wasn't Karl Rove a major part of the very administration that lied us into war, illegally invaded a sovereign state, sent our troops off to war without the proper equipment to keep themselves alive, then made them pay for their own meals while lying wounded in the hospital, then looted the nation's treasury and resources, setup no-bid contracts to enrich their cronies, spied on their own citizens, and as we speak, are now trying to convince America that torture and all of the things listed above are ok, so that Bush, Cheney–and their entire crowd-- won't be prosecuted for war crimes, defrauding the American people, and the senseless waste of human life for personal gain? If I'm not mistaken, I think Karl Rove was indeed a major part of all that. So who looks, sounds, and behaves more like tinhorn dictators? Thus, before Rove starts pointing his finger at President Obama, he needs to smell it first. As a direct result of the greed, poor judgment, and self-service of these people, instead of focusing our efforts on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border where Osama Bin Laden and the others who planned and executed the Nine-Eleven attack on America were in hiding, they went to Iraq and began to tortured innocent detainees–not to protect America, but in an attempt to justify the lies they were telling the American people in order to steal Iraqi oil, enrich themselves, and loot this nation of the necessary resources to fund the New Deal programs that they couldn't attack legislatively. Now, as a direct result of that flawed judgment, we have the Taliban a mere sixty miles away from a nuclear armed Pakistan. So I don't know about the rest of America, but to me, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove's claim of keeping us safe is sounding pretty ridiculous about now. Thus, to even consider "moving on" without prosecuting these people is out of the question. If we simply turned the page on this matter, we become accessories to their war crimes. In addition, we cannot allow them to just walk away from placing the survival of this nation–and indeed, the world--in serious jeopardy. And further, if we are fortunate enough to survive this unmitigated episode of irresponsibility, we need to send an unmistakably graphic message to the next group of budding demagogues, who they've undoubtedly planted throughout the government. If Nixon had gone to prison for Watergate, and Reagan had become his cellmate for selling arms to Iran, we wouldn't be going through what we're going through right now. And finally, we have a moral responsibility to the world. A nation cannot just turn the page after its leaders have committed war crimes and are responsible for the slaughter and/or displacement of a million people. That page won't turn without the offending nation engaging in aggressive corrective action. If it were any other nation, the United States would demand accountability, so we can demand nothing less of ourselves. I know--they're simply wingnut Republiclowns, but their behavior in office was much more than a meaningless prank. Just because we put up with them, doesn't mean that the world should have to. After all, we even carry a pooper scooper for our pets. Trying to walk away from the atrocities of the past seven years would be like defecating and then trying to walk away without cleaning ourselves. We'd have to walk wide-legged and very uncomfortably, throughout the rest of history. Eric L. Wattree wattree.blogspot.com A moderate is one who embraces truth over ideology, and reason over conflict.

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