How Do We Know the GOP Has Purposely Sabotaged America? Because Their Behavior Was Predicted

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

How Do We Know the GOP Has Purposely Sabotaged America? 
Because Their Behavior Was Predicted

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The American people should be completely disgusted with the GOP, because at this point, it has become abundantly clear that they have no limits when it comes to their lust for power and greed. Patriotism and love of country is meaningless to them. Over the past six years of the Obama administration they've repeatedly demonstrated that their lust for power takes priority over patriotism, the nation's interest, and bringing relief to the American people, from an economic crisis that THEY created!

What evidence do I have of that? Plenty. On February 3, 2009, exactly two weeks after President Obama entered office for his first term, I wrote the article below predicting exactly the kind of tactics that the GOP was going to engage in, and also their motivation for doing so. But I don't profess to being a prophet. It took neither monumental intellectual resources, nor a crystal ball, to recognize that the current GOP has morphed into the domestic enemy of the United States. Any American who fails to see that simply doesn't want to see.

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We won't get into the discussion as to why the American people refused to see what's right before their eyes - at least, not at this time - because that would lead to a heated and divisive debate, and that's the GOP's stock and trade. The fact is, the GOP agenda is so toxic to the American way of life, and to the interest of the American people as a whole, that  their only resource for remaining a viable political party is hatred and antipathy.  The GOP has a vested interest in making absolutely sure that the American people's hatred for one another ALWAYS takes priority over their concern for their own family's best interest. 

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Secretary of the Arts? Sounds Like a Plan 

Quincy Jones, musician, composer, and arranger extraordinaire, has started a petition that has drawn to date more than 220,000 signatures , asking President Obama to consider adding a Secretary of the Arts as a cabinet level post in his administration.

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At first blush that might sound rather frivolous in a nation that's involved in two wars, have people losing their homes, and is currently involved in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. But when given thoughtful consideration, it might just be exactly what America needs, and could very well turn out to be one of the most important cabinet posts in an Obama administration.
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What President Obama needs right now is a way to offset Republican efforts against him, and to rally the American people around his programs, initiatives and efforts--and there's no better way to do that than to enlist the assistance of the entertainment and arts community.
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Everyone one is essentially in agreement that America is in for some hard times ahead, but America's economic woes are not the biggest threat to this nation. We're going to get past that-- the biggest threat to this nation is the loss of the American spirit, and our confidence that we can survive this crisis. Thus, an organized and highly motivated arts and entertainment community can help us to address that issue, and they can also be of tremendous value in our foreign policy efforts.
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Look at the value that our entertainment community provided during the Great Depression and WWII. They rallied America's efforts close to single-handedly. They both kept America focused on its goal, and also gave us the motivation to reach that goal. It was a well trained and courageous military that won the battles overseas, but it was Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and the Maguire Sisters that won the battle on the domestic front. And as a result of those efforts, the thirties and forties turned out to be one of the most highly productive and creative periods in this nation's history.
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We must also acknowledge that America has a cunning and insidious domestic foe to overcome. In spite of their rhetoric and pledges to the contrary, the Republican Party has a vested interest in seeing America fail. They see they're interest as totally opposed to that of the American people. So when Rush Limbaugh said he hopes President Obama fails, he wasn't alone in that point of view, he was just the only one dumb enough to say it out loud.
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So let there be no doubt about the fact that there is nothing the Republican Party won't do to undermine President Obama's efforts to cure America's woes - with the possible exception of promoting those initiatives that enhance the business interest of their fat-cat friends. We should also not delude ourselves in the understanding that absolutely nothing would make the Republican leadership more effusive with delighted than seeing the American people suffer like we've never suffered before for the next four years. Therefore, we can expect them to pull out all stops to obstruct, frustrate, and delay, all efforts to bring relief to America's poor and middle class under President Obama's administration.
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That's where a strong and influential secretary of the arts would be of great value. An organized entertainment and arts community could be used to put both social and political pressure on the Republican leadership against sabotaging the American people. The arts community could rally the people to such a fever pitch over curing our national woes, that any efforts by the Republican Party to sabotage that effort would be political suicide. If the American people can be rallied to give their lives in a senseless war, they can certainly be rallied in their own best interest.
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Finally, and just as important to the nation's long-term goals, an innovative and influential secretary of the arts could have an extremely positive influence on both artistic responsibility, and the use of the arts as an educational tool. He or she could engage the nation, and the arts community, in a discussion over using the arts to enhance our lives, rather than drag us down. That doesn't mean to engage in censorship, but rather, to promote, educate, and encourage personal responsibility through the arts - with everything from cartoons, movies, and music, to the advertising billboards along our roads and highways.

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We could use the arts to change the way we relate to one another. We could promote knowledge, education, and community enhancement as cool, and crime, drug use, and irresponsibility as uncool–in other words, do just the opposite of what we're currently doing.
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So I'd say, let's go for it. It may be just what we need to turn our society around. We already have everything we need in place, so now all we need is the will to do it, and someone influential and creative enough to change our mindset. We could even take a page out of GW's book, and call it, "A War on Ignorance."

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Now that's a war I could rally behind.
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FELLOW AMERICANS, DON’T LET OUR IGNORANCE DESTROY US

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2014/07/fellow-americans-dont-let-our-ignorance.html

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Eric L. Wattree 

wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com

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

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The Modern GOP - The Most Dangerous Force in America

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

The Modern GOP - The Most Dangerous Force in America

IF THE GOP HATES GOVERNMENT
LET'S ACCOMMODATE 'EM

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

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OBAMA WASN'T THE FIRST PRESIDENT

THE REPUBLICANS CALLED A SOCIALIST

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

 

Eric L. Wattree

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

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

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President Obama: Protect America From Economic Terrorists

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

President Obama: Protect America From Economic Terrorists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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